Being tilted at the first sign of rejection

It took me from September 2011 to Today to finally have the courage to take my job search serious enough to commit going through the process and feeling all the anxiety that comes along with it.

In the past I’d apply to jobs just to try to move on from a complete break down I had a few years back and somewhere during the interview process I’d self-destruct from the anxiety and shame that I had inside me at that moment.

Today I tried to apply to my first job fully prepared to go through the process and I got rejected within hours of submitting my resume and cover letter. I wouldn’t be too shaken by it but for once in my life I represented my resume honestly and conveyed that I had health challenges that I spent the last few years working on. There could be thosands of reasons why I got rejected but for some reason reading the words “not selected” hit my heart and I felt so exposed. I felt so much anxiety just moments right after finding out the results that I was afraid of all the self-sabotaging moves I would make next…

The rest of my day was shot. I immediately tried to calm myself down because I had no one I could call that I felt safe to share the news with. Not that I got rejected but that I was having a mini-panic attack of feeling so vunerable that all I wanted to do was hide. That is exactly what I did. I spent the next two hours I put my head under my covers and tried to tell myself that its okay. The sensations wouldn’t go away and depressive thoughts came back into my mind. The escalation of depressive thoughts lead to my body shutting itself down and I went to sleep which is a rare thing to happen before my bedtime unless It’s because of a depressive coma.

I kept telling myself that I was going to allow myself to wallow until 30 minutes before I had an informational interview I happened to luck into that was scheduled for today. I went to the computer and my body froze. I wasn’t prepared, I couldn’t be my curious self and I felt I was going to mess things up. My body, my mind, everything was telling me to run. I emailed the person to cancel and reschedule. I felt horrible for being so weak.

When you are afraid you want a distraction and you just want to give up. All I wanted to do was watch sports and give up on my diet. I forgot to workout today and eat Ritz crackers with milk until my stomach was way past full. I felt like crap and it was okay because I was rejected because in this anxiety mind I exposed all these things I am ashamed of.

Not everything was bad today with the anxiety today. Before I got the news I was able to push past my anxiety to go shopping with my father to buy healthy salad parts and actually make it for them regardless of if wanted it or not. I want all the folks in my family to eat better as we are all fighting health conditions and I wanted to work as a family for a solution for all of us. For that and for writing this blog post, it wasn’t a total wreck but still…

Anxiety and other mood disorders suck.

I am a brown guy.