Self-Diagnosed Anxiety: I Don't Know How to Ask for Help

Anxiety is hard.

I've probably always dealt with anxiety in some form or other, but I never noticed how anxious I really was until this year.

Now, my anxiety rises to unbearable levels sometime. And I feel like I can't survive it, but I also feel like I'll never be able to escape it.

I think I had a little too much caffeine (flavored Red Bull is dangerous) last night before RL Grime because I was tired from seeing Oh Wonder the night before. I was okay during the event. But the drive home triggered something in my brain. An overwhelming, almost paralyzing, fear started to creep up on me. I started having a panic attack while I was driving, but I was able to focus on driving home. I think knowing that I was the only one sober enough to drive was how I focused.

I'm lucky; I have wonderful friends. Ant stayed with me and held me while I tried to calm down and sleep. I could feel my heart pounding the whole night at weird paces. Tachycardia. It kept waking me up. But I didn't move at all because I didn't want to risk losing the comfort I got from Ant. I didn't want to risk losing touch. He was my anchor to reality.

Falling asleep was the worst though. The falling part of it. It would jumpstart my anxiety every time. Because I would lose touch with reality. I know that's normal. I mean we enter surreal dreams. But that's the part that scared me. I just felt like I lost control. That nothing was real.

I've been struggling to fall asleep at night because of this. For three months, I've had to listen to pop or acoustic music with lyrics to help me fall asleep. It gives me something to focus on other than my thoughts. And the music doesn't start sounding so weird or distorted as I fall asleep.

This past week, I managed to convince myself to go to bed without music. And I had been okay. Progress.

After last night, I'm worried about trying again. I don't have very much confidence in myself. Especially when I'm alone. Pretty sure my anxiety stems from being alone. And fears about the future, present, life, existence, etc.

I'm probably going to have to watch myself when it comes to consuming any kind of drug, including caffeine and muscle relaxers. They've had extremely adverse effects on my anxiety so far.

Normally, caffeine just makes me jittery. But now I think it's affecting me more than that, which sucks. Luckily, I don't rely on it often, just on those rare days I need it. I should probably just make sure I don't consume more than 30mg... that Red Bull I drank had 114mg of caffeine. Yikes. And I also got a vodka Red Bull at the show too. Stupid decisions.

I hope I can feel normal again in the near future. Anxiety is so crippling :/ I need to start making better decisions for my body and life.

Oh, I just remembered something. I found myself repeating the chant "Nam mô A Di Đà Phật" fervently whenever I woke up. It helped me focus and fall asleep a bit more easily. I just couldn't stay asleep.

Man, how do I find and maintain some inner peace? It feels reachable sometimes. And it feels impossible sometimes. I'm just really scared, and I don't know how to trust my reality right now. I don't know how I'm going to survive.

Work stress that feels good?

It has been a busy work week. I'm on two teams now, as a main member for a new team and a semi-main/backup member for my previous team.

For a couple of weeks, I barely had any work to do on my new team. I filled my time with helping train my new team on their new responsibilities, ironing out some workflow issues, taking on some cleanup work, and helping other coworkers with old workflows that I was familiar with.

This week, in three days, I ended up facing a sudden deluge of challenges and issues for my new team, including an urgent matter. And I also volunteered to do some testing.

I was really stressed today. Granted, I shouldn't have felt so stressed, but having a manager request something be done by the end of the day, when it would normally take at least a day or two because of how the process is set up, adds a lot of pressure. And I'm a perfectionist in some ways. So I stress when things don't go accordingly.

Juggling that task with devising a testing plan filled with thousands of tiny, little details for an improved workflow, sheesh. How have I done this before? I never remember. I think I'm always just glad to get things finished in a timely manner, decompress, and block out the memory of the stress haha. I suppose this is how I forget the impressive and impactful work I've done; maybe I should start not blocking it out, so I can use the experience in my job interviews haha.

Initially, joining the new team, I felt overwhelmed because there is so much to learn. I thought I knew enough, but I realized there was much more I didn't know. I have yet to learn a good third of the work that is entailed on my new team. I'm just waiting for the opportunity. For now, I'm doing the work I'm most familiar with because of the circumstances of the team. I'm hoping the circumstances change in the next week or two. Otherwise, I feel like I'm never going to learn what I need to learn.

Overall, I think the change in work focus has been nice; I like having an area of work to specialize in. There were a lot of things up in the air when we started the team. Things are now starting to settle, but there are still a few unanswered questions. But we're addressing them as they come along and we have the time to hammer out the details. So while I feel like I may be complaining a bit too much about how the team was hastily started, I'm enjoying the results so far. I feel like my input for the team and workflow changes is actually taken into consideration, which is a very validating feeling.

[gasp] My professional opinion is valued? This is great! I just hope I'm not talking out of my ass and I'm actually contributing thoughtful and worthwhile ideas.

I feel like I'm micromanaging my team, and I really shouldn't do that. My team is smart. While they might not always do things the way I think they should, they get their work done without much issue. I should have more faith in us as a team. I do. We've gotten a lot of stuff done since we started.

After the week I've had so far, I think I made a good choice in volunteering for the new team. I've been stressed; I had a little caffeine today before realizing it and was bouncing around with nervous/anxious energy. I think I probably seemed weirder than usual dancing and bouncing around. But I needed to move around to release that tension.

Now that I'm at home, albeit having netted some overtime for the urgent matter I mentioned earlier, I'm starting to get the rewarding feeling of getting things done. (Also, overtime pay will be nice.)

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I had a shot of Bärenjäger before starting this post. Hence, if anything is unclear or weird, I blame it on the alcohol and the empty stomach :P

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I question whether my work life will remain in tech. Weeks like this make me want to both stay and not stay in tech. I'm accepting that my strengths and skills lean toward technical work. But I'm not sure I can always find fulfillment in it. I'm not sure what the bigger picture is for my work life yet. For now, I think I'm content with just trying to figure it out while working where I'm at. Maybe I'll explore other tech opportunities... I just want to find a good fit.