Self employment with fragile mental health.

[thetruth]

Hi All,

Due to a prolonged experience of workplace harassment I have attempted self employment since that experience. The theory is, if I am my own boss I cannot be subjected to any kind of triggering unfairness or unreasonable behaviour. I say this because since the harassment, I have already had a very bad experience of deep distress when I was met with deceit at the hands of a subsequent manager in a completely different job.

I have found the attempt to be self employed to be isolating and lonely. As a result motivation is lacking and is always forced. I am also without a structured timetable.

Has anyone else found recovery after long term workplace harassment by finding work under a good, honest and reasonable boss? At present I think I need to work for a fair person to allow my life to progress.

I think I might have to spend the rest of 2018 looking at employment options. I think the right job for the right person could be key to my rediscovering faith in life and myself and humanity.

Edit, since posting a few hours ago, after further thinking, I just find myself asking the question, is the cost of avoiding the world of formal work possibly greater than the perceived benefit of safety from harassment/triggering? I mean, by completely cutting out the possibility of future unfairness, I am also cutting myself off from the health supporting elements of structured work with other people.

Looks like I might have to push the boat out and try working again. I might need the structure and I probably need the sense of financial security more than anything.

[LilyITV]

So sorry you find yourself in this dilemma.  Workplace woes are the cause of so much distress!  Having to deal with C-PTSD on top of that makes it even more difficult.

Reading your post, it seems like you are trying to avoid certain outcomes rather than going after what you really want.   It sounds to me like you prefer to be in a traditional employment setting, but just have had the misfortune of having bad management.   It also seems like you because you have had such a bad experience on this job, you seem to be giving up on traditional employment entirely.

To answer your question, yes.  My first job I worked for a maniacal boss and I went on to work at my dream internship type of position.  Since then, I took on a few okay type jobs before landing another job where I've been for over 13 years.  This is a job that gives me security, but now that I've discovered C-PTSD, is just a job where I merely exist and go through the motions.  As I progress through my recovery, I'm realizing I can have a job that I truly love and not one that is just tolerable. 

I think for me, it's been a matter of believing there are great jobs out there and that I have the ability to get those jobs if I put forth the effort. 

[thetruth]

Thanks so much LilyITV. Yes today for the first time in a very long time, I have tried to challenge my assertion that I cannot work for a boss again. Having met with further triggering unfairness even after the job where the harassment took place, I decided a few years ago that I could not risk trying to work under the authority of another person again.

I am glad to hear you found healthy work after working for a maniac and that it worked out better. I am sorry to hear that you developed Cptsd when things looked like they were going well. It isnt clear to me what caused your Cptsd, I hope it wasnt your current long term job?

I have been trying to make a certain work option work for me but it isnt working. I might have to let go of self employment in favour of the traditional employment route. Yes I do like the traditional  method if you are being paid reasonably well and your boss and manager are not bullying, contrived, vengeful liars. I like my boss to be a mature and honest person who doesn't assume it is his right to recreate the truth in whatever way he likes in order to suggest he isn't doing anything wrong !

Thanks a lot LilyITV! To work for a reasonable person might just help me to recover.

[LilyITV]

Thetruth, my CPTSD was caused by childhood physical and emotional abuse.  The CPTSD symptoms make it pretty difficult to be fulfilled me my career. 

It seems the workplace is filled with abusers, especially in the U.S. where there are very little protections for workers. 

I sure hope you can find a good person to work for.  My husband is self employed and wouldn't go back to being a salaried employee for the world, but like you, I like the structure and social interaction in the traditional workplace. 

[Rainagain]

My feeling is that boundaries are key to getting along in the workplace.

Work defensively, do a good job but don't over commit to it, and be strict and assertive with anything which could become an issue.

It takes bravery to be assertive, but if you go into a new job expecting a challenge to your wellbeing you will be prepared to counter it when it happens.

Don't live in fear of having to defend your boundaries, expect a challenge and look out for it so you can step up and face it immediately.

If you can face down the small stuff you probably won't ever have to face anything worse, your boundaries will be seen and understood.

Sorry if this makes no sense, it does to me, but that doesn't mean I'm right

[thetruth]

Hi Rainagain,
I hear ya re facing down the small stuff. I gave my abusive boss 1 year to desist from his behaviour, or to prove that his bullying was occasional and the result of him having a bad day. It turned out to be a mistake to do that. So maybe I didnt face down the small stuff early enough? However, with this individual, I am quite sure nothing could have worked. When I asked my manager to speak to the company owner about his systematic unfairness the manager told me he had had to the same for other people. I felt relief. 2 weeks later after the boss had taken his first revenge for my initial protest, manager and boss conspired to create the lie that I was being unreasonable. It was all down hill from there. In the end they had my GP in their corner too, suggesting that my stress was personal instability and nothing else. This was wholly unjust and it caused deeper injury than had already been sustained. My GP assisted them to make me redundant when they desperately needed to get rid of me.

This guy took revenge at every opportunity.

Regarding your other comment about over-committing, that is exactly what I did. Due to systematic criticism of my work, I mastered my job with massive effort. I thought the criticism would reduce but I couldn't have been more wrong. It just got uglier and more contrived. After being driven to perfection in my work by an over critical boss, he accused me of "looking for praise".

I simply could not win. I loved the work, I had never loved my work before, it was special. But now my mind is damaged because of the injustice I was subjected to trying to protect the rare thing that was a job that I loved.

If only I was less naive going into that job, but I wasn't. I just wanted a sense of job security. Alas, I went and figured out technical problems that had never been properly dealt with in the 35 years the company had existed. I couldn't help it, it was within my daily task and over time the answers revealed themselves. The boss revenged me for knowing answers he had never found. If I could go back I would know how to handle them but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Thanks.

[thetruth]

"If you can face down the small stuff you probably won't ever have to face anything worse, your boundaries will be seen and understood."

Hi Rainagain,

With this guy, unfortunately he had a deeply unfounded, false sense of importance and deep down he knew he was utterly incompetent. Any challenge to his fictitious status as an experienced and respectable businessman was revenged over and over and over.

Here's the most sinister thing about him and his strategy, you could not avoid confrontation with him, even with endeavour not to challenge him. He visited you multiple times daily to give you trouble. His lack of intelligence was such that it was simply impossible to not to find yourself in a situation of conflict with him, even when you consciously knew it would be better not to be in conflict with him. He brought the stupidity right to you and before you knew it you were disagreeing with him in exactly the same way you would be disagreeing with someone who came up to you and said the sky was green. You were assaulted with so much stupidity on such a frequent basis that it was impossible to not disagree with him. Even if you had agreed with him that the sky was in fact green, later in the same day when he was reminded the sky was blue, he would ridicule you for a week for having agreed with his own error earlier. You could not win. I have never been in such a no win situation with a grown adult.

I know some people have experience of a similarly twisted individual. You were wrong if you agreed with him and you were wrong if you disagreed with him. The bottom line was he desired to belittle you regardless of the facts, the day or the situation.

It was damaging in time.

[Three Roses]

I'm so sorry you went thru that. 

Here's another quote I happened across recently (I love quotes! They help me see things in new ways) -

Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the back either. Just refuse to bear them. —William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

[thetruth]

Thetruth, my CPTSD was caused by childhood physical and emotional abuse.  The CPTSD symptoms make it pretty difficult to be fulfilled me my career. 

It seems the workplace is filled with abusers, especially in the U.S. where there are very little protections for workers. 

I sure hope you can find a good person to work for.  My husband is self employed and wouldn't go back to being a salaried employee for the world, but like you, I like the structure and social interaction in the traditional workplace.

Hi LilyITV,

I know the feeling. Sorry, I want to reply better but I am worn out. Thank you for your messages.

Yes I like the social interaction with good and decent people in the workplace. Working with good people is a blessing.

[thetruth]

Hi All,

Once again I find myself having to write out my thoughts to manage how bad I feel. I find I am expressing the same basic frustrations over and over in slightly different forms. I am constantly trying to be more eloquent and efficient in my use of words. If I feel I have formulated the correct sentence in my head to perfectly describe the nature of the injustice I was subjected to then I am compelled to record it in my phone, for fear of forgetting it. In the last few years I have recorded literally thousands of paragraphs describing my grievances. It has a way of allowing me to get on with the day at that specific moment.

I have just been expressing and recording such paragraphs this morning. I will put my most recent one in here. I think it quite closely describes the 'stuck' situation I find myself in. It is an attempt to summarise the experiences of several years. It encapsulates the fundamental wrongness of a 10 year process of increasingly complicated unfairness, which began when I was given no choice but to take a stand for myself against tyrannical, systematic verbal abuse by a boss at work.

9 years ago I had to ask to be spoken to in a less disrespectful manner by a man in his 50's who owned the company that I worked for. I had let it go for a year and I wasn't able to sleep at night as a result of his choice to speak to me like I was his punchbag. This was the start of a decline into unfairness that I never could have anticipated and it continues to this day as I am denied the right to the validity of my injury by health care professionals who refuse to be informed of the details of the process which caused the injury. It has been 10 years now and it has hijacked every inch of my life.

"My predicament is largely based on the denial of the truth by people who had power to influence the direction of my life against my will. The injustice cannot be processed and it is only compounded by repeated invalidation of my grievances against actual mistreatment that I was subjected to. My mind cannot cope with this and it is continuously being stressed and eroded by this reality based on denial of truth. The nature of my life now is a direct consequence of the abuse of power by 3 people who conspired to reframe reality to undermine the validity of my plight at work and to remove me from my job. "

Please dont feel any excessive need to offer me comforting words, it just helps me manage how I feel to post here sometimes. This forum has been a great source of support for me since I discovered it last spring.

I found this on youtube today. It is very very good, very informative and as far as I can see, very accurate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otxAuHG9hKo

EDIT: Ok, at 36 minutes in the video, the woman begins to talk from a Christian perspective. She talks about God. Until this point I was enthralled with her insight and I still think the video is really important for trauma victims. My experience of injustice has removed all belief in a caring God from my mind so I am somewhat surprised this very knowledgeable woman has brought in the christian God in the way that she has... ie, as if he is an unquestionable reality.

[Three Roses]

That is a great video, it's been recommended here before. Although she did mention her religious beliefs, she was speaking to a group of Christian counselors, and her mention of God seemed very low-key and understanding. Many of us here have varying views on religion and spirituality, but our common ground is compassion and the challenge of cptsd.   

[thetruth]

That is a great video, it's been recommended here before. Although she did mention her religious beliefs, she was speaking to a group of Christian counselors, and her mention of God seemed very low-key and understanding. Many of us here have varying views on religion and spirituality, but our common ground is compassion and the challenge of cptsd.   

Hi Three Roses,

In spring 2015 I was attending mass every morning except Saturday. I was going to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the evening, 5 times a week. I was attending healing services given by a man with a gift for healing. I was also visiting the confessional each time I thought I needed to, to try to keep my soul in a state of grace. All of this was motivated by pain. The pain was Cptsd but I didnt really know that yet.

I have moved on from this and I have pretty much decided that the extent and the complexity of the unfairness that I have experienced cannot be reconciled with the notion of a caring God. The pain I have had in my mind has been too much and too prolonged.

I am not saying I am right and I have all the answers but for me, right now, it is easier for me to live without the brand of religion that I was indoctrinated with. I feel liberated and I have more than enough on my plate without the demands of religious practice.

I couldnt agree more about the video. It is really fantastic. I was really keen to get to the treatment aspect. She says 3 things are needed for recovery from trauma- talking, tears and time. I have to say I was hoping for something a bit more hope inspiring, something more thought provoking. I can pay a counsellor to listen to me talk and I have done so repeatedly. I cannot make myself cry so I am trouble there. ...she says you need all 3 to recover. Time? I am losing my life to this so time better hurry up and make a difference!!! Thus far time has not made a blind bit of difference and she says as much within the talk- time stands still. I am finding the passage of time to be of very minimal help. Maybe it will gradually make a difference though.

Thanks for your response.

[Three Roses]

I remember her saying, "Talk, tears, and time," and feeling dismayed. The talk I've done, starting in my thirties; the time has passed, as I'm now in my 60's; but I have never done the tears. Never felt the white hot anger I know is there, lurking under the surface; never cried the tears of grief for a lost and desolate little girl. I've never stuck with any one therapist long enough for them to tap into that. I've always abruptly stopped calling for appointments; no goodbye (except for the last T but he was just moving out of the area). I'm good at running and hiding, like a rabbit hidden in the bushes.

[thetruth]

Thanks for you choice of avatar quote. Those few little words alone are extremely validating and supportive.

I really mean it. The pain is because we are human, not because we are defective.

[Rainagain]

I wonder if the talking/ tears/ time are in that order because that is the order they need to be approached.

Is it really all about a form of grief and eventual acceptance?

I believe people get stuck in the grieving process, I wonder if I have become similarly stuck.

I wonder if you have become stuck too the truth, the rumination is familiar to me.

Have a look at Jordan Petersen on utube, I find it more useful to rerun some of his clips on evil, incorporating your shadow and other stuff than just listening to the echoes in my mind.

They require repeat viewings as they are dense with meaning, and I find the repetition comforting.

To get unstuck you need some sort of input, only having an internal feedback loop doesn't seem to lead anywhere but down.

He mentions naïveté too, I was naïve, I wasn't strong enough when my troubles began and this led to all sorts of evil later. I hadn't realised I was in a situation that could be totally life changing so didn't rise to the initial challenge like I would (hopefully) have done if I'd realised the danger.

I trusted others to do the right thing, that was wrong of me. And naïve.

I'm not that way now, my recovery involves becoming the opposite of naïve, if I know I am not vulnerable then I know I can defend myself.

Your psych review is an example I feel, if your referral set the course of the psych review (which I suspect it did) then how you presented on the day simply confirmed the GP assessment of you in the referral.

I don't know how to beat that situation, but realising that you were involved in producing the outcome might help to see it more clearly.

This is not belittling you, I'm trying to explain how I now approach my history and try to spot where I wasn't good enough.

To paraphrase spike Milligan - Me, my part in my downfall.

There is so much shame and guilt that the least I can do is actively try to spot where it is justified.

If i can fix those things then I can learn to protect myself better.

My barrister told me recently that I didn't have a duty to protect myself, my employer had a duty to protect me.

While true in law it is not the way life works, not even close.

They were protecting themselves at my expense, while this is a sensible approach in real life they forgot they were my employer and so acted unlawfully when they threw me under a bus to save themselves.

People do bad stuff to others, really bad stuff.