Recovery Post Workplace Abuse: Ground Zero

The immediate aftermath of workplace abuse leaves the target/victim at their own emotional ground zero.  Everything around them is in rubble.  Destroyed.  Everything looks black and bleak from an emotional perspective.

I learned the hard way that there are stages post workplace abuse.

Heck!  I think I learned everything the hard way!

Having never gone through this before, recovery post workplace abuse - in fact the whole experience of workplace abuse - has been a learning experience.  One in which the learning curve goes straight up.  I've learned through trial and error.  I've learned through researching workplace bullying on the net.  I've learned through being open and sharing my experiences with others and having others share some of their experiences with me.  I've learned and grown through walking with an amazing therapist who is well versed in trauma and has gone through her own traumas.  Ironically, this woman has shared with me that she's learned more about trauma walking with me through my own experience!

As I start this post - and perhaps other related posts - please bear in mind that nothing is set in stone.  No two experiences are identical.  However, there are generalities.  Those I think are worth sharing with others who may be going through this themselves or have a friend/relative who is going through workplace abuse, post workplace abuse, PTSD and trauma.

First there was the immediate acute state.  With me, in workplace abuse situation #2, that was two back to back stress breakdowns.  The abuse had been increasingly escalating for four years.  At the end it was brutal walking into the work environment.  Rumours fuelled by gossip ran amok.  Spread and encouraged by one.  Believed by many.  At the end, no one on all three shifts would talk to me.  The virus had spread that far.

It didn't matter how much I used by analytical side and researched the matter of workplace bullying, what it is, how it manifests itself, etc.  It didn't matter how much I tried to resolve things. It didn't matter what I did or didn't do, all attempts to reconcile and rebuild good relationships were rebuffed and, therefore, failed.  I remember bringing in a coffee for one of the "cluster" of bullies in my office, on my shift.  She wouldn't even touch it.  It stayed on a shelf immediately by her work station the entire shift.  It takes two to solve a problem, and the other half wasn't willing.

All of my former abilities and work performance didn't matter.  All that mattered was this uncontrolled rampant gossip.

It was frustrating.

I felt voiceless, faceless, powerless.

The stress symptoms manifested themselves in depression, stuttering, lack of attention span, loss of concentration causing mistakes in the workplace which were then duly reported by the offenders i.e. bullies to management.

*****

I was going to go further in this post and describe the incident immediately preceding stress breakdown #1; however, I think I've gone far enough for one day.  For one post.