I’m having a rather tough time at the moment, have been for coming up to 18 months now. In fairness most of this is personal rather than work related but it’s got decidedly worse over the past few weeks to the point I’m not sleeping, I can’t get through the day without crying, my anxiety and depression is making me physically sick and i’m in pain and vomiting regularly throughout the day so struggling to concentrate which, as much as I try to avoid it, is inevitably impacting on my work. I feel like I just need a break but I’ve go no annual leave left to take this year and my new allowance doesn’t start until May and I don’t think I can power through until then. Im barely functioning at the moment.
I do, for the most part, really enjoy my job and I hand on heart try my best but tensions and tempers are frayed at the moment and relationships with my colleagues are already strained (partly my fault where thorough sheer exhaustion or whatever I’ve unintentionally put my foot in it/done the wrong thing and upset someone). On top of this, I work in a sector which has been hit very heavily by covid and hasn’t bounced back as hoped so there’s likely going to be redundancies very soon. We’ve already had cut backs and voluntary redundancies so it’s not likely to end well.
I really don’t know what to do for the best. I want to try and salvage my relationship with my colleagues, they’re all lovely people and of course are worried about their jobs at the minute too and I don’t want to land them with my workload if I take some time off because that isn’t fair on them. At the same time, I feel like they’re probably sick of me having rubbish days and what they think is me not pulling my weight. I’ve apologised countless times which isn’t doing any good and I can tell they’re pissed off with me because this is obviously wearing thin and the atmosphere within our floor is awful (which I totally get- they probably think I’m just lazy and difficult!). I’m genuinely not a terrible person, I try to be nice and kind and the fact I’m not seen like this at work makes my mental health even worse. My other worry is that if I take some time off I’m going to be first out the door when the redundancies hit- I know you can’t get rid of someone for their mental health but I’m sure it would just get framed another way on paper. Plus I’ve only be in the job a year so that doesn’t bode well for me either. I have a mortgage/rising bills/car and really can’t afford to be doing anything that’ll increase my risk of being out of a job. It’s a minimum wage job so I live pay check to pay check so don’t even have any savings to fall back on.
I’ve been to the doctors and I’m on medication (which isn’t working) and a waiting list for therapy but I don’t know how long that’ll take. If anyone has any advice that would be greatly appreciated because I don’t see a good way out of the problems I’ve got myself into.
Thanks everyone