How to cope with severe anxiety at a new job?

Advice

I started a new job nearly 2 months ago as a Customer Service Specialist for an Education and Assessment company. It wasn’t my ideal position, but I saw it as a gateway to an industry I care about. Initially I thought I could handle it because my diagnosed social anxiety felt manageable even without medication, but as soon as I started, everything spiraled.

The fear of disappointing people is constant. Now that I’m finally doing live calls, it’s reached a point where I can’t even eat properly because my body is rejecting food. I feel a sense of dread every single day even if my calls actually go well. I’m nauseous at work, and when I make mistakes, I take it out so harshly on myself that I’ve even relapsed on self-harming.

I have zero background in live calls since I only did email and chat before, and I feel so incompetent compared to the other newbies who seem to be keeping up just fine. It doesn’t help that the product is so vast that I’m struggling to remember anything, and my manager can be very inconsistent with their moods. Whenever I screw up and people find out, I just feel like a total burden.

I ended up booking an emergency session with my therapist to stabilize myself, and I'm waiting to hear back from my psychiatrist about going back on my meds. I just don’t know what to do because I really need this job and I don't want to give up this early, but I’m dreading work tomorrow so much that I feel sick. Has anyone else felt this way in a new role? How do you keep going when you feel this weak and overwhelmed?

Posted Mar 8, 2026, 1:13 PM UTC

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