Remote working makes me feel paranoid
I am curious if other people are experiencing this.... I used to work remove a decent amount and after a stretch of 4-5 days I'd start to feel paranoid that the people in the office were somehow displeased with me and I might get fired. So I made it a policy to go into our office every 3-4 days so that I didn't have that ongoing anxiety. Maybe in light of COVID I should have actually tried to get to the root of it and resolve it in my mind because now that I cannot go into the office every 3-4 days, I find that still have that paranoid feeling even though no one else is in the office either.Is this a known issue with remote work and how do you deal with it?
teresaman·Jan 17, 2021teresaman·Jan 17, 2021Hi anon!I think, in the scenario where you are working remote while some of your colleagues are working out of an office, it’s not at all uncommon for you to be remote and feel like things may be happening behind your back, or you're not performing as well as those who are co-located, or you're missing out on something that you should know because you're not in the room. This is a challenge that many companies with partial remote teams try to solve — for their remote teams to feel equally valued, and it's a tough one.It sounds like though, that this anxiety has extended to covid times when, even though no one is actually IN the office, you still feel the same if not worse. I think the continuation of how you felt is important for you to recognize. Rather than being more at ease because everyone is now working from their respective homes, you are not getting that sense of relief.There is A LOT to unpack there — and some starting points I can think of:- do you trust your team at work, and is that trust reciprocated?- do you feel like communication is transparent amongst your team members?- what do you think you will need to feel better about being remote? (eg. is it the actual physicality of being at an office? is it how people talk to each other? how people make decisions? etc.)
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