Post Workplace Abuse: Friends - The Importance of Healthy Relationships

Where are we now in our journey through surviving and recovering from workplace abuse?  I almost feel like we're back at the Head of Trails pictured here at Cypress Lake National Park, Tobermory, Ontario.  The main, most popular, trail leads to the Grotto where there are steep cliffs and good swimming.  However, there are many side trails available to walk - some longer than others, some which reconnect to the main trail and some which don't.

I've noticed that on the road to recovery, I might be following many paths all at the same time.  The main one being the on-going focus on recovery.  However, as I've mentioned before, workplace abuse and, therefore, its many affects is complicated.  It affects many areas of our lives concurrently, and I end up working on all of these areas in give or take the same time frame, although not all with the same intensity.

Currently, in my daily journey towards recovery I am actively working on debunking the lies of "perceptions and assumptions" while at the same time working on socialization i.e. relationships.

So today, we're taking a "side trip" into a path that has cropped up lately in my journey and which is causing me to do a lot of analyzing and thinking.

The path of friends and relationships.  Healthy relationships.  What do they look like?  Is everyone a candidate?

So today, we take a side trip into another part of the story.

*******

Lately my thoughts have been turning to friends. Not specific people though.  But what that kind of relationship looks like.  What it's all about.  Especially among adults.  I mean we're no longer children here.  In my 60s I'm not going to have the same kinds of relationships I had in my early childhood years.  Nor will it resemble those I had - or rather didn't have - in my adolescent or even university years.  "Mature" people need mature relationships.

In my journey through my two experiences with workplace abuse, I abruptly lost two sets of relationships which, at that time, were very important to me:  first, when my contract ended at the first bullying situation and I was escorted out the door; second,when I threw my Bible on the floor of the church library and incurred the wrath of our senior pastor.  Because of his anger, I didn't feel I could return.  In neither situation, did anyone feel that they could contact me.  So at two times when I needed relationships the most, they simply weren't there (except of course for my family - and that's a whole other side trip).

Wait a minute, you might say.  What about three sets of important relationships?  What about your most recent experience with workplace abuse? Didn't you lose contact abruptly with those people too?

The answer is yes, I did lose contact with those people in that now former workplace.  But the answer is also, no, because I held myself aloof from those people after my first workplace abuse experience ended so abruptly and badly.  I did not allow myself to get close to these people.

Why?

Because I didn't want to be hurt again.  Because I think part of me realized that these people might well be another "transient" population in my life journey.  And also, because like the situation before, this one was not permanent - at least originally.  I was on a maternity leave contract.

In the first situation, I wanted desperately a full-time, permanent position, and my employers kept holding out the proverbial carrot attached to a stick which kept being just out of my reach.  Unfortunately, hubby and I realized after the fact that the stick with the carrot had been attached to my tail so to speak, so it would always be the same elusive length head of me and it would never be possible for me to catch it.

I realized that way too late.

So, this time I went into a temporary situation with a completely different mindset.  I would do my best to keep this position operating efficiently so that this person, on her return, would have a well-running desk to return to.  I didn't allow myself to even think of this position becoming permanent UNTIL the woman whose position I was filling took on a different job within the company.  At which time, the maternity leave vacancy became null and void and I was either going to be out of a job immediately or hired to fill the vacancy.

I got the vacancy and being a permanent member of the team.

BUT, the damage, the hurt, the sense of violation from the first experience was still very raw.  Still completely unhealed.  I was walking through a desert experience.  A dry and thirsty land where there was no water, no understanding of what I'd been through and, therefore, no understanding of why I wasn't able to "let go" of the experience, why it was still with me every minute, every hour, every day of my waking life from the very first moment I opened my eyes in the morning until the last moment at night when sleep finally - with great difficulty - claimed me.

Because none of us really realized that that experience constituted workplace bullying aka workplace abuse, none of us realized the impact of trauma and PTSD.  The damage.  The injury.  Not even the therapist I was seeing at that time.  Especially not her as she became abusive.  She not only had no understanding of what PTSD was, which meant that she also had no background in trauma, she felt that even if I did have PTSD it would not change the dynamics of her therapy model.

Thus, she not only didn't help me, couldn't help me, but she damaged me further.

This is not to say that I didn't have people around me, but I built such a wall around my emotions, that all my interactions were kept at arm's length.  I may have had quite a few acquaintances, but I had no real friends.

It was not until I discovered my new therapist, that the on-going journey of recovery began.

*******

It looks like the deranged mind has rambled, hopefully temporarily, onto a side path that will at some point reconnect to the main path of trauma and how ignorance of trauma hinders those who are attempting to walk with the survivor (or victim) of workplace abuse.  

Until the below collection of physical trails in a Canadian national park which are neatly laid out, those trails the survivor of workplace abuse follows are not neatly laid out and whereas physically, it is only possible to access one trail at a time, emotionally us survivors may be working on any numbers of "trails" at any given time concurrently.

Looking closer in relationships has been a huge part of my journey in the last few months which is why I'm turning aside on this blog for a short time, to look at it a bit more closer.

I have a feeling we'll be jumping back and forth between relationships, perceptions and assumptions i.e. lies and trauma quite a bit in the posts to come.

Until tomorrow ....

Post Workplace Abuse: The Significance of Trauma in our Lives and our Recoveries

There are quite a few possible postings waiting, not so patiently in my mind, to be explored after writing my last posting about the visit by the church staff member. 

The two most pressing issues are:  trauma and continuity.  Both of which not only played a large part in what happened in my safe room that day but in my journey towards recovery.  

Of course, there are always perceptions and assumptions.  If you don't understand the role trauma plays in a person's entire life - in my case post workplace abuse - you simply will have no idea where the person is coming from, why they say the things they do and why they act the way they do.

*******

 As I've said before, I love H. Norman Wright's book, Helping those Who Hurt:  Compassionate and Practical Ways to Offer Comfort, because he writes in language which everyone can understand.  Because he knows what he's talking about.  Because he doesn't preach.  He simply explains.  You don't have to by a psychologist or psychiatrist to understand what he is saying.  This particular book which I bought early on in what I now call Phase I of my recovery process - after the first episode of workplace where trauma ate at me like a cancer because it was undiagnosed and, therefore, untreated - has been invaluable in my recovery process.  I call it my "Bible".

So today, looking into trauma I will let Mr. Wright do most of the speaking.

H. Norman Wright writes:

Trauma has many effects.  It shatters our beliefs and assumptions about life, challenges our belief that we have the ability to handle life, and tears apart our belief that the world is a just and orderly place to live.  That's quite dramatic, isn't it?  Whether it's your friend or you, here is what to expect:   

Trauma leads to silence: I don't have the words to describe it.

Trauma leads to isolation:  No one seems to understand or enters into the experience I had.

Trauma leads to feelings of hopelessness:  There was no way to stop what happened or the memories of what happened.  (chapter 7, pg. 75).

And this is just for starters.

In chapter 6, pg. 70, he goes on to write under a subheading called "What's Trauma Like?"

What we used to see as a safe world is no longer safe.  What we used to see as a predictable world is no longer predictable.  

Before I make any comments about either of the two quotes above, I'm going to add one more which I feel is pertinent to understanding trauma and it's impact on the victim.

Perhaps not as obvious is the emotional wounding caused by trauma.  Our psyche can be so assaulted that our beliefs about ourselves, our life, our will to grow, our spirit, our dignity, and our sense of security are damaged.  ... In trauma they have difficulty bouncing back because they feel derealization (Is this really happening?) and depersonalization (I don't know what I really stand for anymore). (chapter 6, page 71).

Bingo.  Bingo.  And bingo.

All three of these quotes reverberate at the very core of my essence.

My beliefs and assumptions about life, especially about life being fair and orderly, were ripped apart in the workplace by four years of escalating bullying.  By four years of increasingly being put on the proverbial hot seat for everything I said or did.  Even my beliefs, i.e. being a Christian, were called into question and ridiculed.

At the end, my co-workers were running to the supervisor consistently with frivolous complaints such as saying hello to a co-worker (I kid you not, it really happened and I got grilled for two hours about that one), telling a co-worker who was standing in the middle of our small office, talking loudly and over me and waving her arms "I'm sorry, you hurt me.  I'm sorry.  Good-bye." As I then walked out of the office after my shift was done.  I got a phone call at 8:21 the next morning inquiring about that one.  By the time I walked into the workplace later that day, it had already gone to HR. (That resulted in my first stress breakdown.)  What?  And then there was the trainee who decided she didn't want to be trained and ran towards the supervisor's office because I had simply told her that we didn't do something she was doing.  The supervisor had already gone home for the day, but I knew how this was going to play out from previous experiences.  The supervisor felt that I was the problem.  I was in error.  She had already asked me such questions as:  "How do you think I feel when I come in to an email like this?" (referring to the email from the co-worker who was waving her arms and talking loudly.)

How does she, i.e. my supervisor, feel?  Is that really the question here, how she feels?

I don't think in hindsight that that was the real question here.  The better question would be how do I, the accused, feel about these complaints.  This consistent barrage?  How do I feel when a co-worker accuses me of disrespect when I say hello?  And, more importantly, why does she feel that she can do that?

My world, my beliefs, were shaken to the core by these events and many more.  My world was no longer a safe place.  Certainly, my work situation was not safe for me.  My subsequent actions, my thoughts, reflected that.

I had always felt that if you treated others respectfully, they would treat you respectfully.

Not true.  Not in this workplace.

And there is more.  Much more.

But for now, I will stop and let you chew on what I've written today.

*******

Emotional trauma is real.  It's not like physical trauma where you can see the injuries, the blood, etc.  But it's there.  Hiding inside.  Invisible to the naked eye.  But there.  Real to the person who has experienced the trauma.  

Recovery from trauma takes time.  It takes effort.  It takes energy.  It takes people walking alongside you to hold up your leaning side.

Most of all, it takes knowledge about trauma and its affects/effects to be able to work through and walk through all the things trauma has thrown at you.

If only ... the staff member from my church had brushed up on what trauma is and what it does, she could have been more understanding, more empathetic and, most importantly, helpful.

Until tomorrow when we take another step ... or maybe even two ... on the journey home from workplace abuse.