Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
Find support with others who have gone through a traumatic experience. Whether you have chronic or acute PTSD, we are here for you.
On August 28th I had a meeting with the college vice president, my departmental boss, HR, and my union rep where I work to ask for an ADA accommodation due to my PTSD so I wouldn't teach overloads any more and just teach the normal load for my contract.
Two weeks of stressful interactions with them all followed, and I got a lot of support here to get through them. My PTSD hypervigilance was amped up to paranoia. So while I got the support here to document everything and stand up for my rights, I also got the wisdom here to know I was in the right with the law on my side, so not to ruin myself with paranoia.
I'm grateful for that combination of support. I followed it. Yesterday, because of a committee I'm on, I met all of those same people in a regular business meeting about other topics--not about me, PTSD, the ADA, none of that. About other business.
I was nervous about sitting in a room with those same people for an hour, wondering if I would come off as squirelly or what. But your support and wise advice calmed me, and I acted normally throughout and was treated that way in return. No comments before or after, no asides, nothing like that.
I hope that means things are getting back to normal. This week I did get that reduction in my teaching load from an overload to a normal load, and I got good sleep last night from it. It looks like I can do this, like asking for my ADA accommodation for PTSD to work a normal load paid off. Fingers crossed, and thanks to all of you.
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Hey All...I hope that you have a lovely, peaceful beginning of your weekI have a bunch of chores that need doing but may put them off til tomorrow and just hang out with my landlord/roomie todayWhat about you?...Anything special going on?Have a great day and take good care of you!!..Xo
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Once again I've had a fever today. I'm not going to the hospital because that's a huge waste of time but I did schedule a dr appointment for Wednesday afternoon.
Hugs, J.
Glad it worked for you. Continued support.
If so, it reminds me how I came out at work once before in a medical setting, too, as a hospital chaplain working ER trauma in 2009. Back then I did have a fellow hospital chaplain come after me about it in an open staff meeting of my hospital's department, claiming I was unfit.
But it being a hospital setting, medical knowledge prevailed even in the chaplaincy department. Instead of considering me a liability, my bosses figured my own trauma and recovery experience to be an asset. So they promoted me to be hospital chaplain on the brain surgery unit, where I counseled people post brain trauma surgery. It was worth the risk to come out then, in that medical
workplace.
Here coming out in the past month in this academic workplace I've found the process to be much less knowledge-based and much more political. Support from here at DS PTSD has been essential to help me run the gauntlet of how my coming out is being used for meeting to give others a platform for their own purposes at my expense.
I had to invoke my psychiatrist's backing to draw a boundary around that behavior. My bosses wanted to have an extra meeting just to put me on the legal record for my bosses' sake. They wanted a meeting just for me to say on the record that I felt comfortable coming out to them in the process of invoking my right to an ADA accommodation just for protection from their further work overloads.
It was helpful that friends here pointed out that it was selfish on their part but not persecution, just self-serving. The distinction was helpful in tempering my response to be about boundaries without letting my PTSD hypervigilance become paranoia to the point of accusing them of persecution.
As academics you would think they would not require assistance to see their own irony. Making someone say in public to the boss whether you're putting them under stress is stressful in itself. But no, my assistance was required to point out that irony to my higher education colleagues. We are meeting October 3rd because I've been able to schedule their meeting to be followed by an appointment with my psychiatrist in order to handle the stress.
Thanks for saying I'm an advocate and maybe I am, but I'm no hero. It's taken a lot of support from here online and a lot of support offline from my psychiatrist to get by, believe me. However, the pay off of last week's first work week with a normal work load made a positive difference for me. Now, if we can make October 3rd the last meeting about my PTSD since these meetings began on August 28th, that would be a positive difference, too.
It would be funny if it weren't, well, stressful, right? :-)
I was frank about why I was off and they wanted to have notes from my pdoc repeatedly before I could go back.... They were so worried about being bipolar AND they had a mental health team that I ended up on..... So much for educated people.... They were afraid and that's sad.....
I can understand that behaviour is affected by a mental health disorder however asking for about 4 notes from my doctor was ridiculous and he was really aggravated as well and told me so
My pdoc ended up saying to them if you want to know anything else ask Jan .... A lot of BS... I was angry but held it in
The hero part of it that I see muji is that you're putting yourself out there and will get some beating up in doing so....
It's great that you've had the support of DS.... This was several years before DS for me .... The peer support that DS gives us is awesome and has gotten me through some really dark times and I will be forever thankful for my DS pals.......xo