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Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (March 2021)
This is a monthly thread for those who need it. Vent, share your experiences, ask for advice, talk about how you are doing. Let's make this a compassionate space for all who may need one.
Got a prescription for olanzapine for anxiety. It worked but at the same time made it impossible to read anything, and even harder to write. The lines got scrambled, including video subtitles. Truly despearating since a lot of what I do involves text, for both leisure and work. I stopped the medication by myself and things are getting back to normal. The anxiety came back too, but I was truly shaken by that.
Anyone had experience with this drug?
I haven't, but that sounds like crazy side-effects! I'm on escitalopram, it's the only SSRI I've tried. I can't even imagine not being able to read or write.
I'm getting back to normal, but drugs are crazy and the brain is super complex!
I'm angry at the moment. Angry because despite my workplace making a big noise about how they care about our wellbeing, and will do whatever they can to ensure the health of their staff, they don't give one solitary fuck about me.
I've been in discussions with HR and my manager to try to move onto fixed hours rather than a rotating shift pattern, because I feel like the inconsistency in hours is playing havoc with my mental state. Not being able to have any consistency in routine because by the time I've settled into a sleep schedule for the week, it's the weekend and I'm onto a different pattern for the week after. I was told yesterday that it's not possible to put me onto fixed hours because it's unfair to the rest of the team, and besides, shift patterns are commonplace at IT service desks across the world. As if that somehow makes it OK.
To cap it all, we're expected to be on a video call all day every day, for the sake of "team cohesion" and "learning and development," where really it's just an exercise in not trusting us to actually be there and working. It's stressing me the fuck out. I'm not allowed to turn the volume down because my team leader gets shitty if I don't respond to a question within 10 seconds, so I have to listen to their inane conversations and the whining of at least two laptop fans. It's not like being in the office where you can just about tune it out into background noise. It's blaring out of my laptop for 8 hours straight. It's got me properly on edge. I can't get out of it, and if I'm more than a minute late in joining at the start of my day or after lunch, I get a snide message from my team leader about it. I refuse to put my camera on, so I get sarcastic comments about that at least twice a week. It's such a bullshit idea, and they've dropped all pretence about it being for anything other than "to see what we're doing."
Fortunately I've spoken to my GP, and been given a sick note for 2 weeks to try to destress and take some time to recentre myself. I'm really hoping that helps. I'm planning to leave my job and go back to uni this year, but September seems like an awfully long way away right now.
That sounds like a hellish job. Is there no way to switch to another workplace until September?
I'm ... okay. It's weird because I can be really happy and at the same time, this like, deep ... sadness? ... is there, at the edges. An emptiness, maybe. I've been having trouble getting to sleep and feeling motivated to do very much lately. It comes and goes I guess.