Reaching

[vaneramos]

Friends, I need moral support. The one thing that frightens me most is job hunting. After managing to defer it for a while, now I'm in the midst.

In November 2003 I attended a local business develpment centre to get help finding a job. Instead a workshop leader took a dislike to me, told me in front of a group of people that I wasn't ready to write a resumé, and kicked me out of the meeting. Along with a job interview in which I froze up, it was one in a series of humiliations that precipitated a bout of panic attacks. I got into therapy, but it took another three years for me to find a job, and that didn't involve resumés or interviews, it came from a friend.

Here I am in the same place again, a changed person. Last week I returned to the same job centre. Yesterday someone helped me write up a resumé that doesn't exactly fill me with confidence, but at least seems presentable, and reflects my actual skills and abilities. I submitted one for Patient Watch at the hospital this morning.

These days I ride successive waves of anxiety. On one hand is the dread of picking up the telephone or facing an interview. On the other hand money has run out.

In the past five years I've learned many things to equip me for this. And despite all wistful thoughts about cutting back on medication, I know it's necessary now. I sleep at night, and that makes it possible to wake up and face another day. I set a few simple goals each morning, and things keep moving forward.

Just walking through the doors of a place where I once suffered humiliation, that should feel like a triumph. But mostly it stirs up a queasy mix of fear and loneliness.

Perhaps the greatest triumph is that I have not let this disturbance kill the creative process. I have established a structure, and it continues to work. In the midst of uncertainty, I've learned how to surround myself with wonder and radiance. I am writing, photographing and knitting every day, and laying groundwork of a plan.

Some months ago Sarah and I began experimenting with a tentative new creative partnership, and last week we formalized it: we will meet for an hour every week to discuss our goals. We both need this, and it has begun to transform our habits. This kind of relationship, too, is something I set out to find about eight years ago.

Life still terrifies me, but I've learned from mistakes. If I'm persistent, I can get what I need, probably. I haven't always believed that.

Comments

[bixie.livejournal.com]

I can remember when I was breaking up with my bff about 18 months ago and how I had this very real visceral physical conviction that I was facing death (real actual literal death) by moving ahead with those actions. I knew in my head that I wasn't, but I still had to experience the actual terror, which seemed (again, fairly literally) unbearable. but I worked on releasing into feeling absolutely terrified (rather than avoiding by eating or watching tv or picking fights or even exercising or reading and especially not by talking myself out of my chosen course of action). I really clung to the part of my brain that knew this was disproportionate and just couldn't physically be sustained, and over the course of a few hours (complete with all the physical sensations that come with terror) that part grew bigger and the rest of myself was just tired. and then I had this amazing near-euphoria of having not just survived it but emerged basically unscathed, since there was no actual threat of death!

anyway, I really do believe that anxiety goes to depression when we clamp down on it, and if the meds are helping moderate that pendulum swing you may find that you're able to deal with heftier moments of anxiety in the past without going over the top such that your system needs to go into lock down on it (this is sort of the model I've been working on with my practitioner, the idea of titration, of trying to just experience the moments and allow the system to naturally become more resilient by learning that they end and not engaging a blocking reaction).

I think you're doing really well, though, and I do agree with your comments about fear below. fear of feeling the fear keeps us caught in tense anxiety, imo. the actual fear is much more bearable than the fear of it has convinced us it is. :>

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I worked on releasing into feeling absolutely terrified (rather than avoiding by eating or watching tv or picking fights or even exercising or reading and especially not by talking myself out of my chosen course of action).

That's very interesting! One of challenges is that I have issues with face-to-face communication and have a tendency to freeze up when put on the spot, i.e. in interviews. So my dread about job searching has to do with the whole process leading up to this threatening situation. A lot of my social anxiety is focused on specific situations, and this is a fairly important one. It reminds me that I should practice going head first into the fear by setting up mock interviews.

My favourite avoidance mechanism is computer games. I've been handling that problem this week by going out to work during the day with a study buddy. I've managed to make a habit of never using my laptop for computer games, so it's easier to stay focused on priority activities.

[bixie.livejournal.com]

in addition to something structured like a mock interview, I might also try to invite your experience with the interviews into awareness, by writing about them in the morning pages or something like that. I find that when I'm writing drafts of what I want to say or what I plan to do, that usually brings up the old fear, and I can pause and just repeat what I need to repeat to myself while the fear passes and then take a next step.

I've been working for a few years now with a practitioner who uses somatic experiencing techniques, which are largely what I'm talking about here (I realized) and I thought you might be able to get the book (waking the tiger) from the library. it's pretty fascinating the way they're working with people to release the old stuff that's locked behind freeze (and there's sooooo much there, at least in me, and I go right back into it with my physical habits of posture and holding my arms in tight etc. without even realizing it).