I lost my job last week. Along with a lot of other people in the country. I had started a new job and was excited about a better job at a better company at better pay. Who wouldn’t be excited? Along with it came new challenges. Everyone expects to be challenged learning a new job even if they are well-trained in the field. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse there were also challenges of learning to trust those around me and becoming familiar with the surroundings. It wasn’t an overt thing for me to mistrust my co-workers. I have learned to trust people at my workplace for the basic relationship a person needs to have to start working. But inside of me and I’m sure many other survivors, there is still the vigilance and wariness that seems to not quite go away. How did that affect me?
Looking back I know I was distracted as I would work on certain tasks in an area where there was a lot of people traffic. I know those people were working and they weren’t aware that it distracted me. I wasn’t totally distracted, just enough to cause me to miss some details, thus making a big mistake. Frustrating! Another thing that I see in hind sight is that when things slowed down at work, I would kind of go into a mode where I wasn’t as alert. Maybe I was a bit dissociative, not quite there. Kind of like when your computer goes into the screensaver mode. I don’t change “modes” very smoothly. I can be focused on a task and doing well and if I have to all of a sudden defocus (is that a word?) and refocus on something else, it doesn’t go smoothly. I lose where I stopped on the first task and I don’t quite get what someone might be telling me to start with. I usually have had to ask them to repeat the beginning of what they were saying.
At my last job things went smoother because I knew the job and the people. There weren’t people trying to teach me new stuff all the time. My training was also different. I had been hired to be in one department, not to learn all departments like I was at the new place. So I trained in one department for a month before they decided they wanted me to learn another department as a backup person. After a year I started training in other departments as the employer’s needs changed. That worked well. The new place was busier. I had thought since it was a small company that the work pace wouldn’t be too bad. I tend to work at a slower pace, I knew better than to look for work at a high volume company.
Survivors, are you relating? Have you had enough healing to be able to work but still find these kinds of things cause you problems? I didn’t notice them when I had a job that I knew. I wanted a better job and thought I could do it. With more time to train I know I can do it. The employer didn’t think so. Now I have to work on these problems or I will have them again when I finally get another job. What things do you have to compensate for in your life? I’d be interested in knowing.
