Hi all,
I apologise for any rambling, however I would appreciate some advice/perspective.
I have 3 sons, a teenager, a 26 month old and an 11 and a half month old. During my maternity leave with my youngest son, the company I worked for was sold and there were several redundancies 2 weeks before christmas, of which I was not included thankfully. Between christmas and now, our previously medium sized company has more than halved in size as people have fled for the exits, our 8 man team is now down to 3 senior members of which I am included. When I was sent my new contract I requested that my job title be updated to 'Senior' in order accurately reflect my responsibilities and experience. I discussed with my manager that I had done so and he expressed shock that I didn't already have the 'Senior' title as the business owner had been using that title on our website and when introducing me to clients for some time.
After returning to work in April I was feeling exceptionally confident about the future and my career, however my manager 'unintentionally' shattered by confidence less than a week back to work. I was asked to perform an integration of one of my new companies products into ours and required more information from the external team in order to begin the work as my investigations were proving fruitless. My manager and I have always had a great relationship and my husband and I were invited to his wedding several years go. I informed my manager I would work on a smaller task whilst I waited for the external team to come back to me and after discussing the reasons why I needed this information I was told "You have asked to have your job title updated, that job title requires that you are able to work autonomously". I was shocked and upset that he threw my job title in my face as I had only told him about my request to have it updated as a friend in private conversation. I confronted him the following day as I was feeling extremely stressed and hurt at his behaviour, especially as I had been working autonomously and reached a dead end beyond psychic ability, he explained why he had said what he had and when I asked him why he thought I was so upset by what he said, his response was "I thought you had taken on too much and couldn't cope". At this point I highlighted that at no point have I ever been unable to cope with my job, and given that I had been out of work on maternity leave for 9 months, I had expected him to be more understanding given that I had to reacclimate to being back in the office and also being in what was effectively a new company with all the new processes.
Since then however, I have been suffering greatly from anxiety as I feel worried that I am being judged even by people I considered to be friends. This month has been hell in a handbag, my toddler has had diarrhea so couldn't attend nursery (thankfully one of the two days he was unwell was over my Wednesday off and I made up hours over my evenings and weekend). Then my car seatbelt broke which took several days to fix due to garages being booked to full and parts being ordered during which I worked from home and took a days holiday to cover the car repair day where I had to keep my sons home from nursery, deal with the garage etc (I still attended critical meetings during this day so as to not impact deadlines). Now my youngest has become extremely unwell with an ear infection and tonsillitis and I couldn't work even if I wanted to as he is so feverish and needs his mummy.
I know these are all uncontrollable events and just an impact of life, however the anxiety is crippling. I worked 44 hours last week (only paid for 30) just trying to ensure that I keep proving my worth and meeting deadlines set by 3rd parties which I have no control over. My husband had to intervene after seeing me work every evening and weekend whenever my sons were asleep as he has seen me have several panic attacks over the course of the last month. I have been suffering from insomnia and constantly have a knot in my stomach, even though I know it's completely unreasonable. I just feel so vulnerable and afraid that people will see me as incompetent if I don't keep burning the candle at both ends, unfortunately I think i've also started burning it in the middle.
I do have a doctors appointment to discuss my anxiety as panic attacks are new to me. I know many mums work with young kids and manage just fine, I just feel like everything hinges on me keeping all the plates spinning right now :(.