Symptoms

I started this blog post a while back but then shelved it to move forward - or maybe it's sideways - on the journey.  

Before recovery can begin though ALL the damage has to be in evidence.  Which is also why I feel the legally binding agreement I signed at the company's instigation and the Union vice president's coercion was premature as I agreed that I would not come back on the company for any further damage which might be incurred in the future.

I had no idea that what I was experiencing was not the sum total of the injury/damage.  I had no idea that the body kicks in six months to a year after the acute.

I discovered what I was facing after I returned from the events narrated in the last few posts when I had an appointment with my counsellor.  Walking to her office, I had to reach out and touch the wall for balance.

My counsellor, walking beside me, observed that she'd never seen me like that - and by this time we'd been together through thick and thin for six years.

My counsellor not only is well versed in trauma, but she has been through his own traumatic incidences and times.  She has been through the chronic, physical affects which come after the initial trauma.

She knew from experience what she was looking at that day.

Looking back after almost seven years, it's hard to distinguish the initial symptoms from those which came later after the acute - or critical - phase morphed into the chronic, long term phase.

Initially came the overwhelming sense of depression, of not being good enough.  The high levels of stress I'd been subjected to in the workplace caused stuttering.  Getting words out correctly which has led in the chronic phase to long-term verbal problems and confusions.

In addition to the stuttering, my mind wasn't working well.

I loved to cook.  During my first leave of absence, I would cook.  Hubby would walk in the door, sniff the air and say "It smells like someone sure loves me."

During the second leave of absence, I found I could no longer focus long enough to read cookbooks - especially if they had more than three or so ingredients and a multitude of steps.

There was a cookbook I'd heard about and wanted so instead of buying it, I got it from the library.  When the long anticipated book came in, I opened it up only to discover that there was no way I could figure out how to make any of the dishes.  Too many ingredients.  Too many steps.  Eventually, I had to return it to the library untried.

During that time, I also got the bright idea to maybe take piano lessons again as I had enjoyed playing it before.  I went to a music store and looked at their piano books.  Although I'd been playing piano off and on. mostly off in the last couple of decades, I could not read the music.  The notes made no sense to me.  It was like trying to read Greek.  So I gave up that idea.

This was my condition at the end of the six weeks leave of absence.  I saw the psychiatrist again and he gave me an additional three months.  However, he put my GAF in the 70s even though in reality I was in much worse state than I'd been when he first saw me.  All leaves of absence had to be approved by a third party insurer of the employer's choose.  The third party insurer which the company used advertised as saving their employer, the company, money by cutting back on leaves of absence.  My leave of absence was denied.

The third party insurer said that it had to have objective evidence rather than subjective.  Since there are no concrete tests for GAFs, it's all subjective.

I could appeal - and did.  However, appealing a decision doesn't bump things up to another level, a different set of eyes.  It was handled by the same nurse practitioner who was not a psychiatric nurse.  She denied it a second time although she did offer me half days.  How could I go back to a workplace whixh I no longer worked at?

I believe I should never have been in the position of signing a legally binding document outside the workplace without HR and management present while still on leave.

When I signed away  my rights for further redress that day in the donut shop, I was alert enough to realize that according to the binding union agreement, I had the right to 52 weeks of leave and had had that written into the document I signed.

However, at the same time once I signed that document in reality I had no workplace to return to so when a week or so later, the leave was denied by the third party insurer, I was well and truly euchred.  As far as work-related income was concerned.

All that remained for me was to choose between the two "re"s: Recovery or Revenge.

I chose Recovery.

I still do.

*****

The above explains where I was at at the end of my employment - symptomatically and emotionally.  Also philosophically.

What had been thrown at me and how I had handled it and internalized it.

Where I was coming into the chronic phase.

It is my hope that these posts help both those who have endured workplace bullying, those are currently are enduring it and those who are walking with them to understand what they're friends, relatives and loved ones are going through.