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To Work or Not to Work with PTSD

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mightsurvive

Confident
I saw this post in another thread and thought it was worthwhile starting a new thread on this.

Thank you for starting this topic Metis! I'm going through all this right now too. I'm working full time and even pulling overtime. School is going to hell this semester. I've dropped all but one class. I'm working from 4pm to 1:30am most nights and am working on the weekends for the overtime. I hate what my schedule is doing to how much I see my daughter. As far as trying to socialize, I get home at 2am, nobody else is up to socialize with. Nobody here but me most of the time anyway. I'm still going through a lot emotionally, still crying a lot, still depressed, can't sleep right, shaking, having nightmares, a total wreck and I've been isolating again. My doctor is afraid I'm headed for crash and burn land. I can't bring myself to admit defeat and take a break from school though. Even if I did it wouldn't make all the rest of this bad crap in my head go away, it won't stop the crying and shutting people out. I keep beating myself up for not being Wonder Woman I guess. I went into work today with my eyes all swollen, I looked horrible, barely spoke to anyone. I don't have an answer for you Metis-Siren, I don't even have an answer for me at this point.

This post really made me smile. Thought you were writing about me for a minute.

I know I need to give up school but I keep trying to carry on regardless which is just making me so much worse. Dont get me wrong there are parts of my job that make me feel better. Being with the kids takes my mind off it for a while and they make me smile - and I'm talking about genuine smiles here.

All the rest though - reports, marking, detentions, meetings etc etc - is just swamping me. Its pulling me further and further down. Its drowning me. I know I need to give up work if I'm going to get better but I dont want to give helping the kids up and I know that my husband has expectations for me to carry on with work because he just doesnt have the slightest clue how much harder work makes dealing with life. He tries to understand but fails miserably bless him.

What I really need is for someone to see how bad things are for me even though it would also devastateme and to inist that I take some time off work but I'm not good at letting people see that apart from on here and I cant expect people to be psychic or for non PTSDers to even begin to understand. So thats not going to happen.

So I have to carry on even though I know that one day it will get to the point where it destroys me. Hey I've never liked making things easy on myself but Superwoman has always been able to handle it before the PTSD. Havent seen Superwoman in a long time however, I'm still wearing her mask in public.

So I'm left thinking will I / wont I give up work and know that noone including myself will or can make that decission for me. And the pressure mounts in the mean time. Maybe one day I will crack and and the choice will be made for me. Sounds weird but at least then the decission will be made for me so I wont feel so guilty about stopping work.

I'm on half term at the moment and it really has helped. Another 5 long weeks to go untill Easter.

I know I'm not the only one that feels like this. Not by a long shot. Strawberryburns has proved this. Anyone else?

Anyone found the answer to this dilema for them?
 
I haven't found an answer to the dilema, but I am currently in a similar situation.

At the moment, the decision of whether to work or not has been taken away from me. My doctor has signed me off work and insisted that I cannot return until I've had some 'proper' rest and sleep (easier said than done, thanks doc). He will review the situation in about 10 days time.

I don't even think he signed me off for my sake. I think he was more worried about me being a liability at work. I don't actually recall verbalising exactly how bad things were for me. I was really nervous about going to the doctors. I hate talking about how I am feeling, so I think I'd worked myself into quite a state by the time I saw him. Add that to the aggitation/anxiety from the ptsd, and looking crap from no sleep, and I don't think I had to 'say' much. Although I tried to 'hide', tried to act all cool and calm, I'm sure he just took one look at me and thought "hmm, she looks a bit stressed" !!

When he signed me off work, I was both upset and relieved. I was upset that he thought I could no longer do my job effectively. In my eyes, my job is the only only thing I'm any good at, so to be told I wasn't capable of it, was devastating. He didn't think it was 'safe' for me to deal with members of the public. I know he was right, but that doesn't mean I wanted to hear it.

But, I was also relieved because working 12 hour shifts with little or no sleep between was getting pretty tough. I was getting pissed off with every little thing. I completely lost my rag with a colleague, and had a go at him in front of others. It was getting to the point I was really angry most of the time. I'm sure that the anger would have got me into trouble sooner or later.

I'm sure that not being at work is no good for me though. Yes, the public and my colleagues are 'safe' from me. But me, I'm just home alone, isolated from my world of work. I don't think being at home does me any favours. My reason for getting out of bed in the morning is gone. The genuine laughs I would have with my colleagues is gone. Day to day chit chat is gone. My feeling of purpose and acheivement in doing a good job is gone.

Instead I just have one long day after another, with too much time for thinking. I still have nightmares and flashbacks etc. And I'm still not sleeping.
I would imagine that with a supportive family around you that taking a break from work could be very beneficial. But for me living on my own, I just find it isolating and lonely.

Also when I'm not at work I feel guilty, because I know they are short staffed. I also have concerns that I will loose my job. This is a real worry for me, on top of everything else.

So, I want to go back to work, and I need to go back to work (so that I don't loose my job). Part of me thinks that all I have to do, at my next doctors appointment, is hold it together long enough for him to let me go back to work. Tell him I'm ok.

But I know that isn't the answer, because I'll just be back at square one. What I really need to do, is to get my sleep problems sorted out, then I believe I will be able to cope with work. But quite how I do that, I don't know.
 
Hi Cherryblossom and mightsurvive,

I want to comment on this because maybe it will help you both understand that you need to listen to your body and what you wrote here.

I was on the verge of crashing and my doctor gave me a leave of absence a year and a half ago when I was working. My co-workers were mad at me because they didn't think anything was wrong (The mask hides it all). I took the leave anyway and felt a lot of guilt, and ended up going back to work before I felt I should.

Then things got bad again at work, but I wouldn't listen to my body or myself. I just kept going and telling myself I can do this. finally my husband told me that I was such a mess I need to put my two weeks notice in, which I did.

But things got worse at work because the work environment was unorganized. A co-worker threatened to kill the manager because he was so stressed and that caused me nightmares. I didn't make it the two weeks, I made it one week and had a nervous breakdown and landed in the psych ward.

If I had gotten out of there when my body and mind told me to, I probably would have avoided the nervous breakdown. That cost me a lot of money, embarrassment, added pressure for my husband because he had to find a babysitter for our daughter while I was in the hospital for 5 days, and I was concerned about my sanity (I thought I lost it forever) Thank God I got it back though, but I was so worried for about a month or two.

My point here is this; Listen to your body and mind and learn to let go. It's much easier to take a break or quit your job and classes than it is to crash and go to the hospital. That made me feel far worse than when I tool the leave of absence. Not to mention it hurt my bank account. Maybe you could weigh the pros and cons of letting go versus what will happen if you crash.

I only work part time now and that about half kills me, but if I didn't think I could handle it I would quit in a minute because I don't ever want to end up back in the hospital worrying about my sanity and bank account, not to mention add stress to my husband.

It's hard to let go, but sometimes we just have to do it.

Take care both of you and good luck
Tammy
 
So glad that this is in discussion. Currently, we are short staffed my job and I've picking up the weight since I started (seven months ago). Finally, this week, I broke down. I've been to the ER once and to the doctor three times in one week because I've been in such extreme physical pain that I can't get out of bed. The panic attacks are coming on once a day. (Of course, it doesn't help that I'm currently withdrawing from 2 anti-depressants and starting a new drug - Effexor - btw, if anyone has any experience with this drug, please pm me.)

I also have a record of quitting jobs without notice - the longest I've ever worked at a job was 4 years but lately I haven't been able to work at the same place for more than 6 months. This doesn't look good on a resume especially in the corporate world.

I struggle all of the time with the guilt from my inability to hold down a job for a long period of time. It's like a no win situation: I'm either stressed because of work or I'm stressed with guilt for not working.

Right now I'm on a 3 day leave per my doctor. Though anytime I take a sick day from work, my boss always gives me a guilt trip and says "it was so crazy when you're not here, we were slammed", and I always want to respond, "it's crazy EVERYDAY, you just don't know it because I handle it all". Of course, I don't say that.

I'd love to have a very stress free job - one working with animals or plants.

Eh, I guess I have no advise, just thought I'd share my own story.

- Rachel
 
Hey ya'll -

I was a psych nurse for years. To answer your question about effexor. . . actually its one of the cleaner anti-depressants. It's a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. Do a wikipedia on it and you'll get all the info you need. But ya . . . it's a good one. I've never been on that one but just about every other one there is. I get my impression from seeing the patients who were put on it doing okay. No nasty side effects initially anyway.
 
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