Freida
MyPTSD Pro
My job doesn't know and doesn't need to know until my service dog is fully trained and starts to go to work with me and it makes me super nervous thinking about bringing it up with HR and have played that out in my head a lot to almost rehersed. I am a confidant member of the service dog team today (which took a while) but PTSD in general is an uncomfortable topic for me.
I was the first person we could find in our industry to bring a service dog to work so the agency wanted to make sure they did it all the right way for me and for those who came behind me. I won't lie -- it was awful. I wasn't yet comfortable having a service dog (living breathing symbol that I was broken) and because they were my employer they got to ask much more intrusive questions about his purpose than the standard 2 questions. Not why I had ptsd, but what his purpose was going to be to assist me.
Then when we introduced him into the workplace some of the people I work with were HORRIBLE because I wouldn't tell them why I had him. Luckily I had a great HR director who put them in their place.
Fast forward a couple years and now I don't think I would have half as many emotional issues with it because I have come to terms (mostly) with the diagnosis and I can articulate how he helps me much more clearly. Looking back their questions probably weren't as intrusive as I thought at the time - I just wasn't comfortable enough with my situation to discuss it with people.