(Bear with me while I get through the necessary pre-amble, there is a cogent point somewhere at the bottom of this post!)
Last September, we made the decision to send Sausage to Nursery three mornings a week and I couldn’t, in good conscience, sit at home scratching my arse while she was out, when I could get a job and contribute to the family coffers. Husband had been amazing about me staying at home instead of going back to work after my maternity leave ended and I thought I’d take some of the pressure off of him for a change.
I’d been lucky in that I fell into working from home, managing social media for a few brands as well as a bit of writing and other bits. I brought in a small wage and still continue to do most of it, alongside my ‘real’ job which is in an Accountants office. Bit of a Jack of All Trades, you could say.
But, I digress. The problem I seem to have is that I find it hard to switch off.
Take today (and I wish someone would…); I had a manic day in the office, I’ve just increased my days to four a week and it was payroll day, so I processed around 30 payrolls in about 4 hours. It’s usually fairly straightforward and most clients only have one or two people on their payroll, but today was just problem after problem. One client wanted his P45 issued..oh, did I mention, he’s moving to Australia TOMORROW so it all had to be processed, scanned, emailed to him, submitted to HMRC etc, and I was informed of this about half an hour before I was due to come home.
The actual work isn’t an issue, I can do it with my eyes shut, it’s the fact that I go into hyper-work-mode to get everything done on time and then after I leave, I can’t seem to manage to shake hyper-work-mode off and get into home-mode. Even when I go home, get out of my work clothes and sit down with Sausage, I’m still thinking about tax returns, payroll and my current side-project of getting a website up and running for my boss.
I’ve been reading Kava Guides to see if there’s a natural way to manage my health and there’s lots of promising stuff to consider.
I’ve not spoken much about it, but I suffer on and off with anxiety. It’s not been getting the better of me as much lately, but it started when I was eleven, carried on through my teens and early twenties and was compounded by Post Natal PTSD after I gave birth. The crux of all of this rambling is that my unspent work-mode energy seems to be manifesting itself as anxiety. I get all hyper at work, come home, feel unable to unwind and by dinner time, I’m having a full-blown panic attack.
So, what do I do, people? Does anyone else get anything even remotely like this, or am I just a big weirdo? What can I do to stop it, if anything? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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Hi there. Just came across this post (can’t remember how I got here, that happens a lot to me!). You sound so similar to me and to the way I am. I work from home, I have a website selling cloth nappies. I have two children, one at school and one at home. I spend most of the day stressing about getting everything done and then if I do get it all done I am still stressing about things that I wish I had got done, even though I don’t really know what it was that I wanted to do!!
I too find myself getting stressed and anxious.I think it just comes with trying to juggle so many things, lets face it being a mummy and housewife is a full time job. My only advice would be try to take some time for yourself occasionally. Even if it is just 15 minutes to sit down and have a proper lunch and a cuppa. Try to have a bit of me time in the too before you go to bed (not working!) – that will help you unwind and sleep better.
I’m also a big believer in rescue remedy and chamomile tea – oh and a large glass of wine! I feel for you hun, sometimes it is just so hard to see the wood for the trees and to keep things in persepective. xx
Ok so I know you’ll say ‘I’m not a bloody hippy’, but hear me out…Mindfulness! Hey stick with it!! I have only ever had two full blown panic attacks in my life, one while pregnant and one on my first outing alone on the tube afterwards…so I cannot fully relate to anxiety as a condition. However I suffer from depression and it’s often stress related, I often want to achieve literally EVERYTHING at once, which lead to a complete breakdown and causes me to become frozen in a cycle of rumination and pent up frustration, I am unable to switch off, relax or enjoy ANYTHING.
Only this year i have kept tripping over articles or radio shows or conversations about mindfulness, and it seems to be just the thing to help. I won’t bore you with it here but if you have time check out IPlayer, and search for All in the Mind -Radio 4 they did a recent episode called Stress, you can also get it as a podcast under the title Medical Matters.
For me it is helping dissociate certain aspects oft life with the stress the cause, I try and leave the stress of looking at the bills behind when playing with the children, then I leave the stress of the mess thye have created, when I have to think about getting an assignment in, and then
I try and stop over thinking the assignment and concentrate on sleep…yay! It’s worth a look but like most things takes willing and some effort to make it work.
Let me know what you think pretty lil stresshead
It’s alright, I’m a hippy at heart too, even if I mock you sometimes 😉
It sounds like a really interesting concept, I Googled it and the Mental Health Foundation have an online stress test. 40 is the highest possible score and a score over 10 is enough to cause a significant impact on your life…I scored 26! I’ll definitely give the BBC bits a look over and see if I can find anything for my Kindle too.
It kind of sounds similar to a concept I wrote about a while ago, the whole ‘collecting straws’ thing where you don’t allows daily stresses to built up and become one big ball of stress, when each thing on its own is actually quite small and trivial.
Thanks babe xxx
I am the same Jayne it’s hard. I’ve tried everything but I’ve started trying small things rather than chasing big, time consuming and pressured ‘cures’. My current three pronged approach is Bachs pastilles, a lavender pulse point oil and a green aventurine bracelet. Non has any proven effect but just doing small things helps me feel a bit more in control.
Can you have a shower and change when you get home? A steamy, lavender shower might help you unwind and provide a mental ‘change over’ point where you have ten minutes to yourself to gather your thoughts? I also find my iphone ‘reminders’ invaluable – if something pops into my head i note it straight away. HTH. I know how you feel.
Funnily enough, I bought myself a note pad recently. As much as I love my iPhone, I have a thing about proper handwritten lists and it does seem to be helping. I’ve never tried Bach pastilles, I don’t know if I can with all of the other medication I take, but something holistic like lavender might help, I have a nice Neal’s Yard Lavender body lotion that I’ve never used too, maybe I should give that a whirl!