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.
SunCloud, thanks for adding more specifics to your own previous experience with coming out in the workplace. I'm at the point at which I'm ready to draw a polite boundary with my supervisors as well. Already more than enough has been disclosed to them about the situation, so their appetite for more disclosure now is reaching the point of becoming voyeuristic. I'm sure they wouldn't want me noodling around in their family relationships about what's going on behind closed doors.
I think what's behind their drive for more meetings is that by my resorting to an ADA accommodation just to stop teaching overloads to teach a normal load, in her eyes my boss has been inadvertently exposed as having exploited me with overload work assignments for years. Perhaps she should have thought about that as she proceeded in that way as a boss, huh?
It's not about her anyway, though, it's about getting the normal work load I need, however it was gotten. She could have offered in the past, and she missed her many chances to, so oh, well, it's a live and learn moment for her and her supervisory style, not much to do with me. Until she takes a look at herself I have to draw a boundary to ask that these meetings she's scheduling now to try to backtrack and save face stop because they're being held at my expense unnecessarily.
I'm still hoping that this blows over soon, but sounds like you've made it through the rockiest parts of the water so far & now hopefully its smoother sailing from here on :)