Madly Ever After

I’ve had a lot to deal with over the last year or so and been able to handle most of it relatively well.

All the major life issues have been really challenging but I’ve kept on top of them and despite how much they’ve hurt I was definitely managing mostly.

What I’ve been missing out on controlling are the micro triggers. Small acts of micro aggression or micro control When your head’s so tied up in the macro crises these get under the radar and build up.

One of the most insidious has been work.There’s things I’ve let slide as I’m trying to keep my own ship stable. I’ve been able to contribute a lot and my colleagues have been great especially the ones who know my situation.

I thought I’d come to an arrangement with my newish boss after a few months where he ignored my request to discuss my health status and called occupational health on me with a misleading report. This involved employee relations getting involved and a functional agreement where I was allowed to work flexibly as long as I agreed to keep the clendar updated. Ostensibly for a duty of care by work.

So he takes a week off without letting anyone know other than setting the out of office. I had to take an emergency day due to my cat dying and then two emergency days due to 40c (104f) temperatures as I’m very vulnerable to heat stroke. I messaged the entire department, booked the days off in the system, filled out the calendar, and left a very detailed explanation in our department xhat which includes all the management. Just forgot to set my out of office.

After 4 days of trying to avoid passing out in extreme heat I get back on Wednesday morning fully fresh and ready for work. In my office looking forward to hitting the gym and getting a full day in.

First thing in my in box was ‘I don’t see an out of office, are you in today?’ From Monday There’s no way he could have missed all the other conversations and it’s not the first time he’s used this behaviour. Messaging me on my desktop asking where I am when he can see I’m not at my desk (I was in our technical build room helping another colleague). Another time he did this was when I said I had to go to help a friend and to call me on my mobile, similar message on my desktop. No attempt to reach my phone.

I was angry at first, this was 7 am and I was alone in the office. I decided to let it ride and get breakfast and have a smoke, but after that my insides were in turmoil so I called another manager I know and trust to talk about it and then suddenly broke down in tears on the phone. She told me to go home and I said just once my stomach has settled. 15 minutes later I was violently ill in the loo for about 10-15 minutes.

By this point other colleagues had come in as I staggered back to my my desk saying I needed to go home. At this point a panic attack kicked in and I partially dissociated. Lost most of my autonomic function nearly collapsed and was shaking and behaving so badly the wouldn’t let me leave and had me taken by colleagues to an emergency hospital.

Despite me thinking I was coherent I clearly wasn’t as they wouldn’t leave me unattended until after several hours when I was clear headed enough to talk to a doctor on my own.

So now I’m signed off work for a period, I’ve had a lot of people see me meltdown completely, I’m on medication for the first time in my life.

All from letting microaggressions ride rather than taking them on.

On the plus side people have now seen me have a breakdown and it was a mild one. No shame in this. I’ve learnt enough skills to prevent a catatonic meltdown. I raised a complaint against the manager. I engaged occupational health before he had another chance to misrepresent things. Also with work seeing me in this state they were able to trigger much more support than I’ve ever had during a breakdown. The senior manager there who refused to let me leave out ranks all my immediate management chain and will ask questions.

Moral of the story. Microaggressions have to be stopped before they take root. It’s damn difficult when you have so much else going on and they’ll get missed and get under your skin and build up and then break you in ways you don’t expect.