Work after Trauma

Being expected to thrive on days you can barely survive. My alarm goes off, my eyes are puffy, my head is pounding. To say I was sleep deprived would be quite the understatement. I need to call in sick to work, and I know it, but I also know there is no one to cover me, and there will be consequences. I can’t afford to lose my job. So I get ready the best that I can with tears still welling up in my eyes.

I’m just trying to be here. A lifetime process, I was having trouble expressing my needs and life in general (at times) so I can’t control my emotional natures when a memory comes up, PTSD is triggered, and other mental health related issues arise.

Why does it have to become hard to make a living due to occasionally having to miss work as a result brought on by this mental, emotional manic low that this event has caused? Now I have a feeling of uselessness. I am full of fear that I am being judged, looked down on and even talked about by my co-workers and even higher ups.

What if I just showed up and told my boss what was happening with me? That I was awoken In the middle of the night due to a dream I was having about my baby boy who had died seven years earlier and that the pain I felt in my heart was unbearable and that my mental health was at its worst. Enter manic low. I make it to work. It literally took all that I had, and it is a miracle in its own right. I walk in with red eyes and tears still streaming - instantly being looked at funny. I tried to explain to my boss without losing it. I was unsympathetically told if you can’t find your own coverage you need to stay and finish your shift or it will be a write up, so I brokenheartedly worked that day. My boss barely made eye contact with me the entire rest of the day - out of sight, out of mind, right? I hold everything in because I don’t want to tell people how I feel, and they have made it clear that they really don’t care.

Would it still be this way if they knew my story? It begins like this…I was born on July 23, 1974. I had an older Sister and an older Brother. I had a happy home life. My Father, a timber faller, and my Mother, a teacher's aide. When I was just three years old, my family went through the biggest tragedy imaginable. My Brother was kidnapped out of the back of my Dad’s truck, held captive and then murdered. His body was missing for 6 months, and he was only 6 years old. That day ruined my life and my family forever. Enter first trauma.

What if I told you my Mom’s new boyfriend abused me horribly and he beat me constantly? I am now 11 years old, and I start burning and carving on myself as well as sharpening my pencil and stabbing myself in the stomach during class to just relieve some of the pain. Enter trauma # 2.

Would they be sympathetic if they knew at age 13 I was sexually assaulted and my virginity taken? Enter trauma #3.

What if I told them I am a three-time domestic violence survivor and was beaten for years? Enter trauma #4.

Now to talk about the worst. What if I told them that at age 40 I finally got pregnant and had my miracle baby. A baby boy named Waylon James, and he died, crushing my world, crushing my soul. My baby gone, Why, Why?

Starting to see a pattern here? People go through traumatic events in their lives, some more than others and these are just my main ones. Just because you think someone who looks and acts all put together have not been through much trauma or “have it made,” you’re horribly wrong. You don’t know people’s stories!!! Period.

Do people think I chose these events that have led to such substantial mental health? No more than people choose a broken leg or a cold.

Every day since I got clean and sober on March 19, 2020, I get up, I go to work, I go to school, I run a recovery home, and so much more. I am happy, and most days are good, but there are days I have manic highs and manic lows. There are birthdays and death dates of my precious people in my life that make life unbearable when they come.

And then there is the physical part. I survived stage 3 Hodgkins Lymphoma and after 2 years of chemo, it still takes a toll on my body to this day. So now we are both dealing with both mental and physical problems.

Despite all of this, I smile when I am out and about, I lend an ear when someone needs one, and I offer concern to my co-workers. And when I am in charge, I take their mental health into consideration and let them go home with no consequences to them because I know first hand what they are going through. And these incidents happen daily in the workplace.

So in one incident, there was this beautiful soul, much younger than myself and new to the workforce who also suffers mental health very similar to mine. On this day she was having an episode or moment with her mental health. She feels comfortable enough to come to me, which I am grateful for. With tears welled up in her eyes, she asks me to go home, it is an immediate yes from me. She is so grateful, and I am so grateful that I can be that person for her. So my boss comes in a bit later and asks, why did you send, we will call her Jane, home? I said she was having a mental health moment, and she replies, well, don’t we all. I say to myself. She says, well, ask next time. I thought, well ok, but I will continue to do it regardless of the consequences, as I know first hand what it feels like. If I lose my job and go to unemployment or the labor board with my case, will it matter? No, it will be my fault.

Then I think of the 4 W’s:

1. Why can’t this be changed?

2. What will it take?

3. What can we do?

4. Where do we start?

These incidents are partially why it is so critical to treat people tenderly and realize everyone has a story that we just know nothing about.

Can people just realize during these lows how hard it is to just get out there and face the day head on?

Health policy usually focuses on the delivery of health care. But in many situations, health care alone is not enough. One of the most common situations in which this is the case is mental illness. Nearly one in five adults or 51.5 million people in the United States meets diagnostic criteria for mental illness which can impair functioning across a spectrum of severity ranging from mild to moderate to severe. Yet despite advances in the diagnosis and treatment of these conditions and considerable progress on including mental health care in health insurance. People with mental illness, including those with moderate illnesses like anxiety or depression...there needs to be acknowledgement in the workplace. It says that there are laws to protect sick leave due to mental illness. Are there though? I have been in the workforce for thirty years, and I did not know that, and most people don’t. They are scared to speak up due to lots of states that have the no-cause laws when it comes to letting people go, so people tend to keep quiet because they need their jobs.

My hope is that we can change the way the workplace actually acknowledges and treats their employees with mental illness. If you are like me and instances like mine have come from trauma in your life, it is not your fault, and you deserve to be treated fairly and to get your needs met like everyone else. Remember, everyone: do unto others as you would have done for yourselves.