Mental Health

I don't know if some of it is similar, but I can sort understand some of your experiences.

It is like the energy is focused on what is perceived as "important" and when you have time alone then there is a just a feeling of being drained and the body shuts down because of all that energy to maintain appearances.

I don't know if there is an insecurity with maintaining appearances and without thinking putting in more energy into people than they deserve, but I can understand the feeling of giving work ( when I had work) more than it deserved.

That is a me thing and maybe it is relatable.

I can't really offer any advice because I have been forced to just keep going without much quality involved working on improving and I have a lot of maladaption developed from that.

I do think the advice offered by others has merits though and hopefully you can find something that can lessen or at least help spread out the intensity of your concentration

I swear I clicked post on a comment here, but idk wtf happened to it. Doesn't look like it was removed in the modlog so I'm confused.

Couple of things...what type of therapy does your therapist use? Does it seem like it's more of a "talk therapy"? Most therapists I've encountered are like this and I have found it not overly helpful. While they are nice for a listening ear, it's hard to find enough substance for me to be able to help myself in practice. What has helped me was finding a therapy program with a specific therapy modality...so I have a way that I can apply it irl. I'd wager that the therapy type is probably less important than the structure. Many therapists claim to use CBT or DBT or whatever else, but when you actually get to the sessions, they don't. In my experience, many are just talk therapists that use vague concepts for these, which I have then had difficulty figuring out ways to help myself irl. Obviously easier said than done to find a therapist with more structure, but that is probably the first direction I'd go tbh. You also have to be very specific and explicit about what you need from therapy in order for them to be able to help you...what you wrote here is great.

Another thing is...have you tried any medications for anxiety by any chance? While therapy definitely is going to be able to do the most heavy lifting, sometimes you need just a little bit more help or a little bit more of a push with psychiatric medications. It's scary, but they are given to millions of people and are not a huge risk. You can always stop them (slowly, not cold turkey) if you feel like they are not helping you. It's not like someone is going in and permanently altering your brain like with surgery.

Best of luck, OP.

All these things you're feeling are super normal. Not fun, but not terribly worrisome beyond discomfort. Not trying to minimize. It still sucks. I know.

lying in bed most of the day and having 2-3 panic attacks.

1. Exercise. Nobody having a tough time wants to hear it, I know. Replaying conversations and ruminating and wondering if you read their reaction right or if you said the right thing or if you fucked something up or if they were just being nice or... omfg it's exhausting.

You know what else is exhausting? Exercise. It's impossible to do both. Go walk up a steep hill. If you can still ruminate, walk faster. You will be all consumed with focusing on your breathing. Bonus points if there's a view at the top. Don't forget to bring water.

I have a lot of trepidation around, and fawn a lot with the colleagues that set me tasks

2. Try writing. You might be real good at organizing thoughts but pen and paper is better. Guaranteed. It can be a vent for the frustrating feelings you are (seemingly) burying, which are (probably) exhausting you.

Even though I can see objectively that I am not in any danger.

3. Go do something (safe) you'd never do. Like a dance class, or singing lessons. Not for intuitive reasons, but to expand your window of tolerance for discomfort in otherwise nonthreatening situations. If you fuck up at work it could have real consequences and that can make anxiety feel real and present when it isn't actually a present threat (we tend to do a bit of magical thinking when we anxiously ruminate. Make lots of assumptions etc). Go create that feeling and learn to sit in it and tolerate it. But make it fun.

but I still have a real lack of energy outside of work and spend a lot of time anxious about the next working day. It's impacting my life a great deal.

Again, exercise. Just go for an hour long walk or something. Get your heart working. You might be surprised how much our heart health affects our emotional states (particularly the transition between those states, and how it feels; this is mostly blood pressure but also heart rate related). The ruminating, the exhaustion, it's real. Make it physical, your heart will thank you and your emotions will follow

One more thing: get out of your head. What do I mean? Focus on your senses. When you're overwhelmed, thinking about something PAST or FUTURE, stop. Name 5 things you see. 4 things you hear. 3 things you feel (physical touch, like your shirt on your shoulders). 2 things you smell. 1 thing you taste. This will force your brain to cut the ruminative loop and get present, back down to earth and out of your own assho--head. Out of your own head. :)

Does anyone have any similar experiences, or ideas of how to stop these situations from having such a big effect on the rest of my life?

Literally decades of experiences. Only other advice I have is recognize what you do to numb out. Is it drink? Smoke weed? Doom scroll? Sleep? Recognize this is a maladaptive coping mechanism that is shrinking your window of tolerance for discomfort.

2 levers which work, but are likely nonobvious:

mindfulness-practice & HIIT fitness ( aim to bring it up to 24-minutes or so? )

The HIIT needs a bit of clarification, though:

do some high-intensity fitness, until your heart-rate is up around 85%, NO more than 90%, of your max heart-rate..

then put the kettlebell(s)/running/whatever down, & wait until your heart-rate is about 4/3 of your resting-rate, then go back into the intensity again..

it's all heart-rate, and has NOTHING to do with seconds/reps/whatever.

If you're ill from a cold, your heart-rate will tell you that your immersions are shorter, but no clock will, see?

Heart-rate's adaptive.

Anyways, just do it so you're finding your healing, NOT so you're battering yourself into aversion-therapy, which .. will only make you hate it, right?

Anyways, if you combine both of those levers, & accept that it takes 1-season/quarter for such to make noticeable-results, then you should find your health moving away from induced-anxiety-centrism, to something more enduringly good.

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Hello OP,

I hear ya eh, having an emotionally exhausting workday and working through trauma at the same time is really tough. I've had similar experiences. I really relate to feeling confident with your ability to do work which make the tasks themselves not feeling challenging, but everything all together feels like a massive hurdle. For me especially as it relates to my coworkers and customers.

I definitely can't relate 1 to 1, and what's helped, so far, might not be right for you. But here's some of the things that helped me.

Movement

 Any exercise you can muster or able to do. If you're not sure plan small and start even smaller. I'm lucky I have a bit of exercise equipment and it can get boring so I always line up some music or a show or even a game I could play while doing it. If no one is around I'll get some music and dance like an idiot.

Small goals where you can be like "oh ya I did that, sweet"

I got plants! So far they're alive, but they need a lil taking care of. I've got a decent number of em and a diversity where I know I basically should be doing one thing a day. When done, yay! Lil thing I did. You might also try getting into a low stakes hobby (to try and ditch if you don't like).

Respecting my own labour

I remind myself that I work for myself and not (really) the massive corporation. I'm totally contributing to their massive wealth but I'm building a resume, savings, or maybe earning to care for a dependent. Whatever you would work for that's why you work. It can help take a little pride in the effort, even if the end result of the effort might not be what you're hoping for. Take all the vacay and sick days they give too, at minimum. A lot of places do not offer anywhere near enough.

Routines of human body maintenance

One of the things that I try to be better at as much as possible is taking care of the large bipedal mammal that I am. I've gotten into the habit of making sure I'm hydrated first thing in the morning, eat some fruit everyday. Some regular grooming, the exercise, daily shower. But as important as the physical stuff, some of the brain stuff too. I'll carve out some time to read a book or play a video game that I've been itching to do (I went to the library today). Try to socialize if that's your jazz (this post is me trying that right now). Engage with things you like for no one else's sake but your own. 

It's worked best for me to have some of these routines be daily, but some of them are biweekly. I've kinda developed a little tracking system with an agenda. I'll give myself 1-3 (max 3) goals for the day. But I will also write down the things I've done that I'd find worth noting either while procrastinating the goals or in between them.

You mentioned panic attacks, I have those too, at first I thought I was like ill. But after therapy and learning grounding techniques, breathing exercises, closing my eyes if I can. Something like noticing and resting control of a panic attack before it gets way bad would be something I'd note as part of my daily list of "stuff done."

Anyways, sorry for the wall of text. Hope any of it helps,

Cheers!