Chest Pain

Dear Lyn,

Thank you for your time and suggestion!

Frankly, I do have anxiety and stress from both my family and my work. I feel always relaxed everyday i am back from work. I feel heavy everyday while preparing to go to work. It's not because I don't like my work. I think I am happy at work and I can manage well to do all the tasks that I am supposed to do.

I joined this work last year May 2015. As a first time manager, I felt the environment was a bit unwelcoming and things that I am supposed to be facing are stressful. So, starting from September 2015, I have been suffering from regular chest pain which comes and goes.

Now unwelcoming environment is gone and still I am having chest pain. I have done ECG for about 5 times in a year time. Chest pain is really frightening. Even yesterday I got chest pain a bit severe.

Don't want to live like this. always feeling scared of the feeling like what is going to happen to me.

Unwelcoming work place could be a nightmare, no wonder you are having chest pains, and feeling heavy like that is just your system firing up to face that sabre tooth tiger that has come the the mouth of your cave.

Fight or flight, it is a very ancient part of our brain firing up for the fight or maybe running like the devil away from the issues you have.

Is it the staff or is it the managers you have to answer to that are adding to your problems.

Possibility of both problems being solved never easy, of course, but I have always believed talking and facing up to the problems honestly and hoping your staff or managers can see things the same way are a pathway to solving those same problems, or maybe you need to change, your style maybe rubbing people the wrong way. 

Having been on both sides, once I was able to help, staff soo unhappy, never a birthday recognised, never a card or ackinowledgement of any happy occaisons in staff's life, they were just going through the motions of only what they had to do to keep business running and motivation at zero.

Second time I was on the other side, as junior this time, again staff in terrible shape, a couple of near breakdown's, and they were still expecting too much.

I ended up resigning I was not going to cintinue to work in such a toxic workplace.

I was farwelled with a morning tea party, where i told them the truth about their management style, the cheering and clapping told the managers something they needed to know, did get some feed back some months later, that things had improved for a while, but had gone back to old ways, sad.

Dear Lyn,

Thank you for sharing  your experiences.

Now unwelcoming environment is no longer here. All are friendly here now. but still i feel like I am a problem solver. whatever the problem is, maybe from our managers or maybe from my staff or maybe from our colleagues, every problem comes to me. outside i show nothing. but inside I am scared, sick and tired of it.

As an admin magager, vehicle issues, office house keeping issues, issues with our partners, issues with our managers' housing, human resource issues etc.... these things come to me. 

Even though i think i am happy at work, in reality inside of me maybe I am not happy.

Perhaps that will be reason why i am suffering like this.

Zaw - I would take it as a compliment if everybody is coming to you to be the problem solver.

But maybe you are taking on just too much, I'm sure you have heard the story of the breaking of the camels back.

To me it sounds like you don't know how to say NO.

Your need to get together with your trusted staff and say, you are loading me up with too many problems, too many decisions, we need to maybe break up the workload into more managable bites, and together work out who does what, and have some reporting system too share information at the end of the day, or even the end of the week if all seems to be going well.

Remember me mentioning the place I worked that the staff never were rewarded for anything they did, never recognised their family issues, birthdays etc, so they lost all motivation.

I arranged for us not to answer the phones for 20 minutes at the end of every day, have a chat, and a cup of tea, or glass of wine once a week, clean the offices, and sort the warehouse, do the filing that hadn't been done in months, if not years, we all pitched in with me leading the way, with the broom, taking down the filthy curtains that hadn't been washed in years, they ended up being pale grey, rather than the brown I thought they were, what a surprise that was.

Took a few weeks but we did see progress with the workload and huge progress with motivation and willingness to help each other, when I had to leave I believe I left a much happier staff.

Right at the

I am really really really tired of figuring out.

Do you have any suggestions for this?