Having a hard time dealing with pressure

I have a trouble at work (my friend didn’t see it as a trouble as it was in line with my education so I should be familiar with it). The problem is not the trouble, the problem is it gave me pressure and I don’t do well under pressure, moreover pressure that involves other people business.I am not good with word when I actually have to use them to do my job. It’s frustrating. It maybe because my bosses expectation and the fact that I have to deal with a lot of demanding people. Two days ago I got a warning because my work is a mess, and I couldn't get it under control. Pressure terrifies me, to the point that sometimes I made them worse than it actually is. Even tiny pressure freezes me up. It settles in my stomach like a horn, clouding me with worry and chanting ‘you are going to fail, you are going to fail’. When I felt pressured, I’m sending myself to a sinkhole full with worst scenarios. It’s not healthy. And I know that I can do something. These last few days were horrible, I kept thinking about the trouble and getting restless even though I knew that I am able to finish it. I’m just not a smart conversationalist and pants in dealing with people in business mode. And that’s pressure. I often feeling lost like this when under pressure. It stays with me for days and weeks and months and it grows. My friend can’t stand it. ‘There are no pressures’, they said, ‘even if there is, it’s just a problem I know you’re capable of handling. And if you are not and fail that doesn’t make you a failure. People fail all the time. You just have to learn better and do better next time. And if you keep failing, then maybe this is not for you. I’m sure you will come up with something then. Stop borrowing trouble.’ Yeah, I know friends. My own mind tells me that all the time. It’s just that my brain and body don’t believe them. They keep a stone in my chest, and stir my stomach, and disturb my reading, my eating, my sleeping, and it’s ridiculous, and stupid, and I can’t help it. Why don’t you understand that I can’t help it? I just want myself to understand that problem happened. That it’s alright to have them and that it’s normal, that I just have to do my best. And if my best is not good enough then maybe that’s how it is and I just need to move on. Why is it so difficult? I don’t want to worry about things that may not happen all the time.

It’s good that you reached out for help. That why I got on this website, after I had what for me was a big problem, and I completely messed it up. I wrote myself a help page on what to try the next time I had a problem, starting off, “Be positive. You’ll probably be in pain, depressed anxious, so the problem will be harder than you think.” As a matter of fact, I wrote myself one of the same lines you wrote down in your post below, in which you said, “The problem is not the trouble, the problem is it gave me pressure and I don’t do well under pressure, moreover pressure that involves other people business.” The way I wrote my main issue was, “The problem is not the problem. The problem is my negative unconscious.” I had just read a column on being positive when trying to solve a problem, and realized I had been unconsciously negative all of my life, and was really trying to defeat myself, by disallowing positive responses to problems that would have worked, because my unconscious had been trained not to succeed. I was like you, the problem wasn’t the problem, in my case, it was my unconscious trying to defeat me. So after reading that column on being positive going into a problem that you can solve it, I would tell myself, “Think positive, think positive, think positive” to try and keep my unconscious from sneaking up on me and defeating me. Then try whatever good solution I came up with, rather than trashing it as I had done before. So with you, the problem is not the problem. The problem is you don’t do well under pressure. People who do well under pressure don’t understand what you are talking about and say things like, “My friend can’t stand it. ‘There are no pressures’, they said, ‘even if there is, it’s just a problem I know you’re capable of handling.” People who don’t have the problem of handling pressure don’t understand. People who don’t have depression say things like, “You don’t need to go to a doctor or get anti-depressants, just pull out of it.” They don’t understand because they don’t have depression. You said, “Even tiny pressure freezes me up. It settles in my stomach like a horn, clouding me with worry and chanting ‘you are going to fail, you are going to fail’. When I felt pressured, I’m sending myself to a sinkhole full with worst scenarios.” I was once given the task of editing the newsletter of a small club of about 20 people. The pressure was too much. I couldn’t do it. I stayed up all night the night before I was to have the newsletter done by the club meeting the next morning. I sweated it out. I finally took the newsletter to the place where the club was to meet at about 7 a.m., put them on a table at about 6:30 a.m., walked out of the empty room, and never went back to another club meeting. I couldn’t do it. Too much pressure. There may be causes why you don’t handle pressure well. You might not like it, but there may be causes. As for myself, I am manic-depressive, which is why I can’t handle pressure. I take lithium, which eases the depression and lifts it some, it also calms down the mania. I also take an anti-depressant. I started feeling anxiety from pressure at 17 in high school. It hit me like a freight train. At about 28, I had a nervous breakdown, which is about the age that manic depression breaks out. You said, “Yeah, I know friends. My own mind tells me that (“you can get over this”) fall the time. It’s just that my brain and body don’t believe them.” Maybe listen to your brain and your body and not your friends. You said, “They keep a stone in my chest, and stir my stomach, and disturb my reading, my eating, my sleeping, and it’s ridiculous, and stupid, and I can’t help it. Why don’t you understand that I can’t” The person who needs to understand that you can’t (do well under pressure) is you. In some ways you understand it, and in some ways you’re wavering back and forth, as you can see here: “I just want myself to understand that problem happened. That it’s alright to have them and that it’s normal, that I just have to do my best. And if my best is not good enough then maybe that’s how it is and I just need to move on. Why is it so difficult? I don’t want to worry about things that may not happen all the time.” In some of those sentences you are claiming there is no problem. But in some of those sentences, you are saying there is a problem, for you state, “And if my best is not good enough then maybe that’s how it is….” You say the solution might be to move on, I think you need to realize these problems may be part of a bigger issue, just as my break downs at 17 and 28 were signs of a bigger problem. As stated, in my case, it was manic-depression. I could try and girt my teeth all I wanted, but if I didn’t get to a psychiatrist and get the right diagnosis, so that I could get the right medicine, I was just going to get worse. I would suggest looking up on the search engine for “manic depression” or “bi-polar,” and seeing how many of the symptoms you might have. Some sites might ask you 10 questions, and if you agree with 7 or 8 of them, they may feel you have manic depression. (Some of those questions may ask if you have any relatives who have a mental illness That could be a key to your figuring this out, also. Look for mother, father, aunts, uncles, who may have had problems handling pressure. That can be a big key to your situation.) You may have simply depression, so write in “depression” in the search engine, and read about that, and take 10 question quiz. You might have anxiety disorder, type that into the search engine, and take the quiz. You may have another condition that I don’t know about. So maybe type in “mental illnesses” and look through the list for any you might think might be the one, and search for that on the net. You might not have any of those. That would be OK. What could be rough is if you do have one and it’s not treated. You know, like me, not treated for a lot of years until I have a nervous breakdown. That’s not a lot of fun, either. If nothing else, just go to see a psychiatrist just to hear what his or her (as you choose) opinion is. You don’t have to take any medicine, you don’t have to believe anything he or she says. Just go and get a second opinion to your own. Tell him or her what you’ve learned from the self-tests on the net, for you may have only 50 minutes in their office, and you can have hours on the net trying to figure out what you may have on your own. When I took my first lithium, I felt like a balloon that was about to explode, and the lithium was like letting air out of the balloon. I didn’t know I was that keyed up. That as normal for me. You may be keyed up, also, for you said, “They (pressure problems) keep a stone in my chest, and stir my stomach, and disturb my reading, my eating, my sleeping, and it’s ridiculous, and stupid, and I can’t help it. Why don’t you understand that I can’t” I know it’s hard to be the doctor and the patient, also. I know it’s hard to look on the net under “psychiatrist” in your home town. I know that because I failed miserably when I should have done that. Especially when you’re already depressed (I don’t feel like doing anything), or in a manic state (my mind’s going so fast, I can’t slow down long enough to do any one thing, like call a psychiatrist). I know, because those were the states I was in when I was supposed to be helping myself. If you have someone who can help you, contact that person or persons. If you don’t, maybe muster up the street to write down the phone number you see on the net, and call the number, get the appointment, and just see what the psy. says. You don’t have to do anything he or she says. These people know what you’re going through and can help you. That’s the kind of people you want to talk to, not the ones who says, “You don’t have any problem,” and you keep saying, “Yes, I do.” Act on the “Yes, and I do,” and prove those stupid son of a bitches wrong. As I tell my psychiatrist about not doing anything when I was depressed for a long time without getting help, “Looking for a helping hand? What about the one on the end of your arm?” As I also try to now tell myself when I’m having trouble, “One problem at a time, and be positive about that problem.” Don’t worry about all problems, worry about this one, and be positive you can solve it. The problem is, you aren’t on medicine that can slow you mind down to where you can concentrate enough to where you can solve the problem. So it’s a doubly-difficult problem. Another saying that has helped me is, "the person you have to defeat is the person you have to look at in the mirror every morning." In our cases, it's not the people who "don't understand" who are causing our problems, it is ourselves. Or, as you say, do your best.