Work from home jobs for people with anxiety

[colourfulrabbit]

Hi all,
I’m looking for an entirely work from home job due to my severe anxiety. I suffer from horrendous panic attacks and at my last in person job I found it incredibly difficult to hold down due to this.

Can anybody point out where I might begin to look for these roles? I’m extremely capable of working from home - I want to work and I do not want to get signed off but I also know how difficult actually working an in person job is for me with my mental health.

I’ve been looking on indeed but it doesn’t seem to be great. I have worked in an office before but my main roles have been retail management so I fear I’d be classed as relatively inexperienced.

thank you

Try the Work from home hub - it’s a Facebook page but there is a website coming. Remote jobs are listed there.
i find there’s more charities offering remote than private sector at the moment.

Surely you just need to look for jobs in your field where the employer will consider home working? You use that as a search field on LinkedIn. Hybrid working will get you more opportunities.

@Summerhillsquare

unfortunately with my work history being predominantly retail I can’t imagine there are any opportunities to work from home. My mental health is truly that severe that I won’t manage working in person due to the panic attacks I suffer from but I WANT to work :(

I have a work from home job, but it is very pressurised and stressful. You can’t even just take five minutes out if you want to.

Sounds perfect for me!

What therapy/medications do you take? I suffered from awful panic attacks for years that turned into agoraphobia. It took me 6 years of counselling, CBT, meditation and finding the right medication, but now I work and drive which I never would have been able to do before.

You need to do the work to fox the anxiety, not give up on the outside working world.

if retail how about working for a shop or business that does a lot of online sales and will need parcels organising and sending? Those must exist, particularly for smaller clothes shops etc

There must be loads of online groups for people who suffer from anxiety.

Perhaps join some and ask about in them?

A lot of wfh jobs will require you to do in person training for a set period of time. Would that be possible for you?

A lot of businesses are also moving to a hybrid model so you may be expected to be in 1-2 days a week.

I had a terrific little job while studying for my masters with a little specialist leather goods shop. Their business was predominantly online, and all I had to do was print off the orders in the morning and go to the warehouse and make up the parcels and fill sacks which were collected by Royal Mail. I was completely autonomous and other than occasionally answering the phone I never spoke to or saw another person. Try little places on industrial estates near you.

Try the Evenbreak job board: https://www.evenbreak.com/

Hastings Direct call centre have a lot of agents who work from home. Excellent employers and regularly recruiting

@Helleborer

I don’t take medication as I’m on other medications that my doctor isn’t comfortable mixing. My previous health history makes it tricky for a lot of medications too. I have taken medication in the past which either made no difference or caused really bad gastro upset.
I have been in therapy for the last 15 years - I’ve seen numerous different therapists and unfortunately I seem to get to a certain degree and then relapse with my symptoms (my anxiety and panic are related to the severe ocd I’ve had since childhood). I work so hard every day with my anxiety but the ocd just doesn’t ever let up.

Thank you all for replying - lots of things on here I haven’t thought about! I’ve mainly been looking on indeed so I’m definitely going to look further afield. Like I said, I’m certainly not work shy - I work very well under pressure and I am really self motivated. My panic attacks are far, far less when I’m at home (in my comfort zone I understand, but unfortunately at the moment I can’t afford to go into a new job and screw it up with this). I just find it really demoralising going into a physical workplace for me to then randomly have a panic attack in front of staff who sadly don’t understand. Whilst my previous employment was in person, the panic attacks I’d have every day numerous times a day were totally debilitating (and mortifying as I was in a customer facing role which isn’t the easiest to just run away when you’re mid serving someone and suddenly completely overwhelmed with panic!). I ended up going down to 15 hours a week and STILL couldn’t manage.

I’d think about what triggers your panic attacks too. For example I hate cold calling people and a wfh job could be just that, or a job that was long distance driving and simple delivery is almost totally solitary and not wfh

Something like data entry?

I’ve joined the work from home pages on fb and they all seem to be full of MLM schemes

I'm a Massage therapist and work from home.
Clients are in a good mood upon arrival and very relaxed after their treatments. It's good for the therapist's wellbeing too because generally it's a happy vibe all day.
Im self-employed and have full autonomy over my hours and which clients I treat. It doesn't feel like work tbh.
You'll need to study for qualifications tho which costs money.

@Thighdentitycrisis

I could definitely do data entry but everywhere seems to require experience.

My panic attacks are triggered by my ocd - my ocd goes through different themes each week (I’m aware I sound wappy to someone who won’t have ocd) and one week I could be tortured by one topic, the next week I’m on to something totally irrelevant. My ocd is largely severe intrusive thoughts based with compulsions to ‘stop’ the thoughts.

Can you handle answering the phone? That will likely be required. Local authority - it’s possible but you’d probably need to go to the office for training.

I feel like most WFH jobs will involve a lot of Teams meetings, will these trigger your anxiety?

People often suggest local authorities when the WFH/flexible hours question comes up but make sure you look at that carefully. Many with a WFH potential are in fact hybrid and the WFH or on-site balance is very dependent on political positions. The contracts will rarely be 100% WFH and people can be caught out when they find out what the actual policy is,

Would you consider roles in digital marketing/content writing? Entry level positions typically involve uploading product images and info to company websites, maybe working on blogs, etc. No need to deal with customers in most of those roles, just the odd rush to get certain products live.

@SootherSue

Definitely. I have lots of experience with uploading products to websites too.

@SootherSue

Just been reading about content writing jobs - that sounds like it would suit me perfectly but again loads need experience within their particular areas eg. Medical etc. Am I interpreting it incorrectly?