Would you be willing to go into more detail, Wanting A Life?
Thanks for wanting to hear, PTSD and Me.
I have some general answers and some specific answers that surround one of my traumas. In general - not being able to "escape" to a quieter or less busy place when I need to (of course no one else sees "normal work environments" as something you might feel a need to escape from), having to be around so many people not of my choosing who are putting out all kinds of different energies for hours on end, so much opportunity for normal and relatively minor cristicisms on the job - which my mind turns into, "I'm bad, I'm bad, bad,bad,bad....." or "I don't matter..." The last time I could work full time was 2007. Even for years before that I would come home completely exhausted from the emotion it took to get through a day - if I worked, that was ALL I could do that day. Now I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to find a place to live when I'm discharged from this crisis house - normal work and espeically meetings have so many embedded triggers. I am embarrassed to say that I am applying for SSI disability benefits - and even if I am approved it won't be for months. Very scary.
As far as my last job, from the end of 2005 to mid 2007 - I knew I had made a big difference by pretty much being given full reign to transform the Alzheimer's unit of the richest nursing home in the county. I keep up to date on progressive ideas and programs around the world, I take calculated risks, I talk directly to the state inspectors and ask what they think about innovative ideas that have had good results elsewhere, and then I implement them.
So I decided to take on the poorest nursing home in the county specifically because it was the lousiest place to live. There was no program on the Alzheimer's unit, so I had pretty similar free reign as far as designing the program from scratch. That part was great, and I want to be very clear that residents, clients, the people I am serving, are NEVER my stressors or triggers. Rather, I use my own symptoms to gauge how they're probably dealing with their environment. If I'm in auditory overload from the drone of the TV in the corner of the day room, so are the folks with Alzheimer's, whose world is confusing enough already. Even more importantly, I also know that all my folks who are hard of hearing (at least half the room) will be having a harder time interpreting their environment due to the noise clutter.
So I pretty much had no budget - ok, I don't mind that challenge. BUT what I didn't understand about why this county home consistently had lower quality care had everything to do with the UNION combined with corrupt and just plain lousy administration. Please NEVER put anyone you care about in a union nursing home. The unfortunate end result of this combination is that ABUSIVE STAFF CANNOT BE FIRED. Throw in a culture where "union workers don't report on other union workers," to quote one nurse's aide. Holy cow! I've never seen anything like it!
My co-worker, who I had to spend significant time with, had a major anger problem which he freely aimed at almost anyone in general but always had a favorite target for. I can still hardly believe that NO ONE TOLD ME until the very hour that I left that the woman who had held my post previously had quit after dealing with his violent outbursts and other abuse for years. She, like me, had complained endlessly to our supervisor (who was too scared to confront him) and then to the administrator. The administrator similarly did nothing despite continuous complaints of his outrageous behavior. Eventually the worker took her complaints to the police and was easily able to get a restraining order against him. Since he couldn't be in her vicinity, the administrator fired him. The union took up the case and he got his job back because there had been no prior disciplinary action - because the administrator had inappropriately ignored all her earlier complaints in the first place.
When I came in I was John's perfect target. No amount of the supervisor seeing his innappropriate behavior or of my written complaints amounted to any discipline. At one point he was walking aggressively and fast toward the dog I had trained and partnered with in the nursing home. I stayed by her side to protect her and he body checked me in front of the whole dining room full of residents. My supervisor saw it and blamed ME for not jumping out of his way. When we had to be together for outings on the van, he and even our supervisor would put the music up loud even though I had explained that I literally could not tolerate it. Life was absolute hell, because 5 days out of 7 I was stuck in this atmosphere.
One day I before I realized the depth of corruption of the administrator, I had an unfortunately closed door meeting with him about John. I said that he talked threateningly about his guns and about how he kept them in the car while he was at work, and that I was seriously worried that he would "go postal" one day, with me being his first target. The administrator's response was simply, "Don't you think I'm afraid he's going to shoot ME? I'm not touching him."
To my endless dismay, I have not had much luck in my life in finding guys who are both strong and good. I'm told and still firmly believe that this mythical creature exists, and I wonder and grieve at not having at least one in my life.
To make matters worse for me, I was simultaneously reporting on aides and nurses who were being abusive to residents. When I was interviewed for this job and they asked what my "weakness" was, I told them flat out that I could not handle and therefore did not tolerate disrespect or abuse of clients. "That's great," they said during the interview. When they found out that I MEANT it and would report it as high up the chain of command as necessary to fix it, it was a different story. By that time, I myself had become "a problem" for the administrator, and he saw that it would be much easier to get rid of me than scary John anyway. Might have had something to do with the state investigator that I finally had to call citing the administrator PERSONALLY for failing to report elder abuse.
I was already a basket case from spending my days like this. I was in major depression and found I had to nap on the linoleum floor of my office with the door closed just to get through each day. Spent more and more time holed up in there, crying.
I made the unfortunate mistake of telling the administrator at one point that I already had PTSD and that John was a major trigger. He said that if I could write it all down he might be able to at least keep John away from me by using ADA code because I had a "disability." Seeing no other options, I did write every incident that I could remember. Regarding my PTSD, I wrote that being forced to work with a constantly angry man who had violent outbursts was impossible. The son-of-a-bitch used that paper to claim that I was therefore ineligible to work on the Alzheimer's unit, which I had in the meantime transformed from a miserable place to a much much brighter, happier place with many fewer depressed residents. He called me to an ambush meeting with no union rep and said I could either sign a paper agreeing to be evaluated by their psychiatrist or be discharged immediately. I signed, but shouldn't have. That meeting was like being raped, with all the details reported to committee. I realize now that the strategy was to make it so difficult there that I would quit and they wouldn't have to deal with me OR pay unemployment, and it worked like a charm.
For a while I had the satisfaction of being able to air some of this dirty laundry on the local newspaper's comments section during a dispute over other corruption at the home. I haven't quite figured out yet whether that was healthy or unhealthy for me. But in any case, full time and often even part time work has been an impossiblitiy since then. And shame goes with that, not to mention poverty and homelessness... I don't know how many times my aunt (when I was staying with my family in Portugal last year) said, "
I was never too proud to work!" My brother's cut me off emotionally, pretty much, apparently mostly because I don't "just get a job!" I even have a hard time believing myself that it's really as hard as all that ... but every time I try, I fall flat on my face. Anyway, long answer to your question I guess. Thanks for listening.
