[Everglow.]

Hey, I'm not sure what I'm expecting here but a different perspective might help.

I live in the UK and during the lockdown here we've had a furlough scheme whereby the government have paid 80% of wages while we've been out of work. Which is great because it's meant that for 3 months I haven't had to commute to and from work. On Sunday, my work are having me start again. I work in an opticians so social distancing is hard because we have to take measurements from customers, they're trying frames on all day and I can't avoid coming into contact with people. We're very clean and we sanitize all the time but before lockdown I was washing my hands so often I gave myself a really bad skin irritation which took about 6 weeks to heal and left my hands literally cracking and bleeding. I also found that the last weekend of work before lockdown I couldn't breathe well. I felt constantly panicky, my heartrate was through the roof and I felt like I was suffocating for about 2 weeks straight and it was horrible. Anyone who's seen my blogs and everything know that it was really hard for me and I wasn't coping well at all. Lockdown helped and my anxiety levels went more or less back to normal.

Anyway, because I'm going back to work I'm worried it'll get worse again. I'm going to be at a closer store temporarily so there's less travel involved, but I don't want to get back into that state of mind. Breathing exercises didn't help because it reminded me of how much I felt like I couldn't breathe, and talking didn't seem to do the trick because people have opinions. The only person who really got it, i won't be working with at the other store and she is still on furlough, so I don't have that support network this time.

Sorry, this is longer than I wanted. But basically if anyone has any advice on how I can manage this anxiety I'd appreciate it. I've coped with anxiety for years without much intervention but because of how huge this all is I'm finding this part really hard.

Thanks.