I’m struggling with a situation at work that has affected me emotionally. For the past two days, I’ve been crying frequently, having trouble sleeping, waking up early, and experiencing a tight feeling in my chest.
I work in a small team of four and generally enjoy my job. I’m usually a bubbly and friendly person, but when I become overwhelmed or burnt out, I tend to withdraw socially and focus solely on my work, which can make me appear distant.
Recently, my Team Lead greeted me while I was feeling particularly burnt out. I responded politely but wasn’t as enthusiastic as I normally am. Since then, I’ve noticed a significant change in her behaviour towards me. She seems more distant, avoids sitting near me, and has started assigning me tasks that I haven’t been trained for, while my other two teammates appear to have lighter workloads.
I’ve also noticed a change in my teammates’ behaviour. Their messages have become shorter, one of them no longer sits with me despite usually doing so, and I feel excluded from the group dynamic. My Team Lead is close friends with one teammate and has a close relationship with the other, so I can’t help but wonder whether she has influenced their perception of me.
What confuses and upsets me most is that neither of my teammates has approached me to ask if I’m okay or to understand my side of things. I feel as though I’m being treated differently for having one off day during a period of burnout.
I recognise that I may not know the full story, but the sudden shift in behaviour from all three of them has left me feeling hurt, isolated, anxious, and questioning whether I’ve done something wrong.
Thank you for sharing with us the difficulties you have been experiencing at work. It sounds like it has been especially emotionally draining because you’re confused about the seemingly hostile behaviours of co-workers with whom you have always been close to. It is actually very understandable why you’re unable to come into rest because your mind is probably searching for reasons for what is going on.
I’d like to assure you that you’re not problematic for your feelings, after all, they didn’t emerge from a vacuum, and they are a response to your perceptions of being misunderstood. This is especially hard since you’re probably feeling isolated from the rest of the team and still having to face them every day.
I imagine the hurt you feel is tremendous, and I’d like to encourage you to take a step back from your thoughts for a bit (which you also recognised are currently also conjectures rather than facts) because they seem to be unhelpful at the moment, and in fact fuelling your anxiety. Because you have to work with them day to day and it does sound like you guys share a close relationship, do you feel that there might be an opportunity for you to have a conversation with them, not necessarily about the behaviour change for now, but to share about the burnout you have experienced? This might clarify things for a bit
Having such conversations can be really scary, and it’s okay to take it slowly. But they can help break the emotional spiral and also give you a truer sense of where things are with your team.
@Bubbl3s Is this your first time working? When i first joined the working world, i also got burnt out and overwhelmed. it didn help that those Smes didn give the pay on time > added more to demoralisation plus they made me OT which i didn wanto. At my current place most of the time is fine, but not all teammates would ask if im ok either. Each person has diff reactions, its not necessarily personal
try to google highly sensitive. and take a short day off to recover
