No. I haven’t talked to my therapist in a while. The last time I talked to her, I had had a panic attack and was struggling with my anxiety. But I wasn’t really having any work issues or issues with my mom at that time.

Glenys, I wish I could, but my friend lives an hour away from me, and my job doesn’t really pay enough for me to help her with rent.
Nina Sakura, it is hard and hard to try and keep a positive attitude. It’s especially hard when you’re someone like me who suffers from anxiety. As far as finding a better career, I’ve never really had a hard-core interest in anything. Whenever I think about it the only thing that I can think of that I have a deep genuine interest in is traveling, but I don’t see a stable career in traveling. What I really want to do is teach English abroad. I’ve been wanting to do this since about 2010, but I’ve never really told anyone about that. And I much too scared to tell my mom. So when I graduated from college, I felt stuck. So fast-forward to last year I accepted a teaching job because I wanted to have the experience of teaching at home before teaching abroad. But that I experience was terrible. I ended up having to resign after two months because of anxiety and stress. I still want to teach abroad, but ever since that horrible experience I kind of feel like all my teaching experiences will be like that if I go back to teaching. Then, I’m an only child and I just have this fear that something will happen to my mom and I won’t be at home to help.
Anita, I know I keep posting about this. I really do want to teach English abroad, but based on my past experience with teaching, the decision makes me a bit wary of going back into teaching too. I mean, I won’t know if I don’t try and I can’t keep hopping from retail job to retail job. I actually think I’m giving myself anxiety because of this job. But I think it’s just fear that’s stopping me from taking such a big risk. I actually read an article on here about waiting for the right moment, and I think that’s what I’m waiting for, but in this case there may never be a perfect moment to start, but I’m just worried. I just don’t want this teaching experience to be as horrible as the last one.

I want to quit so bad. But I don’t have another job lined up and I don’t want to not have any money coming in even though it’s a little. It’s just I hate this job and even though I applied for the tsa, the process is so long and I don’t really know if I even want a tsa job and my mom keeps stressing about it. I just can’t relax and my mom kept saying don’t make a habit of calling in and that I should just go to work not feeling too well. I know I’ll have days where I’ll be suck and trudge to work, but I feel sick to my stomach every time I have to go there.

I sometimes go in and think “well I’ll just make the best of it, it’s only temporary”, but then something reminds me of how much I hate this job and that makes me want to pursue teaching abroad even more and get out of this hell hole. But I need some money right now.

Anita. I had to do a little research on LOC. I think part of my LOC is ELOC because of how I was brought up in church (I hope this makes sense). And I’m not saying that I can’t make my own decisions. It’s kind of like if something good or bad happens, then I believe that it’s part of God’s plan. So, in that regard, I tend to feel like if I go for something I want and it doesn’t happen, then I feel like “well God didn’t want me to have it, He must have something better for me”. So right now I feel like “well I probably need to learn something from working here and once I learn it I’ll be ready for the job that God wants me to have”.
But in regards to my mom and those people at church, I have a problem with worrying about what others think. That’s part of why I have anxiety. It was because I had so much pressure on me from other people (or I thought so and I was putting pressure on myself to just be this best teacher). I thought that if I quit the job, I’d be considered a failure and that if I pursued what I really wanted to pursue, they’d think I was crazy and I’d be disappointing a lot of people.

Anita, yes teaching abroad is still the dream. I just wouldn’t want this experience to be stressful and anxiety-inducing. Especially since I had such a terrible experience with teaching about a year ago. I want a career where I’m not dreading Monday and constantly checking the time to clock out. I know that no job is perfect, but I just want to enjoy my job. Is that too much to ask?

Maybe. But I have started to get the ball rolling with teaching abroad. I just don’t know how to tell my mom that this is what I want to do. I’ve told a couple of people. But I’m kind of weary of telling my family because I just don’t want to deal with the anxiety of people asking me so many questions again. But I hope everything will go well!

I really do want to move out of my parents’ house and away from my small town. I’ve been wanting to move since I was 10 lol. But now it’s not just for the independence, it’s now more for me to find myself and to grow as my own person. That’s kind of why I want to travel by myself. But I am scared and it’s not just being away from home, it’s also being a woman of color. I really want to get out of my comfort zone, but it’s hard. Since I’m on the topic, do you think I should pursue teaching abroad?

Anita, I never really thought of it that way. But it’s weird because, like I said in a previous post, she wasn’t this overbearing when I was in college. I don’t even think it was that bad when I was in high-school. So I don’t really know where it started with the constant hovering. My therapist says my mom is a helicopter parent. But I never really thought of it as my mom being a cause of anxiety and stress. I thought I was just a constant worrier (which I think I am).