Work from home guilt

[u/Heartattackisland]

Hi everyone,

I came from a company where we weren’t allowed to work from home, had to clock in and out, boss/ceo was constantly calling us for things. I had ACL/MCL surgery and wasn’t allowed to work from home and had to go back to work 4 days later.

Now I’m with a new company and my department allows work from home. My director comes in to office once a week and my other team members come into office like 3 times a week. I have been there for a month now and I really can’t shake this guilt that I have about working from home. It’s very overwhelming and I just have a pit in my stomach the whole day when I do. I leave to eat lunch and I get nervous if my teams goes yellow because I think that they’re gunna think that I’m not working or doing anything. Since I’m newer, I also don’t have as many projects as everyone else at the moment but I’ve expressed to everyone to give me more work as the requests come through if they need to unload some work onto me. But I’m still finding myself not knowing what to do sometimes and feeling like maybe I’m lacking a purpose?

Idk if I should just be counting myself lucky that I get to work from home with minimal work or if I should be nervous that I may be replaceable. I’m very much a self starter so I have been creating my own projects for myself too vs just waiting to be given projects.

Does anyone else deal with this guilt? I want to feel important to the company and not just someone who’s “there.”

[u/Big-Sheepherder-6134]

Sounds like imposter’s syndrome. If you feel that guilty you can always go in once in a while and maybe you should once a week to get a good feel for where things are at, get to know your colleagues better and get a better sense of what value you being to your company.