Boring Personal Journal (sorry)

So I did something really good for myself last night/today. The manager at the job I'm about to leave (since we have to move for Toby's new job) is a bully, plain and simple. She speaks rudely, gives vague commands and becomes sarcastic and disrespectful when you fail to do the thing right, and then goes back to faking being nice in a very obvious manner. Every day I went to work, I felt a little worse, and I started obsessing over all the things I did wrong that day and how bad I am at my job. It got to the point where all throughout my day, I would be yelling at myself in my head about my mistakes, like I was bringing her attitude around with me and doing the bullying for her. Once I realized that's what I was doing, and how much I was obsessing over it, I was able to reel it in. Usually, when I am upset and obsessed like this, I just get filled with more and more anxiety and nothing gets better until the person somehow leaves me life (work transfer, I move away, etc.) But this time, for the first time, I stopped myself from obsessing and running my mind in circles over a problem that nothing was getting done about.

I stayed up late last night and did some research, and really thought about what exactly it is that was making me freak out. I of course had held mental conversations with her in my head, telling her off and throwing an insult or two to feel better. But then I read this article about how to stop focusing in on your stress, and this one after, about handling confrontation. I did as it said, even though it felt a little weird at first, and made a quick, to the point, emotionally uncharged speech, then practiced saying it out loud. I focused on the fact that I'm a friggin' adult, not a kid in high school suffering bullying, and that I don't have to be treated with disrespect and just take it. After I sorted through all the crazy obsessive thoughts and figured out what I was going to do if I needed to confront her, I felt awesome. My hands finally stopped shaking like crazy, my heart chilled out with the blood pumping, and I just felt way better. I ended up not having to confront her, as we didn't even speak much today, but just knowing that as soon as she talked to me that way again, I had something planned to say about it, it felt like I was armed and ready.

I've never been diagnosed with anything, but I really do wonder if I have GAD or some variety thereof. It is impossibly hard for me to not overthink and stress out about interactions with people that didn't go perfectly. So the fact that here, right now, I was able to just talk myself through it, it feels like a miracle. So many times I hear "Don't worry, just calm down and stop thinking about it" and by god, I would love to just stop thinking about the thing. But it's like having a giant pin in my head and chest, and telling me "yeah, don't worry about that, it doesn't actually hurt you". But maybe now, I can just take the horrible giant pin out myself, instead of having to hope it goes away or trying to get someone else to help work it out. I'm hesitant but hopeful that this is something I can do again.

Anyway, I was just really excited about this bit of emotional success, and felt like I wanted to share it. Thanks for reading if you made it to the end, lol.