- Disclose Prior? Nope. Never.
- Disclose After? I have when I'm doing well, because it didn't mean anything to me. It would come up in conversation & "Oh, yeah. I used to have a perky little case of PTSD." :p It's one of those love/hate things in retrospect. Hate because I really did think it was past tense. Love because, yeah, people with PTSD can be very normal. 99% of the time the reason it came up in conversation was because of some big bad nasty stereotype. And I've always sort of enjoyed busting those. "But you're so normal!" Really was something I heard in response to that fairly often. (And then the jokes, ;) ). But it really did help to normalize PTSD in a lot of the places I worked. Especially when we got down to some of the brass tacks; yep. Panic attacks, and nightmares, and flashbacks, oh my. Had some really rough years once upon a time. (And, yeah, I was one of those homeless violent vets who perpetuate the stereotype, which I did not bring up. But when I say rough, I really do mean rough.).
The upside to being a chick, means people didn't usually assume military. They assumed rape. Which DID mean that in every job I disclosed to I became one of the unofficial resources for coworkers who've just experienced a rape, or who knew someone who had. Just like every other coworker who was open about either rape or PTSD or whatever. If you tell people? People will talk with you about it. Sometimes just out of curiosity, but the vast majority of the time I found just because they don't have anyone else TO talk to about it, so they're grab any straw they can. At usually hugely awkward and worst-timing places possible! :roflmao: Since rape isn't what gave me PTSD, aaaaaand that's trauma I actually had processed and sorted down to DGAF ages ago, it was never really that big a deal to me. I can talk rape all day long. I can sit with someone through a panic attack. I can pull out & look up local resources, and hold hands through some pretty gnarly steps, and it doesn't even twitch a hair on my head / make me batt an eye. It's not something I like to do all the time, other people's emotions are exhausting, but it's something I can do here and there. As long as we're talking rape. The moment, even back when I was doing well, that any of my BigBad traumas hit the deck? Nope. Huh-uh. Sorry. Ain't gonna happen. To the point I have left jobs because someone twigged onto my actual history. And then, yes, the same thing happened. If people know? They talk to you about it.
- When I'm doing badly? No. I don't disclose.
Granted, I'm also usually not working. I tend to revert to homeless/jobless/useless pretty damn fast. Any job or source of income I am managing to hold onto is by the skin of my teeth, and I really can't afford to either have that threatened, or to get kicked in the gut by even innocent questions, much less hard ones, or road blocks, when I'm just barely managing to hold on.
