Social anxiety and the job search

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I was let go from my job in April for performance issues related to my social anxiety.

Since that time, I spent the summer taking care of my two young children (4 and 7) but they are now back in school and I have to resume my job search.

I'm so anxious about meeting people that I've made no serious attempt at looking.

I have a Bachelor's degree but I can't stand the thought of working in an office, especially if I have to answer phones.

I've applied for a few retail and warehouse positions, but have gotten no responses back, probably because I'm overqualified.

I know that my social anxiety will only get worse the longer I stay home.

Also, whatever I find has to pay enough to make it worth putting 2 kids in afternoon daycare, or be flexible enough to let me work only while they are in school.

It is possible to get over being anxious meeting people in order to find work. It's possible to play-act that I am someone else, just going through a role.

I think I share much of your situation in that I am looking for work again and dreading the interpersonal interaction required to find work, but more significantly, and I suspect this would apply to you, too, I have to figure out some work I'm comfortable doing. That means it can't involve keeping up the fake social act AND doing the job all day. That's two jobs in one, too much.

Have you analyzed yourself as to what you are good at and what interests you? What was your degree in? At age 45+ I don't want to do what I've done and what I was trained to do, so I am thinking about more school but as you have two children that is probably not an option for you right now unless your government has subsidized training. Aren't there career and job search workshops you can take for free? (We have them by the trainload here in Canada.) I'm in the midst of one myself and gotten to the difficult part about making decisions (when none of the options appeals to me.)

As one of my old students told me, if you have a degree, you're probably not going to be happy in a conventional role of repetitive clerical work. Yes, as we are AS, we also don't excel in the assistant/receptionist role which has a lot to do with handling people of all kinds.

I'd be interested in talking more about this if you are.

I'm 30 years old and have been working at different jobs since I was 15 and took a job washing dishes at a Pizzeria. After several years of dead-end jobs, I went back to school and got a B.A. in History.

Most of my pre-college experience was working at various retail jobs at or just above minimum wage.

Since I graduated, I've had two office jobs that both ended with a sudden layoff. I was such a poor social fit and had so much anxiety at these jobs that I do not look forward to working in another office environment, even though there is the chance that I get lucky and find a good fit.

I also do not want to work for just above minimum wage when it wouldn't even pay for the cost of part-time daycare.

I'm not interested in teaching, and I'd have to go back another 2 years to get a teaching certificate anyway.

I'd love to work for the Park Service, but there are a lot more applicants than there are jobs. I've applied several times to several parks and haven't even been called in for an interview.

Well, what i can recommend is (if you're officially diagnosed) get in tough with a case manager. From there you can (hopefully) get referred to a job coach who can aid in job searches and the like. You should also be able to get hooked up with your local ESC's (Employment Security Commission) Vocational Rehabilitation program. Word of caution, with the job market being what it is, you will likely have a VERY small pool of choices. For example, Ive got an AA of General Arts degree, AS of Biotechnology, and 70+ hours Electrical Engineering. The only job i was able to get after 2 years (1 year with Assistance through VR and a Job Coach) was a Utility Worker position for a college's dining service. As my coach tells me, "Just get a job until you get a job." There are actually several positions out there that require a minimum of social contact. Granted, you will have to stomach encounters with at least one person at a time until something comes up. Hope this option proves helpful to some degree. Good luck.

edit: The only other option is to go into business for yourself.

Are you in the States?
Jobs in the Parks Service up here are also very competitive. There are two main types of jobs that I've seen, both requiring a background you don't have, and both requiring people skills. One is wildlife enforcement and the other is naturalist -- this is basically a combo of teaching and tourism, using a biology background.

Sounds like you need to do some career research. Onet is good:

http://online.onetcenter.org/

Find out what other people are doing with their history degrees. What interested you about it? Take that and google jobs that relate to that. What were you good at in your history studies? With a degree you can apply for government jobs, too, and those pay well quite often.

Well, if social anxiety is getting in the way of you working, you may want to consider different types of jobs. The warehouse position sounds good, and you may want to look into general admin work, too. I recently put out a post on a local job board stating, "Autistic Individual Seeking [xxxxx] Position". Tomorrow morning I have an "Interview" which will consist of a tour of the office, them explaining how it works, and two hours of sample work. Make the potential employer aware of the way the interview needs to be different because of your disability. Maybe in light of the idea that something can be different about it, (it doesn't always have to be one on one, with bright glaring lights, and them asking you question after question after question) you will feel more at ease.

If you have friends (I until recently didn't...) speak with them and ask them if their places of work are hiring. As far as your resume and cover letter, what I did to make it more appealing was I took another resume for a similar thing (a sample "good" resume for a website) and copied it, putting the resume in my own words, but with the same structure.

I had a job that gave me two anxiety provoked seizures, and two trips to a psych unit because I couldn't understand or handle the severe amount of stress I was under. No one could really talk me through this because they didn't know how to reach out to me in an effective manner.

But there are other ways! You really do not have to go through so much anxiety!

My last job was as a customer service rep for a tile company. I was on a phone queue answering calls from distributors while at the same time I was entering orders that came over the fax, checking orders that came over EDI, and answering emails from my distributors.

Also, depending on the distributor, I'd have to build and release their truckloads and contact the carrier to pick it up, or check their weight to make sure the warehouse would send it out automatically.

I had a lot of trouble prioritizing and also got in trouble for putting my phone in 'aux work' so it wouldn't ring and I could get some damn work done.

I have a script for Ativan 1mg for occasional insomnia. I'd occasionally take one at work if I was on the verge of having an anxiety attack, but it just made things worse because it screwed up my short term memory and I'd forget item numbers as I was typing them.

Part of my problem is that I don't ever want to get back in that kind of environment again, but that's where my experience lies.
The rest of my experience is in retail positions which I would enjoy more, but don't pay enough to make it worth putting the kids in daycare.