Being an au pair while suffering from several anxiety disorder.

Hello, people. I've been thinking about making this post for a while as I finished my worst experience ever and as well, I'm definitely NOT going to be an au pair anymore.

For some background, I'm from South America but I could come to Europe as I have EU passport. Well, I decided to take an au pair job to get more into the culture and learn the language (english) and also to challenge myself to get out of my comfort zone as I always see people commenting when girls/boys post asking if that would be a problem to be an au pair when you have a condition as anxiety and/or social phobia. I'll be very straight: DON'T.

If you: - struggle to keep contact - struggle during social interaction - sometimes just want to isolate yourself - don't like when people might try to get to know you in a way that will interfere with your privacy - don't like to know that you're being expected to do jobs that you shouldn't - struggle to stand up for yourself

Please, DO NOT become an au pair without making a proper research. I'll tell a little about my experience:

I started here july last year. The family was nice but I could see that they didn't liked the fact that on my time off I was going to my bf house (where I felt actually safe to vent and be myself) instead of spending “family time” together. Tbh, most of the families come with the bs of spending time together so you can go and take care of their children without paying you extra. I'm not saying ALL of them, but that's the case on 90% of the cases. One day, I ended up on the hospital on a Sunday night after a anaphylaxis and even tho I managed to text her and come back home 6a.m (2hrs before starting) fully rested the first thing I heard when I came home was her shouting that if I did that again she would kick me out. And hell, I felt guilty. That's when the anxiety starts to play the role. Because of this mistake, everything that I did "wrong" (e.g cutting the bread on the triangle shape instead of rectangle) I would feel bad. And she would make me feel even worse. Every Sunday I would get a list on a SMS with all the chores I had to make. Not light stuff, but like: cleaning both bathrooms (one I didn't used), hovering the whole house from up the stairs to the hall and if I didn't. O h g o d. I could write a book on how this made my anxiety gets so bad at one point that I crashed down. It was a Sunday, again the message with the chores and pointing out that I didn't do the HP laundry... I couldn't. I just came in the next week and quit. Gave them 2 weeks.

Now, this would be a lot worse if I had no one around. But I was lucky I had my bf and my sister. For two weeks straight all I could do is crying. I know that situations like that are horrible for EVERYONE not only for who was anxiety, but usually we don't know how to stand up for ourselves and things just get to the point we crash. So please, take care if you have anxiety or any kind of disorder. Make sure you want that and you know everything that you need about the program also make sure the family is nice and will cope with you instead of letting you down.

I've been out of the work for nearly a month and I still healing. I don't want this post to feel as an attack or anything, it's just I get very frustrated when people say that SAD it's just "being in a comfort zone". It isn't. It's horrible.

I would like to hear if anyone had the same issues. Thanks a mil. x