Post No. 2,605 - Recovering from a corporate life - Episode 17: Continuing problems with trauma

Posts in this series are now listed at https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/p/recovering-from-corporate-life.html. 

PS - expect these to be edited fairly often. Writing these is part of the healing process, and will bring up more insights,etc. 

PPS - much of this may also apply to the effects of being an activist aka human rights defender, or a member of a minority. 

The last three posts in this series have been about trauma. 

And the trauma is still continuing - not only for me, but for everyone else who is still stuck in the currently patriarchal corporate world ...  

I had a routine session with my GP recently, and she commented that crashing this way is common ... It’s good to know that (as knowing that is affirming for me), but that reinforces the almost pathological inadequacies of communication in much of society today. 

When I left I got a lot of, frankly, unexpected good will. As I think I mentioned in one of the other posts in this series, communication in the corporate world needs to be balanced - my experience over most of the decades I worked was of endless criticism and, too often, abuse over deadlines and the amount of profit, and egregious aggression from project managers who wanted their project given priority over other, often more important, projects.

In fact, at one stage in the 80s I was told by a colleague that I was respected, and, in light of the endless abuse I was receiving at the time, I asked him to tell those people who allegedly respected me to give me a crumb of praise ... and nothing happened. 

Which is quite telling of the hostile, toxic psychology of the people I was working with at the time, and too many since then. 

And it is no wonder, after nearly half a century of that, that I still need help for depression and trauma. 

In terms of managing that accumulated damage, what I want is to spend a few months just decompressing/destressing, but I need to keep going with exercise, meditation, creative outlets, etc. So I am - but I am cutting those activities back to what I can manage to do regularly for now, and I will increase them later, when I can. 

Two activities that helped keep me sane while I was studying at Uni were playing music and sketching: I've been doing the sketching still, but will do more, and am thinking of buying a cheap musical instrument to get back in to that (no audiences will be inflicted with my attempts, and there will be no musical career!).

That’s good for me, but does nothing to change the corporate world. That will have to rely on other activists ... 

There is another matter I want to touch on in this post: the flawed psychology behind not listening. 

The video “Autism and Anger Management” includes an excellent comment about needing to be heard, and that anger can be a reaction to not being heard - which is more than just being listened to, it also includes some sort of response that demonstrates that - even if disagreed with - what was said was heard and understood. 

There are many incidents in my childhood where I was not heard or not even listened to (such as the <expletive deleted> notion of getting changed behind towels on the beach - towels that inattentive aunts dropped and caused humiliation and belittlement, until I eventually refused to partake in that rubbish [I also eventually refused to get dragged around to strangers - well, they were to me, even if they were friends to my parents - houses on the weekend), and there are other examples - such as the sceptics unbelievably insulting, clueless and dishonest claims about the Ariel School mass UFO sighting. 

The one person claiming he lied to start the event is not credible in any way, shape, or form, and is typical of the sort of emotional cowardice disguised as “intellectual” cowardice (although they pretend to themselves and others that it is something different) that is behind - or partly behind - many problems, such as denialism of the reality of the climate crisis, denialism of the reality of structural discrimination, and denialism of the reality of the need to change economies and workplaces away from what people were used to and thus comfortable in, and denialism of the reality of having to grieve at some of these changes ... you know, the sort of problematic psychology of many of my abusers in workplaces (especially in the 80s and 90s - DEI work has made a massive improvement for the better). 

To manage this, people need to learn to be comfortable with emotions, and competent at being human.

I’ll leave this post at that, for now at least.

Blessed be.

I am writing this series in the hope that it will contribute to a better understanding - or at least better research into the effects of - the so-called developed world’s economic systems - which are based on the world-destroying amathia of perpetual growth, and patriarchal oligarchical capitalism expressed as often expressed corporatism and neoliberalism.

 

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below, and there’s also Instagram and Mastodon. 

Vote Yes for the Voice in Australia - see this backgrounder.  

Finally, remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, and to mind our Mӕgan.