Hi Daisygirl,
I appreciate you sharing your experience, and the courage it took to share it here in particular.

The workplace can be such a minefield, especially for introverts, strong intuitives, feelers and deliberators. I hope other introvert/intuitives here will come and share how they maneuvered it themselves over the years.

You said you took a similar test; I'd hazard a guess that you're probably a fairly strong Intuitive. Intuitives with any shades of Introversion tend to have a really hard time feeling valid, appreciated and "niche-d" in the workplace, because it's the extroverted logical types who tend to hustle and bustle their way to the top. But trust me, we DO BELONG, even if we haven't yet figured out how or where.

My own therapist suggested the same thing to me about the job situation. By that time, though, I had been forced to leave because of the severity of my breakdown and fatigue. But he couldn't imagine how I had survived in that particular field of work for so long without breaking down long before I did. And yet, it was one of my all-time favourite jobs!! So I had some difficulty accepting what he said.

I would not have been able to switch jobs either, partly because I had just sunk thousands of dollars into retraining myself for this field...I could not have just thrown all that investment away. Of course, by allowing myself to burn out so severely, I did throw it all away in the end anyway, didn’t I!

My view on it is that no matter where we go, we carry any unresolved "baggage" with us, so the problems don't necessarily disappear; they just take on different faces. Until we come to terms with the root cause of our work-related difficulties, we might never be able to completely escape them.

That being said, sometimes people ARE in the wrong jobs. If our job is constantly diminishing our energy rather than providing some measure of satisfaction and meaning, then we have to look at the possibility that our job IS contributing, if not causing, our fatigue, growing sense of disconnection and powerlessness…perhaps even hopelessness (because we see no end or possibility of change in the near future), which is one of the hallmarks of depression.

In your case, if the reality is that you have to stay in your job for the time being, then you CAN (and MUST for your own health and sanity) find a way to not only survive there, but thrive there. If the main reason you don't enjoy it anymore involves your co-worker's confrontational comments and the feelings they provoked within you, then you can perhaps try to find a way to dig through those feelings (not letting HIM define you or your value at work) to the core truth of who you really are...a valid, worthwhile member of the work team.

IMHO, that's what your therapist could be doing with you, rather than telling you to find another profession. Who can afford to do that on the spur of the moment...maybe that's feasible for long-term planning, but for now, you have to find a way to co-exist with your co-workers, and find some joy and satisfaction in your workplace while you’re still working there. It is do-able.

Toastmasters sounds like an awesome idea! Sigrid MacDonald, another one of our sisters here, is taking Toastmasters and raves about how it's boosted her confidence, as well as her comfort level when speaking in front of people. It's the kind of training that would be useful in so many different work and life situations. So I say "go girl! You can DO it!"

[ September 22, 2005, 03:25 PM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]