Category Archives: career

Coming up for air

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5

You look out into the sea of faces, and welcome the group to the video conference. All is well, and going smoothly until a voice starts bellowing, “There is no contract between blah blah blah blah.” At least that’s what it sounds like to you because you are not there once you hear that inevitable berating nasty tone. You’re gone, just like that. Somehow you’re saved because one of your colleagues handles the nasty woman with the question/comment.

But then there are others with the similar berating tone, and you find a way to fake your way though it even though your body is floating, and you hardly feel like you’re on the ground. You’re answering questions, and keeping your body from shaking, but it is the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life. It is painful to stand there, and keep it all buttoned up.

Right before the lunch break a woman approaches you to ask you a question. She’s nice and polite, but you haven’t eaten in three hours, and you feel yourself start to fade while she’s talking to you. You take her hand in yours, and tell her that you desperately need to eat something, and you would love to hear her question after the training ends. Mercifully, she smiles and says that’s fine, and that she’ll see you after the training.

You run to your office cube, and shake and shake and shake ,and then you eat your yogurt and granola. You want to cry like a baby, but you go back on camera in 15 minutes so there is no time for that.

You are back on camera, and the worst of it is over. However, your body does not know that, and it wants to TWEAK out. Keeping a lid on the pressure cooker in your body is an “all-hands-on-deck” affair. Somehow you get through it.

The lovely woman with the question right before lunch finds you after the training, and she turns out to be a joy to speak with. She is the one bright spot in the entire experience. The two of you wind up talking extensively about issues tangentially related to the training.

You are able to get to the end of the day, and you’re exhausted. Unfortunately, your body is in overdrive, and does not realize that the ordeal is finished. Your friend, Jack, takes you out for an early birthday dinner, but you’re twitchy. In fact, you’re especially twitchy when a couple is seated very close to you in the restaurant. You just about jump out of your skin.

Finally you get home, and just melt down completely. It is full on panic/freak-out mode, and you are drop-kicked into the horrid past of your parents yelling at you in that berating voice. You find yourself wishing that your mother had killed you that time she tried to run over you with the car. One of your friends calls you in the midst of this episode, and comes over to check on you. They wisely assess that you need your Xanax, and a break from your brain. You take one, and eventually are able to peacefully sleep, and put this dreadful day to rest for good.

I can do this

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12

I have go into the lion’s den tomorrow. Tomorrow I have to make an all day presentation in a job in which I chafe at on a daily basis. It’s possible to chug through most days when I’m behind a desk dutifully plugging away at my work. It’s an altogether different scenario when you have to stand in front of the entire state, and run a video conference in a job in which you fantasize about leaving.

This job has been good to me in a number of ways. It has enabled me to have flexibility with all of my therapy and psychiatry appointments. My boss is very supportive of me. Now I’m drawing a blank at thinking of other positives …

The job can be very adversarial, and because of this, I can get triggered at times. I most fear someone being horrible during the video conference tomorrow. I’ve seen it happen to other colleagues of mine. I just keep telling myself that even if the worst happens I won’t die. I’ll live through it. They can’t imprison me or torture me. I’ll be able to walk away at the end. There will be an end. That’s what I keep telling myself.

I’ve even planned to have dinner and a movie with a friend after work so that I have something to look forward to after this ridiculous ordeal.

Serendipitously, I have a second job interview on Friday for a position in human resources, my previous field. I had a very traumatic experience in my last job in human resources. That’s the main reason I left that job. My previous director assaulted me. The whole thing was a very traumatic ordeal. I stayed at my human resources job for 2 years after the event, but I knew that I needed to move on in order to make progress in getting better.

That’s what brought me to the job I currently hold. Every moment that frustrates me at this job causes me to mourn the loss of a career I loved. I want it back, but for tomorrow I need to be present to get the current job done. Get through tomorrow to get to Friday in order to try to come back home where I belong.

PTSD is an expensive condition

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12

PTSD is an endless black hole of dollars going only one way, and that’s out.

When you say that PTSD is expensive you are not even talking about the traditional money outlays for appointments and medications. Those dollar amounts are only part of the story in spending on this ass expensive condition.

You’re not talking about tiered co-payment structures for medications, where, undoubtedly, the antidepressant that does not give you an allergic reaction is not “preferred” by your insurance company. This happened to you because Lexapro was not “preferred” by your previous insurer, and you had to go through a review process just to get the medication. Even after it was approved you still had to pay $50 a month for the prescription because it was not “preferred.”

There are the other outlays that you don’t initially plan for with this condition, such as your venture into acupuncture because you’ve read that it is effective for PTSD. You tried it for 3 months on a weekly basis. However, for you, the benefits of acupuncture only lasted 24-48 hours. Since money has not fallen on your head, you don’t do acupuncture with any regularity because of the cost. Can you imagine $75 every couple of days?!

Then there’s all of the leave credits that you give up in going to appointments or going away to residential treatment, leave credits that could have been used for other things in your life.

Because of your PTSD, you pass up promotions that require travel because you know that the travel could exacerbate your condition. Also, you know that it would be harder to keep up with all of your appointments. You watch your peers move on ahead of you in your agency, and it angers you because you know you are just as good, if not better than them. But you also know that you cannot take a promotion that requires travel right now. So turning down that promotion means turning down dollars in your paycheck.

Then there’s the crazy stuff that happens. Like the time you went to McLean Hospital, and you accidentally banged your head really hard on the low eaves in your room that gave it that Alice In Wonderland feel to it. The staff decided to send you to the infirmary to make sure you did not have a concussion. That seemed like a reasonable thing, so you complied and went to get it checked it. It was fine. The nurse just had you walk, touch your nose, etc. You were deemed fine. End of story, so you thought.

But upon return from your stay at McLean you find a bill for $357.00 in your mail because the doctor at the infirmary was not a participating provider in your insurance plan. You had no idea this mattered since you were approved to go to McLean. Apparently, going to the infirmary accessed medical benefits, which are different from mental health benefits. You appealed, and lost. Out of personal protest you are paying the amount over 6 months just so that it takes them longer to get their money.

But here’s what you’re really talking about …

All the damn food you buy because you intend to cook, but then you get triggered or depressive, and you wind up picking up take-out food instead. It adds up, all of it, the unused food in the refrigerator and all the food you buy when you eat out. You’ve tried buying less groceries, but then that only ensures you will almost certainly get take-out food. The whole food situation is an embarrassment, and tiring, to say the least.

You know that a huge part of the black hole is with food. You’ve tried and tried to plug up this part of black hole. Just when you think you have a handle on it, you find yourself going through the drive-thru for food because you know you barely have the strength and wherewithal to eat the food you just bought, much less cook anything.

This black hole needs plugging.