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Tag Archives: stress

#330: Life blows. How can I be nice to myself again?

By
August 14, 2012
Friendship, Mental Health
147 Comments

Ahoy there, Captain, and fellow Awkward Army.

Sad Keanu sits on Fry's dog

Artists’s depiction of how sucky things are right now.

As I am typing this, work has been massively stressful and busy for me–I work at the busiest gas station in my city and despite being part time, I consistently get 40-hour/at least 30-hour work weeks; the end of the summer semester is drawing very near, and next semester (which I only have a week break in between the two) is going to be even more hectic, with twice as many classes; because I am so busy, I very rarely see my main core of friends, who live 45 minutes away from me; I am in a very bad place mentally, dealing with lots of anxiety and general sad feels; and to top it all off, I have now split up from a boy I didn’t want to break things off with, because I’m still emotionally invested in him, even though we were on the opposite ends of “Displaying Affection and Something Resembling Caring” Spectrum and I was hoping to talk to him about it but we had a snit about him never hanging out with me that eventually accumulated into breaking up.  Read More

#232: Going through a rough patch and taking it out on your partner.

By
April 23, 2012
Reader Questions, Relationships
39 Comments

I’m waiting for a Quicktime Render from Hell to finish. Here’s a question.

Dear Captain Awkward,

I’m in a messy and unhappy situation, which isn’t really what I’m writing about. The awkward kind of comes in with how I’m handling it. A member of my boyfriend’s immediate family has a terminal illness and in addition, this is (unsurprisingly) leading to meltdowns among other members of the family. He lives quite a long way from them and is doing a lot of back and forth traveling and trying to keep up at work as well and generally is stretched pretty thin. I’m also in a lousy situation at work, with a demanding boss and people quitting and having to take on their stuff. The combination of this means we hardly ever get to see each other. If we manage to carve out several hours to ourselves – and we both do try really hard, but it often doesn’t work out, a lot of the time something comes up at the last minute – then everything is good and we can relax a bit and just enjoy each other’s company. But most of the time all it seems like we can do is grab an hour here or there, on the way to the airport, from the airport, late at night when we’re both tired. And then in those times we either talk logistics or – and this is kind of my problem – I pick a fight.

I try to be supportive and take a backseat and provide him with what he seems to need. But the longer we go without getting to spend some time together the more unhappy, and honestly kind of resentful, I start to feel. I try to tell myself that I’m being selfish and he’s under a lot of strain, and I also try as much as possible to ask for reasonable things that would help a bit, and he’s good at listening and trying to accommodate me. But still I eventually start saying to myself, “We haven’t had dinner together in two weeks, we haven’t had a proper conversation in three, we were supposed to have two!whole!hours! on Monday morning and the plane was delayed – ” and on and on. And then the next time we talk I’m surly or snappy or else I just burst into tears.

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