self-sabatage at work??

Old 01-05-2007, 11:58 PM
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self-sabatage at work??

Does anyone else have trouble with work being an ACoA? Any one else sabataged themselves more then once at more then one place of employment...ending in an unfavorable result....or even work related anxiety, anxiety attacks, or panic attacks? I have failed at most of the jobs that I have held & I don't know why. Well I do but I don't know how to fix it. I get attached to my jobs & workplaces, get comfterable, things are going good, and then for no reason I do something idiotic that causes me to either get myself fired or isiolate myself into leaving on my own. The thing is that I am smart & I can take direction well. I am a superb employee for the first few months & easily get promoted....but once things start really going well I ruine it. I am 21 years old.....and feel totally and completley frozen in time...like I will never be able to move forward. Last October I got let go from a job because of a situation that I "didn't handle well" with a customer who was minorly injured (due to no fault of my personal own). I moved back into my parents some months before before that....because my mother was emotionally fragile & had alot going on....my father is emotionally abusive & I feared she would hurt herself if I didn't come back to be her emotional support. After I moved back home I went through a sevral month stretch of severe depression. I had to give up a job that I LOVED & was surprised to be doing really well at, friends(isiolated myself form them when I needed to come back home because I was so embaresed of my situation), and a INDAPENDANT HEALTHY life. I was so miserable that that misery turned into anger, depression, resentment, and hatred. I HATED that I had been trapped back in this situation. I hated living with all the anger & always walking on egg shells. After having experiencing a taste of freedom....living in that house agian was a whole new thing that was more miserable then I could have ever imagined. All I could think about is what was & what could have been but I couldn't leave...I was/well am trapped here. Well I am still in this house & it is eating away at me. I just can't take it anymore & I need to get out....but I feel like I have led shoes on. I have failed SOO much already that I fear I can't make it on my own. I fear I will ruine it agian & end up back here. I need to consider where I live carefully & make sure I am healthy enough to sustain myself before I consider moving out. If I move out this time...I don't think there will be any coming back. The relationship is rocky at best & if I move it will be seen as a betrayal of the family and I will most likley be detested by my extended family as well....for leaving my mother all alone. What about HER they will ask & guilt & call me a selfish bitch when I don't put her needs above my own.

I havn't had a job or tried to get a job snece october 2005....it's been a year in October of this year. I have anxiety attacks - maybe even panic attacks(I have herd that you feel like you are dying & while I don't know if I feel like I am dying I know I feel something I'm just not sure if it's so on the verge of death severe that it could be called a full blown panic attack but I don't know the diffrence between the two I guess) when I think about moving forward. I have these paralizing fears of failure, being homeless exc. I feel like I have gotten beaten down so many times & each time it is so much harder to get up & now I feel paralized like if I get up at all I will automatically fail & makes things worse then they already are. Of course my father is a narsicstic/alcoholic personaliy.....so he taunts me with the fact that I don't have a job to show that he is superior to me, knowns more, is more productive exc. Him picking at an open wound doesn't help much either.
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Old 01-06-2007, 08:42 AM
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Hello Mlynn, I'm glad you posted.

As far as self-sabotage, yeah I used to do that all the time, and not just at work. I was a little "sicker" than you cuz I would just leave a job cuz I _knew_ I would mess it up. So I'd just leave _before_ they had a chance to fire me. Did that with school, with the apartments I lived at, with relationships, with everything.

I also had to move back in with my parents a few times. And yes, it sucked big time.

Panic attacks? You betcha. Especially when i was living with my parents.

What helped me the most was getting involved in ACoA. I went to lots of meetings and spent a lot of time on the phone with people I met there. Meeting real people in real life that had overcome the same "stuff" I was dealing with was a huge help. They showed my how they took _action_ in their lives to get themselves out of that "emotional pit" I was in. Using their examples, and being able to "vent" at meetings I was slowly able to learn how to quit sabotaging myself, how to begin to accept myself, how to stop hating myself, and little by little I got my life straightened out.

It didn't take me long either. Just after a few meetings I felt way better. Walking in the door of the first one was the hardest, but after that it got easier and easier. Now I have a great life free from all those horrible emotions and self-destructive behavior.

Have you been to any real life meetings yet? I found that a lot of al-anon meetings were really dealing with ACoA issues as well as relationship issues, so those worked great for me. I don't know what part of Ohio you are in, but if you grab your phone book and call the local office of al-anon they can direct you to a meeting that is convenient for you.

Check out a few meetings and let us know what you think of them.

Mike
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Old 01-06-2007, 01:05 PM
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Hi Mlynn,
I can really identify with some of some of the things you wrote.

I have these paralizing fears
The overwhelming feeling of emotional and physical paralyzation is one Ive had alot of. Petrified to make any decision at all (no matter how minor) for fear that it will be the wrong one was a pretty common occurence with me.
but I feel like I have led shoes on
Yep. I know that feeling.

ask & guilt & call me a selfish bitch when I don't put her needs above my own.
I still experience this with my mother, although since having a relationship with her that is on my terms only, that is much more limited. I remember how difficult it was to live with her bc it wasnt on my terms.


Whats helped me has been meetings, therapy, lots of personal reflection and making lists. I make lists of what I want to accomplish for each day. Long term goals are still hard for me, so I focus on one day at a time.

When the old feelings of self doubt and sabotage creep in, I focus on the small things I can do. For example, this morning I was starting to have a crying fit over the fact that I couldnt move my bed and nobody was here to help me and Im all alone, Im not good at anything and blah blah blah. I stopped, sat down, took some deep breaths and made a list of all the things I was proud of myself for.

A little while later, I said forget it with the bed and moved on to something else.

I guess for me, some things just arent big enough deals for me to feel like a failure over. I think as an Adult Child, I was conditioned to feel like a failure if I wasnt perfect at everything and anything less than pure SuperWomanism was not enugh for me to feel valuable and good enough.

Im learning that I make mistakes and its ok. One little thing at a time works for me, and meetings
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Old 01-07-2007, 07:20 AM
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I used to sabotage all kinds of things: work, friends, personal relationships.

I can look back now and realize that it was because having a good healthy relationship (be it work or social) meant that I was doing something right.

It meant that I was doing something right.

That meant that my entire perception of myself (as being incompetent, no good, loser) was being challenged. Which, in turn, put me very very far out of my comfort zone.

Eventually I learned that I couldn't trust my own ability to judge myself or my actions. I learned to listen to what other people were saying, and tried to believe them.

From the sounds of things, you stay in the job until you start getting recognized for the good work you're doing, then that feeling of discomfort that comes from having "who you are" challenged creeps in, and you sabotage it to put you back into your comfort zone. Except your comfort zone isn't a healthy place to be.

I can trace my behaviors in this regard back to High School. It wasn't until I was about 27 that I started really getting a handle on it and realizing that I needed to not listen to myself, that I was taking my parents thoughts of me, carrying them with me, and inflicting them upon myself, and it was time to start listening to other people who told me what a good job I was doing, no matter how badly it made me squirm or how much I didn't believe them.

You have the ability to do good things. You are capable and reliable. Let that show through and tell those old voices in your head that this time you're not going to listen to them. Usually it's only the voices of the past, not the present, telling us we're failures. It's now time to listen to the voices in your present.
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