Help!!! miserable office conditions

Hi, I have started a new job since January. Earlier I was at a job where the employer was very abusive(verbally and sexually) and I was quite miserable. After 2 years of constant anxiety I decided I'd had enough. This new job has an employer who is nice in a detached sort of way and respects your personal freedom. However, instead of being happy I am depressed about the office environment. My cubicle is smaller than a matchbox and so crammed that when I move my arm I touch my coworker. The whole place is dirty and dimly lit, the toilet stinks and the corridor has bird droppings. In fact the whole place is so dreary that I am unable to concentrate on my work and often find myself dozing off. Every night I feel anxious about going to work and have nightmares. I haven't been to office for the last 4 days. At this rate I have no option but to quit. I have tried counselling, talking to family and friends and reading motivational stuff but to no avail. Nothing can prepare me to face another day of work. Can anyone please offer any suggestions or explanation why this is happening? Any similar experience, something you read or anything basically. I'm almost grasping at straws now. Thanks in advance.

As a manic depressive, I had trouble with jobs, also. Things got on my nerves. You said, "I have tried counselling, talking to family and friends and reading motivational stuff but to no avail. Nothing can prepare me to face another day of work." I am now on lithium, which calmed me down, and made me feel like air being let out of an over inflated balloon. I didn't know I was up tight, but I was. You also said, "Every night I feel anxious about going to work and have nightmares. I haven't been to office for the last 4 days. At this rate I have no option but to quit." You're saying you feel anxious, and having nightmares about work. Why don't you look on the web under manic depression, or anxiety disorder, and see if any of that applies to you. You said, "I was quite miserable. After 2 years of constant anxiety I decided I'd had enough." And, "However, instead of being happy I am depressed..." You added, "the whole place is so dreary that I am unable to concentrate on my work and often find myself dozing off." As a manic-depressive, I usually found my jobs too difficult that I couldn't do them, or too easy and I got bored and couldn't concentrate on them. You were, also, the one who said you had tried counseling. So you are looking around for something. You might be looking for yourself, as in "who am I?" In my case, I was my uncle, who had manic-depression, whose mother, my maternal grandmother, had manic-depression. So I found myself in my uncle. I had a man who told me, "I knew your uncle. He was manic-depressive, and you probably are, too." That's the first I knew of it. I was probably miss-diagnosed for 15-20 years. If you're not diagnosed right, they can't medicate you right. If you're not medicated right, you're not getting any help. So the diagnosis is very important. That's why you can help yourself by looking under the two above, and other, categories as to what might be going on. You doctor will have 30 minutes with you to figure what's going on. You can spend hours, days, weeks, off and on, looking on the net, trying to figure things out, and telling the doctor what you found, if anything. Do you have any relatives who have anxiety or had trouble with jobs? You can figure some of that on your own, or you can ask relatives. I don't know any of this, but you were asking, searching, I was took, and I was glad when that man told me, "Your uncle was manic-depressive, and you probably are, too." You want to find the answer, as you seem to be searching. It might be up to you to deal with this, which can be hard to do if you're the one having difficulty. I couldn't. While jobs were tough for me, being without a job was tough, it would throw me into a depression because I wasn't around any people. So, either way was tough on me. After I was fired from one job, I got depressed in a few days, and it got worse over the next 3 or 4 weeks, until I had a nervous breakdown, which almost wiped me out. You don't want to do that. I could have looked for a psychiatrist during the 3 or 4 weeks I was depressed, but for one thing, being depressed, makes it hard to do something like that. It was hard to make a decision, for one thing. But I would advise you to look for a psychiatrist, find one (man or woman as you choose),call one, see one, and see what her or she says. You don't have to do anything, just listen to what they say, get a second opinion on what may be going on. As to what you do, you're being tested right now. I didn't pass the test. But all these years later, I know what I needed to calm me down: lithium. It may not be the one for you, but you do need a second opinion, in my view.

Thanks a lot for your reply. I really appreciate you taking the time to think about my problem and coming up with solutions. I will look up the disorders you suggested and will also ask my counselor if we could proceed along those lines. The only thing I can't work out is, that even though at my previous job I was working under an abusive employer and eventually his sexual advances forced me to quit, I was happy with my job. I was taking an interest in what I was doing and I loved the feeling of being successful and appreciated for my work. But there is something about this place that literally bores me to tears. Does this fit into the type you were describing? I am asking because I have no idea. And there is no history of depression in my family. Everyone has been able to hold a job. I am the first one to go nuts.

I appreciate your reply. Well, I think I missed it. But I was in there trying. From your reply, I don't think you're manic-depressive or anxiety. So I appreciate your patience with me. So you have a counselor, who you can check with about these things. Great. You said, "But there is something about this place that literally bores me to tears. Does this fit into the type you were describing?" Well, what would happen with me in jobs was, in an easy job, I would talk to everybody too much, and couldn't do my job. In a difficult job, I often couldn't do it. In a middle level job, I would often talk too much. It was the mania from being around people. Before taking the job, I would be depressed, from being around no people. Once on a job, I would be so stimulated from being around people, I couldn't shut up and concentrate on my job. I also had trouble concentrating with no people around, from the mania and probably from Attention Deficit Disorder. So, it doesn't sound like you have that, for which you can be thankful. You said, "And there is no history of depression in my family. Everyone has been able to hold a job. I am the first one to go nuts." Well, you're either going to be rewarded for being the one who can't hold a job, or you're fixing to fall on your face. From my first reply to your post, OK, I went with the nuts. Some thing about what you said, I thought, she's having a difficult time. I think you're very interesting, which doesn't pay much, and the benefits are horrible. I think you should have stuck with the guy who was trying to lay you. At least he has goals, which was you. You know, there is a reward for being a little bit nuts. For being off-beat. I think you're individualistic. And that is a definite plus. I think you should be positive about what you have. I think you should give yourself 100 points for that. Your description of your last job was funny: "My cubicle is smaller than a matchbox and so crammed that when I move my arm I touch my coworker." There was a national radio and then TV talk show host, Sally Jessy Raffell (sp?), some 15 years ago, who said on her radio show a number of times, that she was fired from most of her first 10 jobs. I couldn't believe that, because I had trouble holding jobs, also. So it gives you some hope. As for being bored to tears, you could be just a person who likes enjoyable things. Who likes to enjoy what you do. You could be high-strung, who is sensitive to things. There's is nothing wrong with that. In the right job, you could excel, you already have, in that job for years. You also have principals, which you can be proud of. I think you can still be you, which is great, anyway you want to take that, and still find employment. Sometimes your first jobs are not really where you want to be. "Fate has a way of putting a person in a place where he should have been in the first place." That was spoken by a guy who failed, at first, but then got into a job he liked and excelled. It can happen. It might not happen, but it can. At jobs you don't like, make fun of them, as you do, which can help you get through them. But you're also quite capable, once you get into a job you like. Stay positive. You know, it could be your mind and body, the one your former boss admired so much, is telling you, "Get the hell out of here." Maybe telling you to find something you enjoy. So go with your gut as far as getting out of those jobs. What kind of work would you enjoy? Hello! I know, it's a novel idea. Would you rather work with people or numbers? If you want to work with people, maybe, something along those lines. But those jobs can be upsetting, too, I would guess. Just having a job puts you in touch with people, so you don't have to look for that. I think it's hard to find a job we enjoy and get paid for, also. Well, as a manic-depressive, I think it's impossible. What line of work were you in with the first guy. You remember that guy. I think you're a fun and wonderful person. But there I go with my trying to figure out people again.