Work Trauma
Let's give it a name: Delusions of Labor
Do you know the wood-creak of a string straining, tightening, tightening, pop! Do you feel the gnawing grind of your molars in your clenched jaw?
This is the anxiety I’ve felt in the workplace.
This is also how it feels to be unsafe.
I’ve often felt unsafe at work. Backed into a corner, the only way out behind the perpetrator. You will have to rush them or brush passed them. Either way, they touch you. Violate you. Your boundaries or your values or your trust.
We are not prepared for this trauma. And that’s what it is. I know because it’s imprinted on me.
I feel the fight or flight rise up like electrons pulsing through the air, lifting my hair, before lightening rips its way to the ground at my feet. I fidget, rigid in my desk chair with a feeling I’ve yet to name, but I know all too well.
You are not safe.
“Can I get out?”
Rationally, yes. Realistically, however, I need insurance and income and the unnecessary necessity of dignity from securing a job before giving notice.
You are trapped.
