ANXIETY - 'That's not fair' ... is it?

Do you get along with the people you work with, or do they get on your nerves?

Am I the only one who suffers from the psychological stress of internalising frustration and anger whilst outwardly remaining smiley?

My anxiety makes coming to work quite a difficult chore at the best of times, but when I get here and people are such complete and utter idiots it makes my time here even more unbearable!

Lazy people, liars and those people hell bent on promotion not to mention those members of secret societies who wheel and deal their way up and around everyone else.

I have worked for the same organisation for 27 years and I cannot wait to retire as things have become so utterly political in every way.

I think the fact that I have always saddled myself with ‘the fair’ rule could be half my problem. What’s fair and what is not fair have always been bench marks by which I measure any given situation. If someone gets promoted because they’re good, make rational well considered decisions and are good to have around in an emergency situation I would think ‘that’s fair’ if someone gets promoted on who they know as opposed to what they know I would think ‘that’s not fair’.

The trouble with viewing the world through the ‘fair’ goggles is that it impacts on your mood quite substantially often turning a sunny day cloudy, and a cloudy day stormy!

Supermarket queues are a hot bed for fair or not fair adjudications! If I have queued a long time and someone else walks straight up to a till that just opened and gets served straight away I’m immediately furious because obviously ‘that’s not fair’ is it?!

Whereas if the till operator acknowledges those already queueing and beckons you across then ‘that’s fair’ surely?

This annoying and invasive habit of contemplating each situation through these fair goggles blights my life and much like Japanese knotweed it seems virtually impossible to eradicate.

Why do those people that shout the loudest, are the rudest always tend to win through and get their own way? That’s not fair… yet calm, measured, mild mannered people often get stomped all over by the afore mentioned idiots as they make their way to the front of the queue!? That’s not fair is it?

That day you chose and organised a BBQ for all your mates, put lots of time and effort in to it and then it rains? That’s not fair is it, yet that adhoc affair organised at the last minute by the golden child gets stunning weather! That’s not fair, right? You get the drift and extent of my problems!

Well as I sit at my desk listening to the utter drivel being bandied around by my co-workers I tend to experience multiples of these ‘that’s not fair’ moments.

Back to back, wall to wall, top to bottom twaddle… Invariably leading me to be in a frame of mind that could loosely be described as tense! Well very tense actually, if not bloody fuming!

That steam coming out of my ears fuming, that feeling the urge to stick pencils up my nose and run up and down the corridor in my pants sort of cross.

Yet here I sit calm on the exterior, being polite when spoken to and seemingly quite content, when really I want to run around everybody’s desks chucking their files in the air shouting wibble!

Do you think I should see the doctor to up my anxiety meds?! Is this how axe murderers start their cycle of offending?!

Seriously though I do wonder how much more of this internal fire fighting I can cope with before the blaze gets out of control. Which comes first the anger or the anxiety? Am I angry because I’m anxious, or does the anxiety ramp up because of the anger issues?

Anxiety as many guises though doesn’t it?

For instance when I’m depressed and anxious I get this brain fog! Standing or sitting staring into space, aware you’re looking vacant but unable to snap out of it or even recall what you are meant to be doing at that given time. It’s like someone hit the pause button and you can’t find the triangle on that remote to initiate playing yourself again! I go shopping but stand in the middle of the aisles looking absentmindedly around hoping to find a visual clue that might stimulate my befuddled brain.

Then there are phone calls…urghh. I hate speaking to people on the phone. I have no idea what it is about the phone that puts the fear of god into me but it does. I am more than capable of having a rationale and intelligent conversation with all most anybody yet the concept of picking up that phone or even answering it fills me with dread and I tend to go to extreme lengths to avoid it.

Social events, how can you not want to go out so strongly that it feels like a physical fear and yet psychologically feel really put out that you can’t go and feel like you are being left out! It’s such a contradiction that I barely understand it myself and yet I live in hope that my friends will understand my ‘stand offish’ behaviour. More often than not they don’t and I have a bad reaction to having missed events. They get the hump and then I feel guilty which in turn reignites my anxiety.

Headaches, oh the headaches, I have had real problems with these. My whole head feels like it is likely to explode, in fact it physically hurts to the point that I want to wrap it up and rest it somewhere soft. The nearest I could describe it to you non sufferers would be the headache you get when you’re dehydrated.

Joint aches, I feel half of the time almost as if I have flu. My joints ache and ache and then ache a bit more!

Ironically though despite all my physical symptoms anxiety is actually a mental illness often associated / connected with depression.

I suffer with depression and I would say my anxiety goes hand in hand.

I do struggle however to understand why as a high functioning anxiety sufferer I cannot sort myself out. I know what the problem is, I am reasonably intelligent, and I am medicated so why can I not pull myself up by the boots strings and get over it?

Frustrates me a lot that one but the reality is I cannot so I just have to take one day at a time, sadly along with one bottle of red wine. Self medicating with alcohol has become a nightly occurrence as I dull the anxiety into submission. I know I am drinking too much but I am struggling to curb the cravings.

At the moment survival and not having any more time off work is my priority. I need to stay upright, not fall off my perch and keep the Jenga upright.