Blog

The next couple of years were like a blur, I had no trust in my decisions on anything and just drifted through life trying to work it out. Financially it was a huge burden trying to still hang onto the house and rent and do whatever I needed too but the debt I got myself into was spiralling and I had no form of reprieve and I was deeply in denial about my reality. I had no trust in relationships but I ventured into the world of online dating in a desperate attempt in the lonely times. It was very devastating and really not good for my mental health the whole experience and I had just given up hope and resigned myself to my life without love.

I struggled with parenting in those years to meet the demands of the financial and emotional burden of being the only adult and parent in their life and the teenage years after the hit 15 were pretty brutal. I will not discuss the issues out of respect for them and their own lives I was pretty devastated that even though I had always made them my number one priority and safety they still struggled with their own difficulties and my guilt and failure as a parent was significant at this time.

I used alcohol to cope through these tough years and I had been on antidepressants for years but through this whole period I was still able to get up every day and go to work and function and be the only person to clean and maintain the house and yard was how I spent my life and again was on auto pilot and just maintaining to stay alive.

There were only so many years that I could juggle the financial debt and responsibility with mortgage and upkeep of a huge house by myself and I was left with the only option to declare bankruptcy. It was a devastating experience, my inheritance from my father and all of my attempts to hang on so tight for security had crashed and all because I had believed in love and fallen into the web of lies and was just another huge grief and loss that was at the time more significant than any other loss in my life. I had lost so much more than a house and I felt so angry with the Universe because I had done the right thing and taken all the responsibility and debt for the safety of myself and my children and I saw this as deeply personal and being blamed.

The next three years were a whirlwind of paying huge amounts of money out of my wage to bankruptcy and not even being able to get a phone plan and my daughter had to do this for me. This was a humiliating experience and one I will never forget but the lessons I learnt even though were hard at the time was again there is never any money in the world that is worth staying in abusive relationships and my beliefs set me free and I did so which my head held high.

It was also around this time that work trauma has resurfaced and the Social Work Management that I had been under for 15 years and my direct supervisor had been the subject of a Bullying and Harassment Investigation by the whole Social Work Team at the Hospital Service I worked with. I had succumbed to being a compliant victim of abuse for years because I needed to survive and hadn’t known anything different so to go through this process was traumatising and so many old wounds and triggers surfaced that were beyond imaginable for me. This process took years and even after the allegations were substantiated the level of trauma that I and others were exposed too was absolutely criminal from an organisational level. I was just so angry that after 15 years of struggling with these issues and everyone knowing and no one did anything until then is something I will never forgive and even though the allegations were substantiated the individuals were only demoted and moved to lower paying positions in other health services and not fired.

I had developed a drinking problem going through this and is was literally what saved my life, if I didn’t have alcohol to cope I wouldn’t have survived and it lasted for years. I would drink to numb the pain every day when I got home from work until I felt no more pain and could sleep. Every night I prayed to god to not let me wake up in the morning and yet every morning I woke up. I had suffered from suicidal thoughts for most of my life at various times but it intensified now. Previously I had this strong belief that even when I thought about ending my life I would always think of my children and knowing the huge psychological and emotional impact children go through when a parent suicides this was not an option. I was their only parent and family in their life and for me it was at the time a huge burden. However, later when my children had their own struggles and I was questioning my own failure as a parent, the lure of suicide and being pain free grew very quickly and steadily and it was only a matter of time that I knew I would gain the strength to go through with it. It was when I had decided to do it that I then now know that my Spiritual Guides and Angels stepped in to protect me and I told my daughter that I couldn’t live like this anymore and I was going to book myself into Rehab and I woke up the next morning and began the process of choosing to live.

I was in the Rehab facility for about 6 weeks as an inpatient and committed to the program and really dug deep to get the help and do the work because I wanted to gain back my control of my life. I knew my life wasn’t going to look prettier but I needed to recover and heal and start the journey back to me.

Probably the biggest reason I put down to my recovery was the correct diagnosis by my Psychiatrist and getting on the right medication. I had been on antidepressants for years following the birth of my children and being diagnosed with depression but I had never been properly diagnosed and therefore was obviously not doing what it needed. I also realised that when you drink alcohol it counteracts the anti-depressant medication so it was a double pronged approach.

Regardless of all this I realised that I had good reasons to be struggling with mental health and for me who was so introverted and never spoke, to have to engage and be vulnerable in front of strangers and having the courage to tell my story was incredibly hard and painful. I knew that I had too and so I just dug deep into my courage and pulled out the strength to go all in and it didn’t get easier but every time the physical pain was a little more tolerable, or I just got used to it and was always very compliant as usual.

I was doing well mentally and strong for the first time that I could remember and was eager to jump back into my work life and we had a new Social Work Manager at work and things were going so well. I threw myself into my career and was for the first time at work embracing the changes and given opportunities that I had never been given before and it was amazing and I thrived and was looking at good things ahead. Unfortunately, however this was only short lived and the Organisation is fraught with Management who have huge amounts of Ego and their own personal desire to build their own Empire no matter what it takes and our new Social Work Manager didn’t disappoint in that area.

I had moved into an area of the hospital where I worked shift work and weekend rosters and the Team was constantly understaffed and not replaced, our work rosters were never in line with Industrial Guidelines and the workload and expectations were beyond anything reasonable. I was in that area for over 8 months and I had asked on so many occasions for the right processes with Human Resources and Employee Agreements be followed but had not eventuated. This had only led me to be targeted and subject to horrific verbal abuse, threatening behaviour and being performance reviewed because I would not stop involving Unions and Human Resources to have it sorted. All I and others wanted was for our basic workplace rights and working and pay conditions to be fair and in line with policy and legislation to be respected and followed. Because I and others stood up for ourselves we were directly targeted by our Social Work manager and leadership team as again not being team players.

The biggest disgrace in my career and profession as a Social Worker to see a Department once again fail every part of the Code of Ethics professionally that we stood for and I knew that it was time to move on, I was done and absolutely disgusted in them and never looked back.

So many others in Management Executive and Human Resources and Unions were all aware of the situation and the risk of harm to myself and others and yet they all stood by and did nothing and accepted the lies one after the other and never stepped in once again to clean up the mess and to support those of us who had to go to work every day and fight the battle to survive our management whilst trying to provide best patient care. As I have learnt like everything all the Karmic lessons come and they already have and the manager has been moved after I left but the damage is done and again for me it was too late and I had been the one to be the advocate and fight for what was right to the detriment of myself but the benefit of those who are still there.

You don’t realise how much damage happens on a psychological level until you leave such an environment and because it was so entrenched the transition took a while and even though I had taken a significant pay cut to walk away from a toxic and abusive workplace it was life affirming. I had to learn how to trust and not live in fear every day at work that I was going to be subject to ongoing abuse and that there really were good people in the world who were so incredibly supportive and helped to heal my heart and faith in the world and ironically they’re not Social Workers.