It's been a while since I posted here but I thought I would check in. A year ago I went through terrible withdrawal getting off Paxil (that I had been on for eight years) and have been experiencing lots of ups and downs since then. This winter I had a terrible break down but felt like I had made a lot of progress and went back to my seasonal summer job this spring.
Now that we're in the thick of summer, several things have caused me to experience another "flare-up" in my anxiety. One is the increased stress and busyness at work, and another is my allergies, since the post nasal drip I experience acts as a trigger for my anxiety and the feeling like I'm going to gag. I have cut back my hours a bit at work, but still get very worked up whenever it is time to go in for a shift, and I'm not able to relax on my days off - instead, I just worry about how I'm going to get through my next shift.
A lot of the work I have done with my counselor has surrounded trying to be kinder with myself and to not always push myself so hard, since my instincts over the years have led me to push through my anxiety no matter what even if it makes me totally miserable. There are other parts of this job I don't like - my employers are not very understanding of what I'm dealing with, we don't get breaks, there is limited opportunity to use the restroom, etc. I know this is not meant to be my career for life, but I've stuck with the job last summer and this summer to try and prove to myself that I can do it without anxiety. Now that I'm so miserable with anxiety and not enjoying the job that much, part of me is tempted to quit. I don't know if this is giving in to the anxiety, or taking care of myself by getting out of a situation that's not working for me. I don't know what to do, but for the last two weeks I have been in a heightened state of anxiety just worrying about getting through the next shift, and then the next.
