Fear of the future
I am currently a manager of a fast food restaurant, one that I have worked for for the past 15 years. My boss/the owner of the restaurant is putting everything on my shoulders even parr of his job and I cannot get any support. Amy time I try to voice frustration or stress levels it is met with "you're being dramatic" I can feel it in my chest, in my body, my mood, I am exhausted mentally and physically. I have been working 2 months straight with a 24 hour period away from work. My boss will not come help with anything and at night I am so stressed out bevause my mind races about all the things piling up at work that I need to do, I don't sleep much because I worry if I sleep to much I'll forget the tasks I'm supposed to do, but even writing them down in a to-do list stresses me out because I see this ever growing list that never seems to get any shorter. I am on the verge of a total burnout and walking out on the job, I am in the process of getting a new job, but it is tough to hang on. I had a major health scare earlier this year and was told to lower stress levels and I just can't catch a break, the stress is slowly killing me, I cry daily, im restless all the time and just can't unwinde. Me being my sole support is being used against me, they know I can't afford to not work so I'm being worked like a dog and it's to much. I keep so much bottled up because I'm tired of hearing "it's all in your head"
*** working 2 months straight without a 24 hour period away from work
Hello. I'm sorry to hear of the burden and lack of support you are facing right now. It sounds overwhelming. That's not how it should be. You should have support, time off, rest. So I work in a different job where we get "tickets" of work items. And it's easy to see the tickets come in much faster than we can work them. We can only get a small fraction of them done each year. Trying to wade through many many hundreds of tickets to try and figure out what's important and what to work first and how things work together and might effect each other is confusing and it's very easy to lose sight of priorities and cohesion, jumping from one thing to the next. But we did something that seemed to help. We looked at the amount of work we could reasonably do, then we only brought in tickets to fill about half or time. And that helped us focus much more on what was important. There's an analogy for this kind of thing: pretend there's a stream of water, a small brook. The water looks turbulent, but you can't see what's causing it. You stop up the water a bit and the water level goes down until you can see rocks at the bottom of the stream. You pull out the rocks, and the water's flow becomes smooth. Doing less can help us see more clearly what's important. Anyway I hope that might help. Another thing, my personal 2 cents, for helping with stress and anxiety - think of anxiety as a problem-solving mode that the body has. It's not a problem, it's a thing to help solve problems. It often turns on when we perceive a problem. So if you want to feel better, don't judge things as problems. Suspend the negative judgement. Maybe try seeing the mountain of work as opportunity. The work didn't change but the perception did, and an opportunity isn't a problem, so you'll likely feel less stress if you think about it in those terms. There have been times where this has helped me get unstuck from stressful thinking. Instead of saying I must get X done to avoid some bad, try to see I could get X done to gain this good. And then try to leave with at work. Put it in a mental box and set it sailing away. Anyway, I truly hope there's something in there that's helpful. I hope you get more support, that the burden lessens, that you find a new great job that you can pursue if you like it. Wishing you relief.
