My Work Demons Come Home With Me

[Lexi]

I have a very stressful job which is driving me insane. I can handle myself rather well at work, but when I go home I tend to breakdown, and that is pretty much happening every day now.

I live alone, so the only person I'm driving crazy is myself, but this is affecting my ability to sleep, and as a result, it is also affecting my productivity at work, which in turn is making things worse.

I give my employees chit chats all the time about how we need to separate our personal life from our professional life, but I can't seem to be able to do it myself.

As I lay down at night, I start thinking about the next day. About things I need to do and say, and that usually takes me into a very dark place where I picture myself screaming at my employees or at clients over the things they do. These elaborate screamfests stay in my head all night. Even if I sleep, when I get up in the middle of the night I continue with these thoughts.

I never actually to this in reality, but those dark and depressing thoughts tend to occupy my head every single night.

Once I get to work the next day and folks start coming in smiling, the dark thoughts go away, and even though we have a stressful job, I keep my cool in front of them. It's just when I'm alone that my demons get the best of me.

Any suggestions on how to better control my emotions, or how to completely forget about work when I'm at home?

[Dan.Linehan]

What kind of work is it?

[Lexi]

I'm the Executive Director of a large 501(c)3 which has been under investigation for financial irregularities. This all happened before I took the job, but nonetheless, it's still taking a toll on me.

And I took the job because it's an agency that my father founded 40 years ago, so I have a personal attachment to it.

[Dan.Linehan]

I thought about your post throughout the day today. This might sound like a strange suggestion, but bear with me.

I would buy some boxing gloves and a punching bag. It sounds like you have a lot of excess mental energy and suppressed emotions built up, and basically you need to exhaust them before bedtime or they come through your subconscious.

There's another, added added bonus to getting rid of extra energy before bed: boxing / kickboxing are great for your health too.

You could try Hatha style yoga as well, which is the more physically active kind. The boxing will be quicker and easier to tire yourself out with though.

What kind of exercises do you do currently?

[uberinquisitive]

I strongly suggest Emotional Freedom Technique. I used it after my fiancés suicide - I could barely function because of the rage, the guilt, the constant negative chatter in my mind. It made a dramatic change in my life.

I have continued to use it, and now use TAT along with it.

In case you have never heart of EFT or TAT - both techniques stimulate the energy meridians of the body, while using talk therapy. It's like accupressure on steroids. The intense energy buzz of your negative emotions becomes neutralized, although of course the memories are still intact.

I would suggest finding a master practitioner to guide you. You can go on the EFT site and look up master practitioners. While it's helpful to be face-to-face, you can also do it over the phone with great results.

You can also go on YouTube and look at what EFT and TAT "looks" like. However, both of these techniques are very free-form, and there is no wrong way to do them (just more and less efficient ways).