Home from Another Weekend

I'm home from another weekend out-of-town. I left my meal plan pretty flexible and didn't overeat, but I'm still really bothered by feelings of fear. When will it come again?

I have this awful feeling that my life is passing me by, that I can't keep up, that I'm not in command when I should be. I feel like there's so many things that I can't do because of anxiety, because of fear. I've been thinking a lot about my life last year. I started a very intense job, and usually I handle work-related stress pretty well. But the people I worked for, I always felt like they were working against me, not with me. They were people who grew up in a low-income area and in a different culture. People who know me know that I respect everyone.

When I started my job, I was caught off guard many times by their actions. They called me down to the office and accused me of making snotty faces at a meeting, and even impersonated the expressions. I felt degraded and extremely confused (I've never been disrespectful in a work environment). It was so hard for me to deal with, because I felt like I had no control over how they viewed me. No matter how hard I worked, they only saw me as a threat or expendable. It took me a long time to realize it was them not showing me respect, and not the other way around. What hurt the most was that people came up with crazy ideas about my personality that had nothing to do with me, things that I would never want to be associated by. And I could do nothing about it, because they were using their frame of reference and not mine.

That still makes me feel anxious, that I could be forced to be associated with things that I perceive as very negative and can do nothing about it. It says more about the people making those assumptions than about me.

I left that job, and still feel the effects. I feel anxious about my life, feel like life is moving and I'm too scared to move with it. I want to be free of all these crippling fears. I want to live my life and make decisions and not worry about my anxiety getting in the way. I want to feel safe in my own skin. I want to feel safe. I want to be able to travel, to work and know that I'm strong enough to do a good job and withstand any outside negative pressures because I feel so confident in who I am. I want to be strong and in command.