this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
251 points (98.1% liked)
Mental Health
5948 readers
105 users here now
Welcome
This is a safe place to discuss, vent, support, and share information about mental health, illness, and wellness.
Thank you for being here. We appreciate who you are today. Please show respect and empathy when making or replying to posts.
If you need someone to talk to, @therapygary@lemmy.blahaj.zone has kindly given his signal username to talk to: TherapyGary13.12
Rules
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
- No promoting paid services/products.
- Be kind and civil. No bigotry/prejudice either.
- No victim blaming. Nor giving incredibly simplistic solutions (i.e. You have ADHD? Just focus easier.)
- No encouraging suicide, no matter what. This includes telling someone to commit homicide as "dragging them down with you".
- Suicide note posts will be removed, and you will be reached out to in private.
- If you would like advice, mention the country you are in. (We will not assume the US as the default.)
If BRIEF mention of these topics is an important part of your post, please flag your post as NSFW and include a (trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, death, etc.)in the title so that other readers who may feel triggered can avoid it. Please also include a trigger warning on all comments mentioning these topics in a post that was not already tagged as such.
Partner Communities
To partner with our community and be included here, you are free to message the current moderators or comment on our pinned post.
Becoming a Mod
Some moderators are mental health professionals and some are not. All are carefully selected by the moderation team and will be actively monitoring posts and comments. If you are interested in joining the team, you can send a message to @fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
My workplace surprised me with support this week. At first it was the same pattern it's been throughout my life: stress builds up, attempt to get support, those intended to provide support fail to provide it, I break down, people misinterpret the series of events, and I get punished for breaking down. (Specifically, I got in trouble for "not maintaining professionalism.")
But this week, I did something different. I did something I've never done before - I narrated the moment from my point of view and spoke up to management afterward.
I wrote up my side of the situation in an essay, complete with an illustration demonstrating what extreme stress does to my mind, and presented it to management. I told them how I lose my ability to communicate at a certain point. I told them how I tried to follow protocol to get help before things got that bad, but was denied it by people I trusted. I pointed out how specific words that were used in the moment triggered trauma from my past that made it even harder for me to defend myself in the moment. I expressed how hard it is to keep trying to stay 100% perfect every day, and how much it fuels my self-doubt when despite my best efforts, I get in trouble for not maintaining that perfection.
To my absolute astonishment, they listened! In fact, at the end of the week, the management team did a presentation on "professionalism" that outright stated that if someone at work is struggling and you have the capacity to help them, you should, because helping them is an aspect of professionalism.
It feels so weird. In all my 35+ years, I've never been supported like this after an episode. I should feel grateful, but some part of me is still expecting the other shoe to drop.
Such is the life of someone with sufficient trauma, I guess. The closest feeling to "security" that I can hope for is "feeling cautiously optimistic."