Social fatigue wearing me down

Post Reply New Topic

I'm new on a project site in the middle of Australia and have had to socialise intensively over the last week getting to know the people. Its a bit like running a marathon when you are heavily overweight I think. I'm doing it reasonably well I think but the psychological attrition is slowly weighing down on me. I think I am going to have to be anti-social for a while.

The reader might be wondering why I bothered to post this? Well, its just that by telling everyone what I'm going through somehow makes it feel less stressful.

I can relate.

The best way to cope for me is to get plenty of sleep each night - 10 hours of sleep is good.

Yeah I can definitely see why that would make you feel stressed. Maybe find some quiet time each day to just decompress. Qawar is correct sleep helps a lot too as does talking about how your feeling.
Pm is open if you need/want to talk

My remedy (although I admit it may not be the best but it helps me get through) are the three C's:

Coffee,
Cigarettes
Catnaps.


Or sometimes if catnaps aren't possible long amounts of sleep at night, but usually I'll do catnaps for 1-3 weeks, depending on how long the stressful period is and what all I need to get done, then I crash for 12-18 hours for 2-4 days.

Not exactly healthy or ideal but I have a weird job that is unpredictable, involves social stimulation 90% of the time and is extremely stressful to me. And there are no regular 4-12 work shifts, some days it can be 2 hours, some days it can be from the moment I wake up until I lie my head down on my pillow and try to catch a sorry excuse for sleep.

This is why I need to get out of this job. If I stay any longer than my planned 9 more weeks, I'll probably have a mental break down, melt down, panic attack or all three.

I strongly relate to that. Sleep is good, and also just try to carve out whatever alone-time you can find at all in your day and week. Get away from everyone to a place or situation that relieves you of what, where and whom you've dealt with.

Sleep. Wonderful sleep. I can't get over the people here. They work in these work crews all day, socializing continuously and then head back to camp and socialise a whole lot more by doing gym, aerobics, wrestling, drinking beer, quiz nights etc. I know rationally why they are like that (because they are 'normal') but I just don't get it. I must admit that I have a great affinity with drinking beer, but if I had a private stash and was allowed to drink it in my room I would do that by preference 80% of the time.

Even going to eat is a socially taxing exercise because of the communal nature of things. My one solace is my room where I can be alone and yes .... sleep.

Jabberwokky, I feel your pain. I had to socialise all weekend. It's going to take me all week to get back to 'normal'.

True and thanks for the empathy.

Its the expectation that is so hard to shake. I feel obliged to go socialise because if I don't it somehow means that I don't care about the people. Again, I understand that this is how normal people behave when they care but it doesn't help me because I have no way of explaining to them that how much I care is not correlated to the amount of socialising I engage in.

So, I'm off to get my beer, tick a few boxes that make me socially mainstream and then back to read my book on the history of the financial evils that have led to the current global economic mess.

it is better for your health to tell your coworkers there that you get drained from social interaction, you shouldn't be that exhausted too often and most people will understand, once they know

I care about my brothers and I hope they do well at their hockey and football games- I just can't bear to watch them. It's so noisy and so BORING because it takes like 20 hits before getting a goal. Baseball is WORSE, because it's messured in innings and you have NO CLUE WHEN IT"S OVER.

But Basketball- it only takes 3 before getting a shoot- so that's nice to sometimes watch.

I hate socailziing, especailly on Sundays when I have to go back to school in the morning. I always hated that many of my dad's family parties were scheduled on Sunday because I need that night to relax. The only time I'd go was to see a Baby Cousion. Babie's are too enteraining to miss!

I did once go and play iwth my cousions, getting them screaming, and the whole family got mad
When I have kids, I'm going to let them SCREAM! : o