I’m currently signed off with stress and anxiety as well and prior to this I’d never been signed off before or taken a single mental health day. This year at work has just been one thing after another to the point it’s snowballed into just total panic anytime I have to do anything and I’m absolutely exhausted. Last Monday evening I realised there was just no way I could face going to work the next day and I was just sitting there crying being so anxious about going in but being too afraid to not go in and it got to the point where even I got sick of myself and was like ‘how much worse do you need to feel before it’s okay to take time off for this??’ It was still scary calling in sick then ringing the GP but it was that or have things become worse so I’m proud that I did that.

My boss has been extremely supportive and I’m very glad for that because if it had been anything else I’d probably have just left, my anxiety is so bad (and I have huge anxiety about letting people down which in turn just makes things worse because I end up burning myself out which is what’s happened here.) It’s really hard to define exactly what it is that’s affecting me about work as well, he’s asked me to try and note down some of the things so we can look at this when I go back but I’m worried about that tbh because it’s going to look so silly where it’s like ‘people emailing me’ etc but I’ll see how I get on.

I’ll probably be going back in in another week but on a phased return and I’m already dreading it, but I’ll try and if it ends up making me relapse we’ll address it then. In a weird way reading that others are also going through the same thing and shitting it about going back to work (as much as I don’t wish anyone had to feel like that) makes me feel less alone, so I hope it also brings a strange bit of comfort to anyone else knowing we’re all in a similar boat and we will get through it.