Saturday, March 08, 2014

Stress-O-Meter: Yellow

 
Not entirely sure I'm being as successful as I wanna be describing how stress affects my mental state with depression. There are so many other factors involved.   Like the money issue?  I know, rationally, that if I'm sensible and pay attention to my spending, I will have enough money to pay my bills. But the brain hangs onto the memory of the times I have not had enough.  The times I've gotten my lights cut off from forgetting, or from emergencies popping up, and that causes the swarm to whisper, "screw up, fuck up, you're gonna mess up and get something turned off because everything you do is failure."  
 
The work related stuff is the same way.  I know I am good at my job.  My job records it in numbers. I win awards for customer satisfaction that I have on my desk.  I do so well at my job that I have hit the raise cap. I can't get more raises while still in this job title; I've gotten them all.  But when performance review time comes up, all I can hear is the mistakes I've made, what I'm not doing right.  Part of that is the culture of a call center. They want you to always feel like you must strive to improve so they can't tell you how well you're doing. They have this convoluted idea that it's motivational.  And for someone with my mental health challenges, that is a very hard row to hoe.
 
So even knowing rationally that I'm doing things right,  situations beyond my control tweak that part of my brain that tells me I can't do anything right.  And the brain chemistry problem is really loud.
 
 

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