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Bad anxiety working with children


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I've been working with children for over 2 years and I enjoy it but lately I've been feeling really anxious. Lately I've been depressed and I'm going away on holiday on Monday and I always get anxious before I go away as I worry that something will go wrong. 

In my mind I keep worrying that I'm a paedo and that I've done or said something wrong or that I have impure thoughts. 

Today I was playing a game with the kids and I told them a story about a witch who made children be her servant. Then in my mind it was like sex servant. I'm worried what if I said it aloud? Why would such a thought pop into my head. Why would i associate a children's tale with that?? Why would i think such a thing?

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I'm always careful around what I say and do around the children. I'm always careful not to swear or say anything inappropriate around children and I make sure if they watch or listen to something it's for children. 

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Hi lonelygirl, 

I work with children too and it can be quite tough when you have OCD and are responsible for the wellbeing of someone else. But look, you have to have trust that your worries are OCD and not reality. Also, even if you did say something bad in front of the children, it's not the end of the world. They will hear these things eventually anyway!

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The thing is working with children is extremely stressful and even the most minor things can get you in trouble. I once got suspended because this nasty headteacher said I wasn't watching the kids properly and made ridiculous petty accusations and looking for faults i.e. the kids were on the stage (it wasn't dangerous and very low so no one could be hurt), a piece of equipment wasn't straight and that I was shouting at children. It was such a horrible and agonising time being suspended. I felt that I did nothing wrong and I always take my job very seriously. At this school many of the kids had severe behavioural issues and it was very difficult to work with them- even the two managers left because they said they couldn't handle the kids. I've had loads of colleagues and parents tell me that I'm good at what I do. I feel so angry that I was suspended for something so ridiculous and minor! No children were hurt and nothing happened! I know this guy who is useless at his job and is a manager, recently a child banged her head really hard and got concussion and knocked out four teeth under his care and he didn't know how it happened because he wasn't watching. He didn't get suspended and he should have! That for anyone is way more serious and the mum strongly complained about him! Everyone says that I was unfairly accused. 

This happened 3 months ago and obviously I'm working at the same company. I feel that I have to watch my back all the time and I worry over any little or minor thing because there are some people who make a mountain out of the littlest thing! It tends to be teachers as well! It's like they enjoy the drama. Last year me and two other girls got in trouble and were accused of sunbathing because we sat down in the sun and apparently we're not allowed to sit down. It was a scorching hot day! The other two girls were really good at their jobs and great with the kids. We worked with some other guys and these guys were useless; they would huddle in a group and just talk amongst themselves the whole time instead of interacting with and watching the children and they never got in trouble! I feel that there's so much unfairness. 

I feel that there's so much pressure and I'm scared that if I accidentally said the wrong thing, that I'd be taken the wrong way and I'd get suspended and fired and banned from working with children. I think I would kill myself if that happened. 

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I don't even know if I said it! Part of me is trying to be rational and that if I did, the kids would notice and a) ask what it means or b) be like miss said a bad word. kids are honest. they weren't phased at all.

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I think you've experienced this stressful situation of being suspended and now you're OCD has kicked in and is trying to convince you that you have put yourself at risk in your job again. What you're doing isn't going to help unfortunately. It's understandable that you want to figure out whether you have actually said something bad or not, but the reality is that you have to let this go and move on. You won't be able to figure it out, this is OCD and it will always leave a trace of doubt in your mind and the more you try to figure this one out, the more new situations OCD will introduce for you to worry about.

Just try to accept that this situation has been caused by OCD and try to stop ruminating over this, just go about your life and your job like normal. 

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Its unfortunate you have had some experiences that have caused you to feel stressful about your work experience.  Unfortunately sometimes people who get a little bit of power abuse it because it is all they will ever have.  Thats unfair but its also reality, and all we can do is deal with it.

On 24/05/2019 at 06:46, lonelygirl91 said:

I feel that there's so much pressure and I'm scared that if I accidentally said the wrong thing, that I'd be taken the wrong way and I'd get suspended and fired and banned from working with children. I think I would kill myself if that happened.

Is it possible that all these things could happen as you describe them?  Yes, technically it is possible.

But its also possible, that NONE of them will happen.  You are considering only the worst case scenarios and spending all your energy focused on those.  What if after all that time and energy you spend on them, none of it ever comes true?  Then all that worrying and what not will have been for nothing.  You will have wasted so much time and effort that could have been spent enjoying your time with the children and other parts of your life!
 

On 24/05/2019 at 05:30, lonelygirl91 said:

Today I was playing a game with the kids and I told them a story about a witch who made children be her servant. Then in my mind it was like sex servant. I'm worried what if I said it aloud? Why would such a thought pop into my head. Why would i associate a children's tale with that?? Why would i think such a thing?

Why would you think such a thing?  Because its something that happens to all people.  We have random thoughts, we have inappropriate thoughts, its part of being human.  We are not robots, we don't act or think like machines, we can't trace every flow of input to output like a computer program can.  Our minds are CONSTANTLY filtering input and thoughts that we have no control over.  Every sight, every sound, every smell, your brain is constantly analyzing it all, and the vast majority of it you don't even notice!  Your brain filters it out and you basically ignore it.  Its like you are the CEO of a giant company.  Maybe you have 100,000 workers in your company.  Do you think the CEO knows EXACTLY what each and every one of those workers are doing all day every day?  Of course not, instead only the most important information, only the things the CDO cares about get filtered up to them.  They run their company, just like you run your life, using only the key details.  Now sometimes a CEO (or any worker) gets some useless information in their inbox or at a meeting.  Just because a piece of info reaches the CEOs desk doesn't mean its important.  Thats the goal, but its not the reality.  The CEO knows what to ignore, and in a non-OCD person so does the brain.  Maybe the CEO has a new assistant who doesn't know the company very well, one day the assistant makes a mistake and tells the CEO that a report on his desk is very urgent.  So the CEO responds to the report as if it is very urgent.  Turns out its not urgent, but the CEO didn't know that until after.  Time was wasted, decisions were made out of order, all because the assistant made a mistake.  Now in the real world if that happened too many times the assistant would be fired.  Unfortunately we can't so easily replace our brain's assistant.  We have to train them instead.

In your brain, your mental assistant has, unfortunately, been trained to think thoughts related to pedophilia and sex are "important" so you not only notice them more often, but when you do you treat them as high priority.  Of course because of the nature of those thoughts combined with your personal beliefs it creates a conflict and you feel anxiety.  But just because you have a thought doesn't mean its important, it doesn't mean you want it, it doesn't mean you'd ever act on it.  You could have that thought for any number of reasons.  For example, maybe you saw a news report on some child who was mistreated, and in the story on the news you see a kid wearing a blue and black striped shirt.. Your brain files that away somewhere, obviously its not something you like.  So maybe the next week at work, you see a kid, different, wearing a similar color shirt.  Without even realizing it your brain pulls up the memory of the child abuse story in your mind, after all the "blue and black striped shirt" was connected to that story.  Now you don't REALIZE thats why your brain brought it up, all you notice is that you had a thought about child abuse while being around a child.  To you thats evidence you want to harm the child, but the reality is quite different, the opposite in fact.

I understand what its like to have these kind of unwanted thoughts pop in to your head.  It can be random, it can be absurd, it can be scary.  But its just a thought.  The other day I was holding a water bottle in my hand after taking a drink and for no apparent reason I had the thought "huh I could just take this bottle and pour it over the head of my coworker next to me.  They wouldn't be able to stop me before I did it.  I wonder what would happen?!".  Now I can safely say it would be a bad idea to just random dump some beverage over the head of a coworker.  Its definitely not something I should do, and I'd get in huge trouble if I did it.  Which is, of course, why I didn't!  I was always in control of my actions, it was just a fleeting thought.  Something, as I said above, people have all the time.

In the end the only thing you can do as far as your job is concerned is to do your best.  Hopefully that will be enough to keep your job for the foreseeable future.  Maybe you'll make a mistake and lose your job.  Maybe you won't.  You can't guarantee the future, none of us can.

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