Post Workplace Abuse: Life Goes On

Life goes one.  Whether you are struggling with cancer, post workplace abuse, whatever, life goes on.

It never stops.

Adding this to the mix.  Maybe subtracting that.

But always, it goes on.

For me, in my journey, life going on has included the last birthday and six weeks later the death of my mother, almost exactly a year ago.

Also the long anticipated wedding of my nephew lsat year.

Throw in our entire nuclear family's birthdays and anniversary plus a long road trip to bury my mom (and back again), you've got quite a scenario.

Many stressors all converging in one small slice of time.

As I struggled through that six week period, some events good, some bad, all stressful especially to a body already overwhelmed with stress affects, it became a pivotal point or milestone in my journey.

A point where the rubber met the road.

A point where God somehow gave me the grace and strength to make it through that slice of time.

Yet, after all was said and done.  The wedding, the death, the burial and I was back home, all the feelings I'd set aside, all the grief, all the tiredness came pouring back in like a flood that could not/would not be stopped.

I was like an electrical grid that got completely overwhelmed and overloaded with too much demand and too little supply.

Much of the months after that slice of time I simply don't remember.

I remember bits and pieces.  Certain events.  Most certainly I remember the day I broke my wrist.  I remember our Canadian Thanksgiving where I tried to shop for supplies needed for the meal and was so overwhelmed that I had to call my daughter on my cell phone to talk me through.  I remember feeling so exhausted that I could not even think of Christmas.  So we had a "Charlie Brown" christmas.  I bought a "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree, we had a bonfire on Christmas Even, sat around and enjoyed Christmas DVD's on Christmas day.  Nothing to get up in the middle of the night about.  Low-keyed.  But enjoyable nonetheless.

But for the most part, each day melded into the next in a sameness of grey.  Overwhelming fatigue.  Affects that mimicked brain injury.  Not being able to think, to talk accurately.  Being out in public was difficult as sometimes I was so overwhelmed I could not even choose what drink I wanted.  My daughter would thankfully intervene and choose for me.  But I've never forgotten the looks on people's face when that happened.  How they would suddenly look down.  Stop interacting with me totally.  The perception was that I was mentally deficient.  That hurt.  That hurt a lot.

Fear, especially of people, became overwhelming.

I stayed home, for the most part alone as my husband had to work.

In fact, not only did I stay mostly at home, but within the house I was comfortable only in two rooms:  my bedroom and what we call "the office": the computer cum knitting/craft room.

My world shrunk.

Now, a year later, I still struggle with the after effects of not only that time in my life when life so rudely interrupted the recovery process from workplace abuse, but I also struggle with all the added injuries/affects from that time.

Yet, life goes on.

Recovery goes on.

And I've found that life, even life altered by unpredictable events, can still be good.

Different, to be sure.

But still good.

Trauma ... The Cancer of the Emotions

This posting was written months ago but never finished and posted.  I never found a place where it really fit.  However, it seems to fit in here as we begin the series on post workplace abuse.  How getting out of the workplace is not the end.  It is rather a new beginning.  For me it was the beginning of an eighteen month tour through the desert:  the wasteland of emotions; undiagnosed and untreated trauma, people who genuinely cared but had no knowledge of what was happening and therefore had trouble relating.  The trauma would not go away, it intensified as the days, weeks and months went on. A year passed.  No healing. Rather further trauma ensued. 

Travelling to Myrtle Beach in 2008 years after the first abusive workplace situation ended and recovery had finally begun, I saw a billboard about depression which said:  "you'll never hear anyone say:  You just have cancer, get over it."

So true.

At that point, I thought of it in vague, uninvolved, generic terms.

The workplace abuse in the second workplace, the exclusion, the isolation had already started but had yet to really impact me adversely.

I was in a relatively good place in my life at that time.

A place comprised of lots of emotions completely unrelated to trauma.  A place of recovery in the journey which began in childhood with an angry parent who lashed out continually.  A journey which wandered through the Riots of '70 on a university campus.  A roommate who would have attacked me - if I hadn't shut and locked the door in time.  Date rape.  Depression.  Breakdowns.  Depression.  Good times that didn't last.  Depression

And then I found an amazing counsellor in late 2006, and we entered on an amazing journey of recovery that is still on-going.

As in all journeys, the journey of recovery has many different phases, side trips.  The difference between the journey of recovery and a road trip is that there is no definite end destination.  We can never fully say that we have arrived.  And usually there are no photographs to mark the moment in our personal history.

In my journey, at the time I saw that sign, I was in a good place.  A place where I was finally feeling comfortable in my own body.  

I was naive, though.  I thought that all the past junk was ... well ... in the past.  And would stay that way.

What I didn't know is that new traumas, new challenges awaited ahead a me - a few turns around the bend.

Depression?  In my naivety I thought it was gone - for good.

I also thought that the comment about cancer was just an advertising tool.  A way to get the point across.

What I didn't realize was that some people actually feel that depression, trauma, etc. are not diseases.  They are not the same as cancer.  They are not fatal.  They don't kill.

Until ...

Until someone actually said to me last year as I was working through all the debilitating and challenging physical and emotional affects from the second abusive workplace situation:  "After all, you don't have cancer."

Which brought back from the recesses of my memory, that sign. 

Now I understood what it meant.

I understood the reality of how "other" people, non-traumatized people, perceive us.

Why they don't support us, walk with us.

Trauma is not a physical disease.  There are no cures for it.  No chemo.  No radiation.  No real diagnoses.

It is in the mind.

No matter that trauma can and does affect the body.

No matter that trauma can and does cause chaos in the brain - mimicking concussions or other brain injuries.

No matter that trauma leaves us alone in the midst of people.

Not because these people are not good people.

But because they simply do not understand.

Trauma is the cancer of the emotions.  Left untreated it does not go away.  It takes over more and more of the victim's thoughts and behaviours.

This was the situation I was thrust into when I was walked out the door from the first abusive workplace situation.  I was thrust into the world of trauma.  A world I had no idea that I had just entered.  A world no one around me understood.  We were all clueless.  And because we were all clueless, support - for the most part - wasn't there.  And the cancer of trauma metastasized until it almost destroyed my life. 

Although this post was written during a period several years after the first abusive workplace situation during the period of recovery, I feel it is important to include it as a foundational block on what trauma is and how things degenerated badly during this eighteen month period between being walked out the door and finding a competent therapist who understood trauma and was willing to walk with me and provide a safe place for me to work through all the emotions which were assaulting me.

Words/Labels

I've learned a lot of new words as I've walked through this period of my life.  My favorite being the euphemism "in transition".  In plain language:  unemployed.  But hey! it sounds positive, so let's go for it!

No purpose for this picture - except to brighten your reading pleasure

And while we're at it:  I was not fired, I was terminated - or dismissed.  Two euphemisms for the price of one.

Words to make something unpalatable look, sound or feel better.

While we're at it, there are other terms, not euphemisms, which I've recently learned which describe my situation:  stress breakdown, psychiatric injury, hypervigilence, reactive depression, complex PTSD - to name a few.

Then there's the terms the original specialist (another euphemism - this one for psychiatrist) used to diagnose my condition during the crisis phase from the stressful situation:  bi-polar disorder and mixed personality disorder.

Words.  Labels.  In our world, in our minds, we need to put things into neat, little boxes and label them.  We want the world to make sense.  We want everything to fall into order.

In short we want to make things that we cannot understand, understandable.

We want to make sense out of the senseless.  Put order into the disordered.

As I walk through this journey of recovery, I keep trying to make sense of the non-sensical.  I want the why questions to be answered.  But there are no answers.  None that can take away the pain anyway.

If I'm to be labelled by those involved in the former stressful situation, by the medical community, by those who faithfully walk with and beside me and, ultimately, by myself, I would pick the terms stress breakdown, psychiatric injury and reactive depression to describe what happened to me as a result of the severely stressful situation, where I'm at now and what I'm recovering from.  What I'm dealing with on a daily basis.  These terms are for conditions which are not mental illnesses.  Rather, they are cause and effect situations.  Cause (severely stressful situation) = Effect (stress breakdown, psychiatric injury, et al).  Simple.  And they don't have the negative connotations of bi-polar, etc.  Ironically, I never had the symptoms of bi-polar.

Yet these conditions are not always that easy to recognize.  Especially when one is in an overtaxed, overused and understaffed medical system.  Where it takes months to see a specialist and then the specialist is so overburdened and overworked that he spends as little time with the patient as it takes to "diagnose" the problem and prescribe medication.

So it all boils down to words.  Semantics.  Sometimes euphemisms.  Assumptions.  Perceptions.  Based on who we are, how we think.

This is an interesting blog for me because as I write it, my mind wanders all over the map.  Never staying at one place or one topic for long.  In short, it mirrors the path I've been walking through since early 2011.  All over the map.   Never in one place, at once thought, for long.  Always changing.  As research uncovers something else.  As therapy progresses.  As life events unfold and intrude - sometimes like a bomb exploding and causing re-injury to the fragile soul.  Always changing.

An "all-over-the-map-journey".  Kind of like a round the world trip - except you don't get to board a plane or boat and go to exotic locales.

The On-going Journey Towards Recovery

After coping with and learning from a bad experience which lasted over four years, I finally hit the brick wall.  I could no longer go on.  I realized the futility of even trying.  I had a stress breakdown.  I suffered psychiatric injury.  Now, a year or so later, I cope daily with the physical affects of latent stress on a daily basis.

My on-going journey comes with no easy, 1-2-3 instructions for healing.  It's a progressive, in-my-face, daily journey.

As far as depression goes, there are two theories for healing.  One is to do absolutely nothing.  Lie in bed all day if you want to.  Play solitaire in your room if you want to.   Etc.  The other theory is to try to keep to life as normal as possible.  Wake up at the usual time.  Perform the usual tasks.  Do the usual activities.

I always ascribed to the second theory.  Until I hit the brick wall this past fall - about six months or more after the original stress breakdown.

At the time, I was cognizant that I'd had a breakdown of sorts.

Stress breakdowns, psychiatric injury, reactive depression, complex PTSD do not come with manuals.  There are no simple instructions to follow.  No magic wands to wave.  No pills to make it all better.   To make it go away.

Does this mean there is no hope for the victim?  Recovery not possible?

No!

It simply means that each victim's path is unique to that individual.  Only with strong support can the individual even hope to make it through.

With a nightmare, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Waking up.  With a horror story, there is no tunnel.  No light at the end of it.  It's more like a quagmire in which the victim is sinking deeper and deeper.  Past the ankles.  Making walking hard.  The quagmire appears endless.  Totally engulfing.  Hope is in short supply.

I remember a moment in an Olympic games many years ago which has stood out in my memory.  An athlete had sustained an injury but was determined to run again.  He started off with the others.  All eyes on him.  Running.  Would he make it?  Would he complete the race?  At first, it seemed like he would.  Then he fell.  He picked himself up.  Tried again.  Fell again.  Picked himself up.  Could no longer run.  Tried walking.  Determined to cross the finish line.  His face showed both his struggle and his determination.  His father and his coach witnessed this man, picking himself up.  Saw his determination.  First one, then the other, left the sidelines and approached the runner.  The father on one side.  The coach on the other. Their arms around the athlete, the three completed the race and crossed the finish line.  Not the way he wanted to.  Not on a sprint, arms waving in the arm, huge smile on his face to cheers of adulation.  Yet, he attained a greater victory.  By not giving up.  By continuing on in the face of great adversity.

From here my (deranged) mind flits to a more recent memory of a man I've never met nor talked to.  Whose name I don't know.  Yet as he ran past me on a beach a few years ago, he created an indelible imprint in my mind.  A jogger.  There are many of those on the beach.  What caused this one jogger to impact me so much?  The answer.  He was running with a prosthesis.  To me, he has become a visual image for me to keep on.  To face the challenges.  To continue on the race.  It can be done.


This is you and me, my fellow journeyer, on the path of recovery.  We can do this.

Instructions Not Included

Ever tried to assemble something?  Looking at 52 pages of small print instructions - in the dark of night with only a flashlight for illumination?  A flashlight with weak batteries.  Add a strong wind which blows the sheets of paper about like leaves in the fall.  The letters swim about on the paper changing shape and form.  For all the good, they're doing, they could be written in another script entirely.

A nightmare?  Your worst nightmare?

You ask yourself:  Is this a dream or is it real?  Am I going to wake up from this?

In my experience with trauma, especially the latest trauma in 2011, I learned the difference between a nightmare and a horror story.  A nightmare you wake up from.  Horror you don't.

Most importantly, I learned that recovery from severe stress, etc. does not come with any instructions.  No doctor, no counsellor can give you exact directions to follow to get well.  There are too many variables in the equation.  In fact, in my journey, I've been the one researching, problem-solving, describing symptoms to my health care team.  It's been a trial and error process.

I've been blessed that my counsellor not only is well-versed in trauma but has experienced it in her own life, thus enabling her to walk beside me step by painful step.  It was my counsellor who first described my experience as "horror" and suggested that until I faced the horror, it would not magically go away.  It was my counsellor who told me a piece of her journey through trauma and how she learned that after the acute phase settles, the physical body starts to act up some six to 12 months after the trauma.  It was my counsellor who give me a huge piece of wisdom:  when the victim is experiencing both emotional and physical symptoms, taking care of the physical symptoms comes first.

Even then she couldn't tell me what to do.  She could only support me as I stumbled and bumbled my way through the morass.  She could - and did - provide a safe place for me to tell my story - over and over again from this viewpoint and from that viewpoint - ad nauseum and to work through all the complications of recovery from severe stress and trauma.

My doctor, likewise, has provided a support system through regularly following up with me re: medications, emotions, etc.

Both have provided a lifeline.

Both have allowed me to direct my own journey towards healing.

Both have affirmed me as a human being in this journey.

Both have helped restore my sense of self worth, that there really is some value left in this old bear, by repeatedly affirming the conclusions I am drawing and the way I'm directing my healing journey.

Recovery doesn't come with easy instructions.

But it is possible.

I'll be exploring this issue of recovery minus instructions in later posts.  Until then, keep reading and keep healing.