Rainy Journal 2022

[rainydiary]

Thank you San.  I am feeling a bit better today.  I appreciate your support.
.........
So I just had an experience that has deflated me.

I joined a committee that I thought would be one thing but has turned out to be another.  It is giving me experience presenting which I don't mind doing.

I emailed my boss a presentation I had given in my last job that I thought would help her prepare for her part of the presentation. 

In her response she not only told me she no longer is able to do her part of the presentation (which I truly don't mind) but that someone else in my group is going to be presenting on a topic I speak openly about and feels very personal to me.

I am taking this very personally.  I am not the only person in the world that can talk about this topic but it really upsets me that someone else is going to doing it.

I think the main reason I am deflated is because it feels again like I have people making promises they don't keep and this feels like a reminder that I don't navigate these systems very well.

[rainydiary]

Now my inner critic is giving me a hard time.  I reflected that perhaps the person doing a presentation is presenting about a course she took. 

I know it isn't personal and it isn't deliberate and yet my brain takes things so personal.  I still struggle to see myself as valid and worthy and important.

[sanmagic7]

yeah, trauma brain will do that.  it's amazing how fast we can go from 0-100 w/ this kind of stuff.  i hope you can be gentle w/ yourself, rainy.  love and hugs

[rainydiary]

San 
.........
I wish I could say that today was good or at least calm but it wasn't.  I worked a shorter day today and yet it was the worst.  Dealing with people and surprise emails that just straight up make me mad.  I can rationalize and understand that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have and with the understanding they have.  But I am worn down and cannot catch a break.

I am not feeling well again.  I have a cough and chest congestion.  I don't feel the worst ever but also not great. 

I am feeling upset about this because I was looking forward to this weekend.  I have several fun things planned that depending on how I feel tomorrow I may not do.

I think stress may be keeping me sick. 

It occurred to me this evening that I can't really remember the last time I had fun.  It's been a while.  My nervous system is too amped up all the time these days.  I can't seem to find balance.

[sanmagic7]

so very sorry you're sick, rainy. i don't doubt the pressure you feel at work has diminished your ability to heal.  stress is a wondrous thing in that sense.  ugh!  i hope you feel much better soonest.  love and hugs

[rainydiary]

Thank you San - I imagine it is stress and constantly being around lots of kids with various viral strains.  I appreciate your support.
.........
I am at very low energy today.  I think the days off from work have been good.  But I am drained.

My husband has shown me a lot of care today and I have accepted his care. 

My dreams the last several nights have been fueled by stress.  My brain has been processing a lot.  I sleep yet it hasn't felt restful.

I have three weeks of work until another break.  Those weeks will be incredibly full.  I'm trying to not think about it and yet I often am. 

Tonight I have an event to go to which I hope will be enjoyable.  I am caught off guard by how hard everything feels right now.

[CactusFlower]

Gentle hugs, rainy.  I hope sleep improves for you and that whatever you have tonight is good. It's hard to enjoy things when sleep dysfunction adds to everything else.

[rainydiary]

Thank you CF - I appreciate the care.
..........
I had a troubled night of sleep but made it through the day.  I am still not feeling the best but hoping my body heals soon.

The transition back to work especially after several "off" weeks was tough.  This will be the first full week of work following a "regular" schedule in 3 weeks.  I don't think I am taking time consider how difficult those different weeks are.  I focus on "making it" to a break and not necessarily how to prepare myself to transition back.  So then anxiety and depression kick in.

Recently as I was struggling to sleep or settle in, I saw how the "surprise" meeting I had in my last job really served to take away any feelings of dignity, agency, and confidence I had as a professional. 

I imagine myself standing tall, on a rock, holding a hard earned trophy which represents a degree, hours of continued learning, and lived experience.  Because my trophy made my "colleagues" feel small, scared, I don't know what, they opted to sneak up on me, knock me down, grab the trophy out of my hands, throw it in the ocean, and give me something to hold that they felt more comfortable with.

If I hang in with this visual, I see that I am still holding that piece of garbage they gave me.  They tried tricking me by forging my name on it.  They thought that because I was battered throughout my childhood, I would be grateful to them.  But all they did was add to my pain, use my voluntary openness against me, and hold up a trick mirror that reinforced decades of trauma that left me feeling like I am broken and disgusting and incapable.

Part of me is still grasping the garbage they gave me.  Part of me is waiting for them to apologize.  But I am never going to hear from them.  I am going to make my own way forward.

I had more realizations today but this post is getting so long so I will return to those another time.

[milkandhoney11]

Hi Rainy,
my mind has been a mess recently so I'm afraid I won't be able to write much as a reply, but I just wanted to say that your post resonated with me deeply. I know how degrading "surprise meetings" and observations like these feel and I found the image of the garbage trophy very intriguing (and very sad!). I am so incredibly sorry that your colleagues have made you feel broken and incapable, treating another person like this is never acceptable and especially not when they are doing their best to remain open and approachable after so much trauma in their lives.
I am thinking of you and hope your return to normal work hours will go well. I believe in you!

[Armee]

The resolve and intention here is powerful:

  I am going to make my own way forward.

I am so sorry they treated you in such a crushing way. To make someone like you - someone who cares about their job, and really cares about the kids, and really connects with the kids - feel incompetent it's just morally so wrong that  they did that.

And I'm so sorry it has stirred up memory of past trauma. The words you used to describe the feelings surfaced are tough ones to feel.

Sending along some support for today's work day.

[Papa Coco]

Hi Rainy

I really feel compassion for what you're going through at work. I know, logically, that people bully each other. In workplaces, families, neighborhoods, on the roads, and in stores...basically everywhere. What bugs me is that so many of us with C-PTSD were stripped of our ability to stand up for ourselves. At best, even when we do stand up for ourselves, we sometimes suffer great anxiety for having done so. I have hundreds of memories of standing up for myself at work or in the family, only to suffer so much anxiety, that I later apologized to the bully for having stood up to them. My brain knows that bullies bully everyone, but my heart takes it personally, and my Trauma response is to feel totally isolated and targeted and alone and helpless against the bullying being done to me.


I resonate with being given garbage trophies. Your workmates remind me of something I learned a long time ago, that there are two types of work environments: 1) is the jealous work environment that I worked in during my first 20 years in the industrial world. The goal of the work team was to reduce each member's self-esteem to the level of lowest common denominator. Like Junior High School. Some call it "the tall poppy syndrome", which describes a poppy field. Each flower is the same exact height. If any poppy rises above the rest, the farmer cuts it off so all poppies rise only to the level of the lowest common denominator. During those years, my company offered to pay full tuition for any degree program any employee wanted to take. Having been raised in a family that forbid me from going to college, I saw a chance. I took the opportunity, and right away, my peers...all of them...started calling me a "suck-up" who thought I was better than them. They started treating me poorly until I couldn't take the pressure and I quit the program. Then they were nice to me again.  In fact, even when I did my job, and put my all into it, I'd often get pulled aside by a peer who would earnestly try to coach me by saying "You're working too hard. You're making us all look bad."  That, to me, was a red, flashing siren, saying, "Stay down at our level or we're going to scold you."

I later left that job and took a transfer into the world of Engineering. The first thing I noticed...the massive culture shock of my life, was that in the community of engineers, 1) nobody felt they needed to know what kind of car I drove or how big my house was (so they could compare to see who had the best one) and 2) They expressed pride and encouragement in talking me INTO getting a degree on the company's offer, and they awarded and paid me extra for working as hard and competently as I darn well wanted to.  Nobody ever said "you're making us all look bad" again.

In my first work environment, I was punished for working hard. In my second work environment, I was given kudos and awards and pay increases for working harder than most.  It was not about me, it was about the team dynamics.

It sounds like you might be in a work team that doesn't want to see any tall poppies. () Meaning, this is absolutely NOT about you. It's absolutely about them and their daily fears that someone else's positive drive and success might expose their own fragile sense of ego.

Giving garbage trophies and giving your heartfelt presentations away to lessor involved teammates is also commonly called "putting you in your place" so they don't feel upstaged. When my dad refused to let me go to college, he would put me in my place by saying two things: 1) he thought kids who don't go to work directly out of free high school were just wimps who were trying to "milk their old man for 4 more years of childhood" and 2) If we wanted college, he used to angrily say to us kids, "You think you're BETTER than me?" (Dad's highest level of education was 2nd grade. Mom was the educated one who dropped out in the 5th grade).

If I'm missing the mark, I apologize. It's just that what you described about how you're treated at work, really resonates with me, and makes me feel like I did when I was going through similar things at my first job.

[sanmagic7]

rainy, i'm smelling a lot of envy and jealousy from your colleagues, exemplified by that 'garbage.'  how dare they take out their insecurities on you!  keep knowing that what you do and how you do it is profoundly useful and wonderful for your students.  again, so very sorry you have to put up w/ these people.  argh!!!  sending love and a hug filled w/ self-knowledge of how much you're worth.

[rainydiary]

M&H, I appreciate your words and understanding.  For some reason a lot of folks I've encountered working in education remain extremely immature and the way people treat each other can be so unfortunate.  Thank you for being on my team.
.....
Armee, I appreciate you noticing that resolve and for your support.  I wish the past could stay in the past but trauma doesn't like to stay back. 
.....
PC, I so appreciate your perspective.  I hadn't thought of before that they were trying to "put me in my place."  I think I was making them look bad/feel bad by being me and by having great connections with students.  Why that needs to be torn down, I don't know.  I think this perspective will help me find ways to move past this.  Thank you.
.....
San, I appreciate that you see this - I never sensed those things but can see how that is a factor.  Those emotions cause us to act in ways we might not otherwise but it doesn't excuse the pain caused.  It's a weird thing that when you are on to something some people respond with takedowns.  I appreciate you supporting me.
..........
I am hoping to get to bed soon.  I've had trouble falling asleep.  Whenever I don't run, I don't sleep as well.  But I needed a break this week.

Today was weird and I think events of this afternoon may keep me up later than I would like.

We had a delayed start at school due to snow.  Students arrived 2 hours later than usual.  For some reason adults are still expected to show up to work on time.  I didn't have any issues on my commute.  The delay really ruined my schedule with students.  Days that I don't see students are difficult.

After school I had a meeting with other people in my job role (speech language pathologists).  One of our colleagues did a presentation about a conference she recently attended.  I did reference this situation in a different post I think.

The information she shared is about neurodiversity and I am very familiar with many of the speakers and information she shared.  As she spoke and as my colleagues processed their learning, I became extremely agitated.  I became agitated because it was weird to have my colleagues speak about experiences I live every day in a detached, professional manner. 

It isn't anyone's fault and I am glad she presented on the information.  But I also feel mad.  I've been trying to share about this topic because it is very personal to me.  But because I don't speak about things in the "right" way or know how to "play the game" I am not heard.  Some of my feeling is also probably a trauma response and also the realization that I have probably spoken about things I don't really understand in a way that might have hurt someone.

I opted to share with the group some of the thoughts I had come up.  I don't think I was overly emotional and I think what I said was ok.  But I was also dissociating a bit and feel disconnected from that time.  My colleague texted me afterwards and I told her I was agitated.  She apologized and we had this weird exchange of texts that has left me uncomfortable.  She's uncomfortable with my truth, I'm uncomfortable saying what I said which caused discomfort, and yet it also isn't my job to fix discomfort in others.

I feel ridiculous right now.  I think many people in my field mean well but don't realize how we can come across to people and how ableist and harmful we can be.  I include myself in that.  All of these feelings are why I question if I should continue to do this.  I also feel pressure as a neurodivergent person to "stand up" for myself and other neurodivergent people.  But that doesn't always feel right or suit me.

*sigh*

[Blueberry]

I hear you on that whole difficult day. Standing with you.
You say you feel ridiculous. Let me assure you that you are not ridiculous! That's an EF.
You don't have to do anything that doesn't feel right for you or safe for you. In your own way you are already standing up for neurodivergent people all the time - writing on here and with your students. (I know you know you don't have to but sometimes it helps me when someone on here reiterates these things for me.)

It isn't anyone's fault and I am glad she presented on the information.  But I also feel mad.  I've been trying to share about this topic because it is very personal to me.  But because I don't speak about things in the "right" way or know how to "play the game" I am not heard.  Some of my feeling is also probably a trauma response and also the realization that I have probably spoken about things I don't really understand in a way that might have hurt someone.

I doubt with your colleagues and all that goes on there that you've hurt someone. It's probably more along the lines of what PapaCoco wrote that you're being 'put in your place'. My thought based partially on my own experience is that it really 'just' is that you don't speak about things in the "right" way because what you know comes from the deep experience of trauma and traumatisation which is quite different from learning about this stuff theoretically from a book, seminar, conference. 

Wishing you peace of mind or at least less agitation. 

[milkandhoney11]

Rainy,
I am so sorry the meeting went like this, you certainly deserve to be heard on this topic and personally I would have much preferred to hear someone talk from their own personal experience than have someone ramble on in a very detached way.
I have often experienced the same issues as you because I do everything from the heart and try to use a more personal perspective on things but it seems to me like people in education don't really value that.
I always had excellent relationships with students and some of them even asked to spend their lunch or break times with me because they enjoyed my company so much, but my colleagues and superiors somehow always criticised this as they thought I wasn't upholding professional boundaries. I think in their mind, people in education have to be very distant, demand respect at all times, and never show any emotions. That's what they have been told when they did they training and that's what they believe dearly, so when people like you and me come along who show up a different way, it tends to disturb them more than it should. And it's not that we are doing anything wrong by developing closer relationships with our students (to the contrary!), it's just that it unsettles their world views but because they don't want to question themselves, they need to externalise the blame and put us down.
We don't fit in their sterile robotic world and so they (consciously or subconsciously) try to edge us out but I hope that some day people will realise that our perspectives are valuable and that it's important to have a more personal view on things. I really wished people in education were able to open themselves up to people's own experiences and take into account the different world views that others might have, however it seems like there is a very long way to go till then.
Yet, huge well done for speaking up, it's so important that we try and fight for neurodivergent people to be heard in this way!