Lately I feel like I’m advancing towards some sort of danger and all I want to do is run away. I don’t know for sure what, or why, or where from, but the anxiety is there, rippling under the surface.
I’m reminded of a dream I had in Sri Lanka maybe 16 years ago, which is still clear as day now (It seems even more profound knowing what happened in the exact same spot I had the dream, 11 years later).
I was on the beach walking towards the water and suddenly a massive tidal wave formed and started roaring towards me. It was so high it covered the sky. The sound was a slow suspenseful booming crescendo.
The panic rose to my throat (I can still feel it now just thinking about it), and I scrambled backwards trying to run away from it, only to find myself jumping up in my sleep and running headlong into the wall, which promptly woke me up and scared the crap out of my partner. It’s the one and only time I’ve ever become mobile while dreaming. I had a graze on my head for days after.
(Begin therapy session…)
If I was to lay back on a couch with someone behind me going “mmhmm” at regular intervals, it may be discovered that my anxiety is related to my job and my unhappiness there. I’ve recently made my misery crystal clear to those above me and it’s caused a chain reaction of meetings and decision-making pow-wows to try and fix it.
My anxiety may stem from thinking about what the end result of all this will be. I’ve created a tidal wave from which I now want to run away. I’m unsure what the outcome will be and whether I’ll be able to handle it. I’m not just talking decisions made by others, but decisions I myself might make about the situation.
It could also be the fact that my character is being discussed in great detail. Not the nicest thing to be going on when you have some idea of what might be said. Kind of ups the self-loathing.
Then again, what if, like my dream, I just run headlong into a wall with the panic, wake up, and realise it was all just a dream after all? I might be imagining horrors to occur, only to find out it’s all fluffy bunnies in the end.
Maybe I just need to learn how to surf.
1 comments:
The Swedish have a proverb: "Fear is a light that gives a small thing a large shadow"
And it seems to me that this is what you have here. Not only a shadow, but a possibility of a shadow.
If the higher-ups are discussing it, there are several options they could come up with. And all but one of them (ie firing you) require your consent before anything can happen.
All these possibilities _might_ happen. And they all might have unfortunate consequences for you. But it makes so sense to worry about all of them, since only one outcome will occur. For all the others, you will be worrying over nothing.
And, if you leaving your job is the "worst" of all options, and you hate your job, then that's really an improvement over your current situation, isn't it?
Therefore, if the worst option is an improvement, then any better options will also be an improvement.
So what's to worry about?
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