u/Wonderful-Detail5923

I just got a lifeguarding job a couple of weeks ago, at the beginning of the summer. I work 10 hour shifts and I really enjoy it, especially on slow days. I’ve worked 90+ hours so far and I feel like I have the hang of it. I’ve technically passed my audits, though on my second audit I took much too long to spot the shadow in the pool. Almost three minutes, since it was in my blind spot. But now I know to check there more thoroughly and we are having an inservice soon.

I’m just scared as hell for the fourth of July. We will most likely reach capacity considering I’m in a southern state so it’s going to be very hot and it’s a Saturday, and I’m afraid to guard a busy pool. I’ve guarded when it’s somewhat busy before, but not compared to how the fourth is going to be. I’ve guarded maybe 40 people at one time. Everything in me just wants to quit and I can’t shake this feeling that someone is going to die under my watch and the rest of my life will be ruined. The pressure feels so intense, and all my coworkers just act like it’s going to be inconvenient. When to me it feels like the end of the world…not just because it’s going to be harder than a normal day but I feel like it’s also exponentially more dangerous. It doesn’t help that I had my first save on my first day. Luckily I haven’t had to jump in since then but I’ve been extremely anxious guarding the area it happened since. And that’s where most of our saves occur.

How do I get over this and just focus on doing my job well? I also want to be an EMT, and I want to be able to perform well under pressure. Though at least with an EMT job you know you will be performing life saving care, whereas being a lifeguard feels like just waiting for something terrible to happen while everyone is just having fun. It’s like constant dread which is one of the worst feelings in the world.

Hi!

I’m going to be vegan and I was wondering if anyone else in this sub has OCD and how they deal with it in relation to veganism.

I’ve learned a lot on here like avoiding honey and obviously how the dairy industry is just as bad if not worse than the meat industry. Which is why I’m going vegan. But there’s also a lot of gatekeeping of even being able to call yourself a vegan if you’re not perfect. This is the kind of thing OCD latches onto and I’ve been eating vegan for ONE DAY and the amount of times I’ve checked ingredients is already annoying.

Part of having OCD is checking and it’s really bothersome when I can’t just trust that something is vegan because I’ve already checked 1000 times. I also keep looking up very dumb things like is pepper vegan or is salt vegan etc. Which obviously it is but for some reason my brain won’t believe it.

Also some things I really can’t accommodate. Like, I can’t use vegan toilet paper. I live with my family and we are broke so we get our toilet paper and other hygiene items for free from our local food shelf. There’s not a lot of options. Some things like this make me think I won’t be fully vegan, so why call myself a vegan, so why try at all. Which is dumb.

Anyways I’m not making excuses to not be vegan, I’m 100% going vegan, but I was just wondering if anyone on here has tips for not overthinking it?

Also—if anyone’s advice is ‘talk to your therapist’ yes I will do that!! I just wanted some tips from people with first hand experience.