TL;DR: my wife manages a local business. It was going great until it wasn't, now all her insecurities have flared back up and she's having a breakdown about work. What do I do??
We have been together for 7 years, and seen each other through thick and thin. I am at a loss with her about her job right now though.
My wife manages a successful local retail business. She has only been there a year, but rose through the ranks quickly, and earned the trust of the owner.
In fact, things have been going so well that the owner sat us down to propose selling her the business. This happened last summer, and I immediately had some reservations. It's an amazing opportunity. But from the get-go I was worried about my wife's stress level. Historically, she takes work drama too seriously and has trouble with work/life balance.
My wife spent weeks, if not the following months, trying to prove that she could handle it. She was excited about this potential deal, excited about her work, responsibility, and team. We went on several out-and-about dates, while she tried to show me we could have a healthy home life, and that she could set that boundary.
In Dec, we went to visit my wife's family. They generally treat my wife like trash. Specifically, my wife's mom treats her like she's the biggest disappointment in the world. She's an emotionally immature martyr nightmare who has done untold damage to my wife's self-esteem over the years.
After that trip, her confidence was obviously shaken. We got back and right away my wife jumped into planning her store's holiday party. She was supposed to have help from a little party committee, but ended up doing everything herself. Also during this time, she started to get pulled by the owner into more "back of house, administrative" type tasks, taking her off the retail floor for larger amounts of time.
From her perspective, this is when things "started to go wrong." My wife began to fear that a group of her younger employees (aged 18-21) were gossiping about her behind her back. She felt extra stressed trying to balance being a floor manager, with the demand of "behind the scenes" responsibilities.
This is when the work/home balance began to slip. My wife started to come home worried that so-and-so was upset with her, and that vibes were off. She felt sure that there was a groupchat or gossip train talking about what a terrible boss she is. She complained of getting attitude, and trying to talk to her employees while being told "everything is fine, nothing is wrong."
When Feb hit, my wife had a team meeting. The owner took six weeks off for vacation, leaving her completely in charge. She sat down with the team and said "this month is going to be stressful. Let's help each other out, be empathetic towards each other. I'll do my best to support you all."
Over the course of February, however, four employees quit. Understandably, my wife was freaked out. Each person who quit had their reasons- I've discussed each at length with my wife- but she admitted that she was still taking it personally. She reflected a lot on times she had micro-managed or been disorganized, and we spent a lot of time at home talking about it.
She was particularly focused on a young woman, "Ann," who has been a thorn in her side for a while. Ann is only 19, and this retail shop was her first and only job so far. She had a huge ego about how "the store would fall apart without her." She also adored the previous manager and never seemed to respect my wife much. Ann ended up getting sick mid-Feb, and called out of her shifts for a week straight - not COVID, and not a cold, an undiagnosed mystery illness. When she finally came back to work, she said she was still sick, and was going to go to the ER the next morning. Apparently my wife called her into her office, and told her "if you're so sick that you're going to the ER tomorrow, why are you here? Go to the ER now." Of course I don't know the details of this conversation, but apparently Ann ran out of the store crying, and put in her two weeks right after. Her reason was quote "work isn't fun anymore."
Since then, my wife has been worried about her workplace nonstop. Forget work/home balance, my wife's thoughts are obsessively on work all day and all night. We've talked it through, and she's aware that her thoughts are spiraling and overly negative, but she doesn't know how to turn it off. She's started to get depressed and chaotic, creating scenarios in her head where the owner fires her (even though she's about to be salaried), where everyone hates her, where the business fails because of her. She has had to hire and train tirelessly, and feels that training is going poorly and the new employees must think it's a shit show.
It is ALL we talk about. We haven't talked about her new nephew being born, or interviews I have coming up, or our friends in NM who want to call, or even household stuff. Normally she's pretty on top of things like dish soap and laundry pods; lately I've just been up keeping the home without her really noticing.
This all came to a head yesterday, where a fifth employee put in her two weeks. This employee was a major gut-punch, as she is a quiet hard-working young woman who showed no signs of quitting. My wife had a call with the owner, who seemed totally unfazed, and then broke down. For the last 24 hours she's been sobbing on and off, circling her work worries over and over again, needing reassurance.
She had night sweats and panic attacks all night, and trudged to work this morning after crying in the shower. The owner promptly sent her home because she was crying at her desk, and took over hiring interviews for the day.
My wife just seems EXHAUSTED. She never allows herself to disattach from work, or relax fully. She'll get high and play video games and take a bath and still be thinking about work. She says repeatedly that no one is supporting her, deviating between self-pity and self-loathing. She agrees she needs therapy, and even booked a therapist for a couple weeks out. But the way she talks is so illogical and self-depricating that I'm really worried about her.
I'm also exhausted myself. I've been supportive non-stop, but nothing gets through to her. She doesn't listen to anything I say. She will thank me later for the support, but can't seem to recall anything I actually said since she's so stuck in the abyss of her own thoughts.
The thing is, is that I CALLED this. My wife has had a lot of terrible jobs in our years together, and they have always stressed her out. This is her cycle: 1. feel confident at a wage-slave job, be relaxed and chatty. 2. Overhear gossip or mis-interpret a comment, suddenly realize she annoyed someone by being loud and chatty. 3. Overcompensate and become insecure, worrying over co-worker relationships. 4. Hate the job and hate herself for being bad a wage-slave job. 5. Find a new job where she can make a fresh start.
Just, this time around, she's the BOSS. And she likes this job and is actually very good at it. Her rampant insecurities have finally come to a head in a situation that demands she gets over them. And we're getting older now- this isn't us at 22 complaining about another 22 year old. This is her at 32, the boss of 22 year olds, worried that they're gossiping behind her back.
She keeps saying to me that she is a broken mess of a person. I love her so much, it's painful. She's a smart, tender, vibrant, and painfully gentle-hearted person. I don't know how to help her, or what more to even say. I'm exhausted myself and frustrated by this, like, self-fulfilled prophecy I saw coming a mile away.
Any advice is highly appreciated, thank you.
Submitted March 15, 2023 at 04:31PM by mr_meowsevelt https://ift.tt/xaITX8t
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