It was not quite ten years ago we had an enormously stressful year and at the end of it, I was so stressed out I threw up when it was time to go to work. My stomach hurt, I couldn't eat, woke up at 3 am every night. I was able to get out of that job-- my first postdoc experience-- and started playing postdoc roulette, a couple years in one lab and then another. Postdoc positions are inherently horrible and unstable and I had more than one experience that triggered that same stress reaction.

Now I'm finally in my first real job and much happier and I thought maybe I wouldn't have to deal with that again, at least not related to work. I'm almost at the end of my 2nd year here.

I had a meeting with my boss yesterday and he is concerned about my productivity. That sent me headlong into as bad a stress reaction as I can remember except for that first one.

I'm pretty sure it's not that bad, I have another meeting with him tomorrow afternoon, and I think it's just a matter of I haven't been selling myself well enough and there's been some miscommunication (intentional or accidental from somewhere; I have my suspicions). And even if it is "worst case" I still have a year on my contract and we have plenty of time to find something else. (Moving again would suck a lot.)

But that doesn't seem to matter...I have this horrible stress reaction.

What I want to know is, it seems I somehow learned this reaction a decade ago. Is there any way to unlearn it? It's horrible. I've done nothing wrong to deserve sleepless nights not to mention the throwing up and stomach pain and of course the crying. It's not like it accomplishes anything, why on earth do our bodies do this to us? What evolutionary advantage could this possibly have??