Dear S K:

“I am serving my notice period right now… I don’t know if I did the right thing” – in regard to your mental and physical health, I believe that you did the right thing for youself. I want to congratulate you for having served your notice today!

“I have witnessed (boss)  yelling, mistreating, publicly humiliating senior people in the team, which had such a deep impact on me that my brain…  Except a few, everyone else (including my previous boss) advised me against quitting this job so early, without having another offer in hand.  I still chose to go ahead and quit as I was overthinking a lot and that was affecting my mental and physical health.” – on paper, their advice may be a good advice, but in actuality: if you stayed in this abusive workplace, your mental health would have continued to deteriorate, followed by your physical health being affected.  In these actual workplace circmstances, quitting earlier than later is the right choice.

Again, congratulations for going ahead and quitting!

Of course, post-quitting, you’ll  still have to deal with anxiety because, like you shared, you tend to overthink, and you don’t have another job lined up. But you can find ways to manage it because you will not be exposed to the yelling and abuse by .. the boss from hell, if I may refer to her this way (?)

Please let me know of your thoughts in regard to my reply, and if it’s of any help, I will be glad to reply to you further.

anita

Dear S K:

You are very welcome.

“Rest of them made me feel like I committed a crime / I am loser” – (1) the aggression you escaped in the workplace (“yelling, mistreating, publically humiliating“) is the crime, not you leaving it, (2) you were in the process of losing your mental functions (“my brain and mind shut down“, etc.), so the losing was in staying in that workplace, not in leaving it.

“They said one cannot keep quitting over such reasons. I believe a life without a value system or ethics is a life very poorly lived. I believe no one should face such a situation at workplace” – no workplace is perfect and many are far from perfect, but yelling, mistreating and humiliating workers is not to be tolerated and accommodated. You can decide on your minimal requirements of a workplace, what you will tolerate and what you will not tolerate.

“I would like to know though – what are the small every day actions / thoughts for positive affirmations that will help overcome anxiety? My struggle with anxiety and overthinking continues and I really want to learn to manage it” –

– these are my suggestions: 1) If you don’ t have one already, form a daily routine that serves you well. Routine calms anxiety,  2) Make daily aerobic/ other physical exercise part of your daily routine, 3) Start each day with a Focusing Exercise: mine includes a few simple yoga postures. Warrior 1 and Warrior 2, are two such postures. I  hold each for a couple of minutes. Sometime during, I repeat to myself the word courage (intending to be courageous today), and a couple other intents for the day.

4) During the day, when you feel that your anxiety level is rising, change something about what you are doing: if you are sitting, get up and walk around, take a break, listen to a bit of music, etc. (positive distractions from elevated anxiety),

5) List people and situations that elevate your anxiety and either avoid them or change something in regard to them: learn, practice and improve your people skills, such as assertiveness skills and resolving conflict skills.

You are welcome to let me know what you think about the above and I’ll reply further.

anita

Dear S K:

You are welcome and thank you for your appreciation and kindness! Keep doing what works for you and please post again anytime you would like more of my input and suggestions.

anita