What would you do? Anxiety over work taking leave early

[Jg93x]

Hi,

So I posted a thread not long ago about my work.

Basically I’m coming up to 29 weeks, I was furloughed from my normal admin job (mainly just paperwork, responding to emails etc for a large company) Until last week.

They then unfurloughed me, and after a few days decided I now needed to work on the call centre department with zero training and it’s been horrific. I have been getting hounded for mistakes despite no training, expected to do things when I’ve got no idea what I’m doing.

I have bad social anxiety to a point I never make phone calls myself. My boyfriend has had to ring my MAU for me before because it’s so bad 🤦🏼‍♀️. It is really pathetic but I’m terrible at speaking to people, and I’m no longer on medication for my anxiety due to pregnancy so it is already escalated and being shoved on to a busy call centre is giving me panic attacks morning noon and night.

I want to take my maternity early, as early as possible as I genuinely can’t put myself through this until August when I was initially going to take it.

However my boyfriend is self employed and currently unable to work due to coronavirus, and the nature of his job means he’ll be one of the last to go back (tattoo artist). So we haven’t really got an income coming in from him at the moment.

I don’t know what to do. If I take my leave ASAP I need to give 28 days notice I think which will be end of June. I don’t even know if I will last til then, I start work in an hour and I honestly just want to pack it all in I’m so stressed.

To top it off I requested my original maternity leave dates and handed my matb1 in March/April and my work still haven’t confirmed the dates.

I just don’t know how to keep going in every day until my leave. I have spoke to my work and basically got told it’s needs of the business and to suck it up.

What would everyone else do?

Hi OP. Didn't want to read and run. I don't really have any specific advice for you, but think you should get an appointment with your GP as soon as possible. Maybe sign off and self-cert for 5 days and, in the meantime, talk to your GP about your anxiety and see what they can do to help.
Best of luck x

I'd look at seeing whether you can get signed off because of your anxiety. That'll give you a few more weeks until your mat leave will kick in.

Definitely speak to your GP. If the social anxiety part is not simply pregnancy related, if you’ve not already sought some help for it, it might be worth considering. Not being able to make your own phone calls when you will have a small baby sounds like it could be quite debilitating for you.

I hope you find a solution that works for you as it sounds like you’re having a tough time of it, you poor thing