To not understand anxiety!

[Beebeezed]

First time poster here.

I am currently on mat leave but I’m a manager of a company in charge of around 40 staff. In recent years, I have seen a huge increase in staff declaring that they suffer with anxiety. As a company, we do what we can to support these staff and I feel I’m as supportive as I can be. Since going on maternity leave I’ve had time to reflect on my role as a manager and how I can improve and feel that one thing I struggle with is actually empathising genuinely with these staff as I have literally no idea what anxiety feels like. I worry this could prohibit the staff from feeling fully supported. I’ve done a lot of research (mainly at 3am during cluster feeds ) but I’m still at a slight a loss as to what anxiety truly feels like and how it may affect you in the work place. I have felt anxious before but understand this is very different from anxiety

I’d really appreciate you sharing your experiences! And if you do have any suggestions on how your work place could/does support you would be amazing.

Just to clarify, I’m due to return to work soon and this is purely to help me with staff morale and support

Formerbabe that's me too. Sometimes I can't even open an email or a text, I just can't bring myself to do it in case it's something I need to deal with.

I have ptsd mixed with generalised anxiety disorder so hard to say where one start and the other finishes, many of the symptoms over laps.

For me I can physically feel my body filling up with a sense of panic and danger every fibre of my body is telling me to run. I want to run outside and scream to warn of the danger it’s almost a primeval thing. I become hyper vigilant so working in an open plan office when I’m having an episode is virtually impossible as I zone in on every conversation, every movement to assess the danger, if someone talks to me and disrupt my scanning I have to be very controlled not to show my fight mode has kicked in. I generally cope by working from home, doing cbt exercises to try and reclassify the perceived danger into an alternative perspective. I need space to do this and talk myself down. What helps me is working from home or working with headphones in.

Don’t try and jolly someone along, they need space to deal with the anxiety.

In the aftermath, once the adrenaline has gone I feel exhausted, mentally and physically

Op

I think it's brilliant that you're trying to understand this better.
I had no idea when I went to the GP that I had anxiety, as I had never experienced it before. I actually went as I had convinced myself I had a growth in my throat and was dying.

My symptoms were:
Severe difficultly swallowing food, and sometimes actually choking as if there was a blockage in my throat
Feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach
Exhaustion
Palpitations (mostly In bed at night)
Irritability

When the GP mentioned anxiety I burst into tears as it all made sense (I am not a crier).

My mum has taken her own life 2 years earlier, and anxiety, depression and addiction (probably self-medicating that got out of hand and basically took her life) were factors. I thought it I was coping ok but clearly I wasn't.

I got CBT and have had several rounds of counselling since and am much better (haven't taken any time off work in 9 years). I do get the heightened sense of fear/dread sometimes - and the nervousness feeling - but it's no longer debilitating. I can recognise it now I am able to use mindfulness and make sure I get to exercise classes to help.

Hope that helps.

Oh and I catasphosize everything, if I see managers talking to HR they are discussing firing me, my DH drives my DS somewhere or we travel on the motorway we are going to die, I sit in airport lounges imagining my fellow travellers passport sized pictures in a tabloid when the crashes. I’m having a quite time at work its because I’m shit, someone else is given work, I’m shit. I can’t ask for feedback as I can’t cope with what I think will be the inevitable dressing down.

Feels like something very very bad about to happen, physical feeling of dread. Stomach churning, falling feeling in the stomach. Feels like you want to curl in a ball. Struggle to sleep and wake up with extreme anxiety, cold sweats, nightmares.
When I had it very bad I physically couldn't get out of bed. Just didn't want to do anything. Wanted to die.
That's the extreme side of it, less extreme I get the butterfly feeling and obsessive thoughts like when I'm scared of driving somewhere for example. I usually just ask my husband to drive me :)

I've been suffering with anxiety/ depression following a family death, which affected me much more than I realised. I know I will probably never feel a 100% but I feel keeping busy and pushing through as much as I can helps. It's been a while since I've been very bad, for some reason I'm worse around Christmas/ New Years

To me, anxiety is something that never leaves me and basically dominates my life. A permant low level feeling of dread. I have had GAD for years, I had it as a child.
Sometimes it is worse than normal and insignificant things can make it worse. At the moment it is really bad as my new neighbours are parking in front of their own house, cue hours of worry that they are going to be a problem, block me out etc etc. Its not rational but I can't stop feeling very anxious about it.
You learn to live with it but it can be very unpleasant at times.

I've had bad mental health but anxiety is the scariest of them all .

My anxiety has stolen my life.

My anxiety forces me to settle for less than i deserve.

My anxiety makes me believe i am worthless.

My anxiety hijacks every fucking thing.

What can my employers do? Not overlook me when offering extra responsibility in case i get stressed that is not helpful- it just reenforces my belief that im not good enough.

I would like my employers to recognise that running with minimal staffing levels is detrimental ro everyone's mental health.

Id like to be given a decent lunch hour not half an hour break in a ten hour day that can potentially run into 12 or more hours.

I would like to feel supported in my training rather than being made to feel like im whinging when i mention that it is insufficient.

I suffer with anxiety, depression, and (pure) OCD. They all kind of meld together.

Mentally, I worry about everything. I catastrophise, so something that another person would shrug off leaves me ruminating for days, wondering if I am (eg) going to get the sack. I hate change and being out of my routine, so things like holidays which should be great are a nightmare. I can’t deal with big crowds, and socially am fine one-to-one, but something like a “night out” with a group if people is my idea of pure hell, and I will do anything to avoid it. (And of course I worry people think I am odd, or rude, because I turn down invitations to these things.)

Physically, I have a lot of stomach problems linked to anxiety, I often get a tightness in my throat and feel like I can’t swallow, and less often, heart palpitations.

I didn’t disclose mental health problems when I started my current job, and usually manage things well enough - I have never had time off sick because of it. On the positive side, I am a complete perfectionist, and can’t rest until a job is done, which probably benefits my employer.

I'm very similar to Judystilldreamsofhorses. Sometimes I can seem really normal but inside my head I am constantly imagining everything that could go wrong and trying to head off any disasters. I haven't been diagnosed with OCD but I definitely recognise a lot of the symptoms - rumination etc. Usually I manage to control it but sometimes I just give in to avoid having to worry about the consequences for days. (For example, I had a thought that I might have run someone over without realizing on the way home from school so as soon as I got home I set out to do the same route again just to check....and yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds but it let me get rid of the thought rather than obsessing about it for the rest of the day!)

I have anxiety, and it’s a feeling of overwhelming fear, things are behind me chasing me and I’m standing on some sort of precipice. All the physical things PPs have already mentioned.

I also think if you haven’t experienced it, it can be difficult to understand. And that’s okay, I think it’s brilliant you’re trying to learn more about it. My Mam has never had it but she is very supportive.

Also, I think you sound like a lovely, empathetic person. I wish all managers were like you!

I honestly can't understand why there are a few posters being downright horrible to the OP. There is not a single word in any of her posts that sound as if she is being smug. It seems like for some posters they must always be on the defensive. Perhaps if they took the time to actually read, digest and understand the OP's posts instead of immediately jumping on her with comments like well good for you they might not come across as quite so rude.

The OP has asked a genuine question to gain a clearer understanding and some of the responses have been openly hostile.

Agreed rainbowunicorn - i have anxiety and im buggered if i understand it. We need more employers who are open about not getting it and reaching out to try and get a better understanding

Anxiety is exacerbated by stress so If it has been increasing over the years I would look at the causes. Is there more pressure on staff now compared to before?

Does anyone have tips to cope with falling asleep? If I have a bad morning/afternoon/ event, one where nothing really helps to make me feel better I often just fall asleep for an hour or two, no matter how inconvenient this is. Even when I wake up I feel self-conscious for the rest of the day.

If you know what feeling anxious means then you know what it's like to feel anxious no?

Imagine your PC....it has 10 web pages opened, a few word files, maybe an excel and an update
running in the background.

It runs reallllllllly slow as if its not sure which bit to focus on. Pages come to the forefront without prompting when they need attention and everythings a bit confused. In the end it freezes

AliceAbsolum Having anxiety and feeling anxious sometimes really can't be compared.

Feeling anxious and having anxiety disorder are absolutely nothing like each other.

I can get to sleep absolutely fine but it is the middle of the night I am awake. Luckily the AD's are already kicking in as I am very sensitive to medication being as I am on the spectrum.

Lavender oil on the temples at night may help sleep, milky drinks, foods with trytophan in them, staying away from social media/pc's and gadgets late at night. I often put a music channel on on tv and relax in my room on my bed late at night just drifting off that way.

It seems like for some posters they must always be on the defensive.
Yes, when you are suffering from serious anxiety, that can mean that you are always on the defensive, as you constantly feel under attack. My mother has this problem: basically, paranoia. It's another vicious circle, as you feel attacked, so you snap back, and then people really do get annoyed and start being horrible to you, confirming your fears. At the same time, you do realise that you haven't acted great yourself, so you feel bad about yourself and even more anxious.

I don't feel defensive I feel not good enough, like an imposter, a failure, like it's not worth trying because whatever I do it won't be right. GAD has sucked the fulfilment out of my life.

I think defensiveness can also come from people making assumptions about you; being weak/stupid etc

Hyper vigilance. Can’t fall asleep or think about anything else except ‘The Worry’ whatever it is. Nasty physical manifestations eg skin biting and scratching the inside of my ear.