nar_olepsy

Thanks for the hugs! I saw a therapist for depression/anxiety for I think 5 years, about once every other week. At the beginning of 2017 I had to switch insurances to Kaiser and when the time came to meet with a new therapist there, I didn't really have any idea of "goals" in mind and she didn't have any interest in meeting with someone without "goals". I am going to see my psychiatrist ASAP, and maybe I'll give a new therapist a shot. For what it's worth, I do think my tiny anti-anxiety pills are doing what they're meant to do. I noticed a shift from the first couple days of immediate anxiety at not knowing what to do next to being able to push past the anxiety and just take steps to find out what to do next.

Thank you so much for this.

I'm a nursing assistant student and I just finished my second week of clinicals in a nursing home and my instructor had a talk with me about the possibility that I fail clinicals. From the beginning of everything she would comment that I looked "scared" or "lost," which hello, I was because I was just starting something new and I don't automatically know what I'm doing. On the second day of clinicals I was feeling really overwhelmed and my instructor decided to take me outside to talk. I started crying and telling her that I just felt like I didn't know what to do and it seemed like all the other students were keeping busy with plenty to do. She was pretty encouraging and paired me with the Restorative Nursing Aide for the rest of the day. I decided to start taking my as-needed anxiety medication at the end of the first week, and that's helped for the most part, as far as feeling lost and scared goes. I also think I've started to do better as far as seeking out things to do, residents to help, even though it's only been a short time (we have three days of clinicals a week). However my instructor tells me I still seem scared and timid, which always makes me feel insecure even though I feel that I'm improving. Today, one of the facility's CNAs and I were giving a resident a shower. The shower went well, I was drying the resident off, and she suddenly decided to get up from the shower chair and ended up falling. I just panicked and I didn't know what I could have done to stop her(I was in front of her drying her feet) and I started crying. The CNA checked the resident over and said she didn't have any bumps or bruises. She also said something to a nurse who poked her head in after hearing someone fall about not filling out a fall report and told me that I didn't need to tell my instructor what had happened, which just made me feel worse about the whole thing because that can't be right. Anyway, I stopped crying long enough to help the resident dress, gather the dirty linens, put them in the correct receptacle, check on the two residents I was assigned to, and go on break. Then I purchased a water bottle from the vending machine, found a nice bench in an empty area and started crying again, perfectly aware that I shouldn't have been crying, but that only ever makes it worse. Two of my classmates found me and I talked to them about what had happened, along with my other insecurities about clinicals and after a few minutes we all went back inside. I tagged along with them, helping to transfer one of their assigned residents and then we sort of split off again and I was fine the rest of the day. Our post-conference was just about normal, but then at the end of it the instructor asked me to stay behind. She basically told me that at the end of the second week, which has really been just six days, I shouldn't be timid anymore, she criticized me for crying "like a baby," and she told me that she thinks there's a good chance I'll fail the clinical portion of the class. At no time did she tell me she thinks there are problems with how I care for residents besides that fact that I'm "timid" which I really am trying to work on. My classmate I carpool with was shocked when I told her about the conversation and said that she had seen me improving confidence-wise, so I know it's not just that I feel that I'm progressing. I don't really know what I'm hoping to accomplish with this post. I'm just feeling really panicked right now because I hadn't really considered that I might fail clinicals and will have just wasted all my time and energy and hopes on something that I truly thought I was cut out for only to have to move on to I can't even think about what.