"Can you come and see me in my office on Monday morning" for someone who suffers anxiety, these words send a cold shiver down my spine. My first thought is "what have I done wrong?" I then start scanning my memory to try and pin point the error my boss is certain to be bringing up on Monday, why else would he want to see me? This is bad. I then spend the next several hours worrying about what I have done and what I'm going to say to the inevitable when I go in Monday.
This will be followed by visions of being balled at in front of everyone leading to me being fired and the shame of having security watch me clear my desk and walk me out of the building in front of my former work colleagues and having to go home and tell m wife. Eventually she will leave me and get a divorce and I can't pay the mortgage so I'll have the house repossessed. That will lead to me spending my last days living in some derelict caravan on some rain soaked cliff edge somewhere drinking myself into oblivion and lamenting how unfair life was to me for the rest of my days...
Sound familiar? For anxiety sufferers like me this is or at least was an almost daily thought process.
My therapist actually asked me what I thought when I heard that phrase and he wrote it out in full on a white board .....then he pointed out....you haven't even got to Monday yet. What evidence do you have your boss will fire you...concrete evidence?
This will be followed by visions of being balled at in front of everyone leading to me being fired and the shame of having security watch me clear my desk and walk me out of the building in front of my former work colleagues and having to go home and tell m wife. Eventually she will leave me and get a divorce and I can't pay the mortgage so I'll have the house repossessed. That will lead to me spending my last days living in some derelict caravan on some rain soaked cliff edge somewhere drinking myself into oblivion and lamenting how unfair life was to me for the rest of my days...
Sound familiar? For anxiety sufferers like me this is or at least was an almost daily thought process.
My therapist actually asked me what I thought when I heard that phrase and he wrote it out in full on a white board .....then he pointed out....you haven't even got to Monday yet. What evidence do you have your boss will fire you...concrete evidence?
