Photo by riccardo ragione on Unsplash
I am unemployed again and feeling like quite the failure. This is the second job I’ve had to leave due to my anxiety disorder this year, and the anxiety has been flowing steadily into my life since I started grad school. What was once a manageable trickle now feels like a burst pipe with no water shut-off valve.
This particular job ended because of an acute fear response related to a rat bite. I had been hired as an animal care tech for a company and my job was to clean cages, perform health checks and generally manage the wellbeing of animals under my care. However, on my second day of handling rats I was transferring a portly gentleman to his fresh, clean cage when he took offence, turned around, and bit me. And what fills me with fury now is that when I looked at him as I was taking his cage down from the rack I thought, “This rat looks really nice, I am going to handle him oh-so-gently.” Mice can be transferred from cage to cage by their tail, but due to the size of rats you need to support their bodies as you transfer them, giving them (in this case) the perfect opportunity to bite you if they feel so inclined. I finished assembling the clean cage, gently picked up the rat, and then felt a sharp pain in my finger. Now, some people have the reaction of jerking their hand back when bitten, which means that the rat goes flying across the room, but I was able to maintain a calm exterior as he gnawed through my nitrile glove. “The rat is biting me,” I said calmly as he lunged again at my finger, and then I placed him in the new cage. “Okay, but you’re not bleeding, right?” my coworker said, still working on his own tasks. “I am, in fact, bleeding” I replied, holding up my finger as evidence. “Okay, in that case we have to write an incident report.” As my coworker went to locate our manager I bled the wound and washed it in the sink, tears springing to my eyes not because of the pain but because I was illogically mad at myself for getting bitten by an unpredictable animal. Everyone was so kind about the incident, and my manager did in fact remind me that you cannot know what an animal is going to do in that setting.
Now, usually I would be one to simply shake it off and “get back on the horse,” as one of the managers suggested. However, due to my anxiety disorder I kept having an acute fear response specifically when handling rats. I tried for two weeks to manage my fear, but it was getting to the point where I was having to take a quarter of an Ativan just to get through the day. My smart watch, that smug bastard, informed me that I had completed. 1,162 minutes of intense activity during my first week, which was actually my heart trying to escape from the vault of my chest in a panic. I talked to my therapist, who said that it was unlikely that I’d be able to manage my fear as there was no way of exposing me to my fear in a controlled setting. I gave it my all, but it wasn’t enough. For the sake of my mental health I got in touch with my manager, explained the situation, and quietly resigned.
The first few days after my resignation were the worst, with all my old fears of not being able to find a job rushing back in. When you turn down a good job with a decent salary and have no other job lined up, there is very little you can do to not feel like a failure. And when you had a major depressive setback for sixteen years, those feelings twist in on each other and multiply until you feel you can no longer breathe. This is not the way I expected my life to go. I did really well in school and I’ve always been a high achiever and a perfectionist, and I blame these two characteristics for not being content with where I am now. There is nothing wrong with being average, but my brain fights against it so forcefully, yelling “We were supposed to do more than this in life! We were supposed to BE someone.” And while I am someone, it’s not the person I hoped I would be.
It also feels odd to be in this situation of struggling with a formidable mental illness again, because after I recovered from depression, I thought that my life would go in one of two directions: either I would be cured for life, or depression would come skulking back out of remission. I did not have “get progressively debilitating anxiety” on my bingo card.
And the grief that has arisen out of finding myself in a mentally unwell place again is pervasive. I realize that I’m not back at square one, but it’s hard to reconcile how I was feeling just three years ago (the best I’d felt in twenty years) with how I feel now. I find that I’m retreating in on myself, afraid of most everyone and everything, and I grieve the better days that I thought would last longer than they did.
Lately I’ve been having issues doing regular, everyday things. Driving my car, leaving the house, watching action movies – all of them give me anxiety. So I did the responsible thing and booked an appointment with my doctor. She administered the standard anxiety and depression questionnaire (the PHQ-9), which asks things like how often you’ve felt hopeless, depressed, or had suicidal thoughts. My response to most questions was “Nearly every day,” and when my doctor asked how often in the past two weeks I’d been “Feeling bad about yourself – or that you’re a failure or have let yourself of your family down”1 – I lost it. I burst into tears because I feel like a failure and a burden most days. Living at home at 38, it’s hard not to feel like my life has collapsed in on itself.
But this is the reality for a lot of people who have major unhappy life events. It feels like we can never catch up to our peers who didn’t have an extended delay on their careers. And having to go back into job hunting mode in a province that has very few entry level opportunities for someone in my field is devastating.
Before you say it, I realize that I’m not giving myself credit for what I have achieved. Blame the perfectionist in me for that. My therapist once told me that I have survived things, come to realizations, and made breakthroughs that some people will never achieve. And intellectually I can recognize that, but when you live in a society that doesn’t acknowledge those kinds of wins because they aren’t attached to a dollar value, it simply becomes too easy to discount those achievements as less-than.
Right now, I am fighting off my old depression habit of spending my days in bed. My demons have also returned and whisper dark thoughts in my ear. But this is not my first mental health rodeo, and I refuse to give in. So, I’ve been looking for inspiration outside of myself because at the moment my well is bone dry. I found two creators on Instagram who handed me back some hope.
The first is the poet Andrea Gibson (@andreagibson on Instagram). In one of their videos with audio from @allthewiser podcast, they discuss how they focus more on what they can give rather than what they can get2. I think that lately I have been so focused on what I can get - money, respect, titles, career achievements - that I’ve lost sight of everything else. And while we need money to survive in this society, my focus has been so intently directed to what I can squeeze out of life that I’ve lost sight of what I can give. My writing has always served as a bridge to others, and in the coming days and months I’m going to try to focus on connection rather than achievement and traditional milestones. Am I still going to be looking for work? Obviously, yes, as my savings will only last so long. But I’m going to actively give myself permission to take my focus off of metrics and place it firmly on connection instead.
The second creator who inspired me is Reyna Cohan (@reynisima on Instagram). In one of her videos, she says that it is her belief that our purpose is to serve others. She goes on to say, “and not service in a way where you are sacrificing yourself, but service in a way that helps you recognize and live in alignment with your authentic self.”3 She goes on to say that we can either ignore our purpose of “get clear on that purpose and how we live in alignment with that.”4 I get caught up in this idea my purpose is to be financially and reputationally successful, with a “good” career and a title. What I always seem to forget in the process is that these are not guarantees of happiness. Instead, we see countless examples of people who reached these goals and remained miserable and unfulfilled. So maybe it’s time for a revision, a hibernation of sorts, where I reflect on what is really important to me as I recover from this latest illness.
Currently I’m on a waitlist to see a psychiatrist to review the medication I’m on. Here is what I am also doing to help me cope with current anxiety and feelings of failure:
Writing it down: When anxiety overwhelms me, I write down my thoughts stream-of-consciousness style or in a thought record. It seems to be one of the best ways to push through an emotional blockage.
Affirmations: Trust me when I say that I’ve had a lot of resistance to this. I still feel stupid saying them out loud but I do write them down, because at this point I am willing to try anything that others have vouched for, feeling silly be damned.
Eating more mindfully: If you’ve read widely on anxiety and depression you’ll have come across claims regarding the gut microbiome and its connection to mood. I cannot swear to the veracity of these claims, but I do know I could stand to eat more fruits and vegetables.
Exercise: This is my biggest challenge because moving my body is the last thing I want to do when I’m anxious and depressed. But I know from experience that it helps, so I’m trying to move more, even if it’s just for a couple of minutes.
Taking a B12 vitamin: This is a suggestion from my aunt, and since I’m not a big meat eater I’m trying to keep on top of this with a supplement because it could help my mood. And again, I’ll try anything if I think it will move the needle.
I received my diploma in the mail yesterday. When I showed my parents my mom stood up and clapped, which almost made me cry. It feels like an anti-climax just at the moment with so few leads to follow, but I am trying to remind myself that it is a big achievement and that it will serve me in the future. I know I have a long road ahead of me with my anxiety treatment. However, moving forward I’m going to try to remember that my purpose does not lie within traditional milestones. I need to carve out a path that is meaningful to me, and right now giving what I have through a pastime that I enjoy resonates more than anything else. I know there will be bad days ahead, but I have a lot of loving support to help me through them, and I have faith that I can get through this anxiety like I got through my depression. It just takes time, and 100% fewer rat bites.
Kroenke, K., Spitzer, R. L. & Williams, J. W. B. (1999). Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) [Questionnaire]. Centre for Addition and Mental Health. https://tools.camh.ca/phq9/questionnaire.html?
Andrea Gibson [@andreagibson]. (2023, December 1). Above words are from one of my favorite conversations ever on the @allthewiserpodcast [Video]. Instagram.
Reyna Cohan [@reynisima]. (2023, December 1). It’s okay to disagree with me, just know I’m not here to debate with anyone [Video]. Instagram. www.instagram.com/reel/C0Ul3ExRtY8/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igshid=N2ViNmM2MDRjNw== (Every time I try to link this post it tells me it doesn’t exist, but if you copy and paste this URL it should work).
See footnote 3.