5/19/19: I hate how I’ve been feeling lately.
5/20/19: Why do I feel so out of whack?
Those were the first sentences of my journal entries for those days.
I’ve been thinking a lot about where I was a year ago. I was a mess, to put it lightly. I never felt such drastic swings in my mood as I did back then.
Before the initial downward swing, things felt like they were falling into place in my personal life. I was happy and enjoying the beginnings of a new relationship. I was creating deeper bonds with my friends and family. I was working on building my business with the plan to make the leap into full-time private practice in the fall.
But I was fucking miserable in my work life.
I might have alluded to this in past posts. The mental health community in any given city, is relatively small. This has kept me from saying too much about my experience. Honestly, I’m kind of done with silencing myself for the benefit of others. The truth of it is that I worked in a toxic environment.
You would expect that working in the mental health field would lead to greater compassion, healthy communication, and encouragement of self-care. The reality is that people are still human and unless you are doing your own work and willing to gain awareness and insight, you will continue on autopilot. This may look like projecting your feelings onto others, defensiveness, sitting in feelings of envy and insecurity, unhealthy communication, etc. I cannot express just how grateful I am to be out of that environment.
I spent years dealing with microaggressions, macroaggressions, invalidation, underhandedness, and moments of harassment. While I also worked with some really supportive and amazing individuals, it couldn’t make up for the toxicity of my environment.
Examining the difference in how I feel from last year to now is eye-opening.
My physical, emotional, and mental health were suffering at the time. Eventually, the stress of my work environment began to seep out into my personal life, affecting my interactions with my loved ones. I felt constantly on edge, slept terribly, and generally felt emotionally unsafe. That all melted away as soon as I left that environment and started my practice full-time. Unfortunately, that didn’t fix any damage already done in some situations and relationships.
This has been on my mind more lately, as I’ve spent the last few weeks researching and preparing for a discussion I was co-leading on microaggressions in and out of the therapy room. It brought back memories of those terrible experiences. It made me look back and realize just how much it had really affected me.
So here I am, a year out from the peak of all that toxicity and stress and eight months into my practice. It feels almost blissful. It is night and day. I don’t have to deal with the ignorance, insecurities, or racism of coworkers or supervisors.
But damn, does it still exist in the world around us.
I am so heartbroken over all of the recent violence against the black community. In the last few weeks, I have watched horrific videos of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Christian Cooper, as well as listened to the 911 call for Breonna Taylor. That doesn’t include the violence against protestors and the trauma we’ve been living through with this pandemic and how that is disproportionately impacting our minority communities.
It’s not enough to not be racist. We MUST be anti-racist. We must examine our own biases and beliefs about others. We must examine how our fear and insecurity impacts how we view and interact with others. We must speak up. We must make change.
I am dedicated to serving as an ally to my fellow minority and marginalized communities. I am dedicated to speaking up and educating others. I am dedicated to helping those struggling with fears of “the other” and wanting to process any racist, sexist, heterosexist beliefs in order to better embrace others and work towards being anti all of that. I am dedicated to providing a safe space for clients, friends, family, and strangers to share their experiences and feelings about those experiences.
How will you dedicate to making positive change in our community?
