Anxiety

I have been diagnosed as having "Higher Anxiety levels than is normal for a woman my age".

What a freaking treat.

So what made me go to the doctor about this a month ago?

Well, Lately I have had more and more trouble winding down at night.

Oh I pulled all my tricks out of the bag, the PM yoga, the warm lavendar bath, the not putting the computer on after a certain hour, not watching high action or emotionally charged films after a certain hour....

None of my old tricks work. I spent and spend, too much time focusing on one or two topics that caused me anxiety.

Work is the NUMBER 1 reason for the anxiety.

Here's a news flash for all you people who need to control everything, are overly demanding and need to be in charge all the time.... you are micro managers. It's a trust issue. You simply are unable to trust the people who are involved to do things where the end result is the correct one. Sometimes you choose these people, and sometimes they are handed down.

Micro managers are usually exceptionally good team players. Because of their need for control, they can be phenomenal individual contributors. But to manage or oversee a group of people? Not usually an actual strength. It can be learned but generally speaking its not this type of person's strength.

Management is about leading people towards a common goal. In truth you are, at any given time, either managing people, time or tasks.

In a highly functional team, like mine, you rarely have to manage people or tasks. Just time. And usually your own. Occasionally when there is more work than people and things need to be prioritized, that's when the time management assistance comes into play. If we need a task to be escalated, we normally don't wait for a manager, we just do it ourselves.

When we work for a micro manager, you get your time, your tasks, yourself and even the way you do things, managed. What that tells most human beings is, you are not qualified or capable of making these basic decisions on your own. And it's very degrading.

Micro managers tend to lose patience when focused on their ultimate goal. Sometimes they are short or bark other times they speak to you condescendingly as if you couldn't possibly know or understand what they are trying to accomplish here.

So my power woman psyche at work is taking a lot of hits of late. What I am also finding is that my musical life is providing those same hits as well. Thus the high Anxiety on two things that I am good at.

Criticism is OK. It's necessary even. How else can we as people improve and know how we are doing on a scale if there wasn't any?

But at my age to work for a person who overseas when I pull my email or tells me that I have to push an order ( when he says that on every order ) or chastises me becauseI didn't tell him about the vacation days that were on the schedule for over a month? PLease.

And they took our headcount away. So now we have to do 6 peoples' work with 5.

So what am I doing about it.

I started a holistic remedy that allows me to take ann herbal mixture anytime I feel the anxious panicky feeling to rise up. I am still doing the yoga, bath and all that..... but I finding the herbal mixture is actually helpful for me. It reduces the anxiety a bit.

I notice some new symptoms are the increased road rage. The inability to tolerate even mild criticism from family and friends, the lack of tolerance towards large groups of people who can't take direction. This should eventually be managed and I am working out every day to help reduce the stress and anxiety.

I'm just managing the anxiety. One source of stress is largely relieved or at least lifting, but the work issue needs to be managed better.

Yes - I know this appears to be a rant but hey, it's my blog and I'll rant if I want to!