Work is already a struggle for me without the gossip.
The season begun again this Monday. I had a conference and brief on Wednesday and when it was finished I cried all the way home in the car. I find speaking to my coworkers all day very emotionally draining and overwhelming. It felt strange that I was crying because I didn’t have a bad day, nobody was unkind.
But I’ll find myself sitting with my coworkers, for example, at lunch, and suddenly I’ve just dissociated from the entire situation. I’ve suddenly realised that I’m not enjoying myself and then that’s where the worry comes in. I start wondering if anything I said before this moment was anything to cause offence, or if it makes me appear strange to my coworkers.
I go to work dreading it everyday. My brain has almost programmed itself to always expect the worst to happen. Maybe it’s a self defence technique; if I expect the worst to happen I can’t get too upset about it.
My afterwork anxiety gets so bad sometimes that I end up lashing out at somebody who doesn’t deserve it at all, and then that leads to more guilt and overthinking.
I work in a theme park at the moment. It’s not the most exhilarating job, but it pays my bills so it’s enough. So obviously there’s new people every season. We aren’t even a week in and this lady I work with is already gossiping about everybody and their mother. She tries to get me involved in it and I told her that I’d rather not speak about such things as you never know who’s listening. It’s made me afraid I’m going to tell somebody something in private and in confidence and somehow everyone is going to gossip about it.