I am super overwhelmed at work right now. I’m essentially doing three jobs, and it’s incredibly stressful. I’m trying to work on taking better care of myself, but I’m beginning to completely malfunction and fall back into a familiar self-destructive process:

I always do this - when I have too much work coming in, instead of setting good boundaries and asking for help, I do the opposite. I begin to feel overwhelmed, then I feel resentful and put upon, then I wonder if I’m justified in feeling that way or if the work only seems hard because I’m a crappy worker, then I look for things to validate my resentment, so instead of turning work away, I invite more. I look for more. I pull all the files out of my drawers and stack them on my desk so I’ll look even busier. I’ll act like a victim so people will think it’s unfair and feel sorry for me. They’ll say “I’ll stop sending you work for a while,” but once I’m in that mindset, I don’t want them to lighten the workload. I want more work so I’ll get more sympathy. Then I’ll get angry because that attention and pity doesn’t actually make anything better, and at that point I’m even more overwhelmed and now I’m also pathetic and angry, and I hate myself for being so dysfunctional. At that point I’m usually in a mixed state and am not perceiving my situation correctly.

That’s kinda where I’m at right now, though with my Seroquel higher than before, I feel like it’s less extreme this time, and I have better insight.