I've started in my new department in my male dominated field and between the trauma of my job hopping
- Sexually harassed at Lowe's like five times by men and women. Also gossiping from old women? Also vindictive bosses.
- getting sexually harassed at FedEx, like immediately.
-A hardware store consisting of only 3 mentally ill men that hardly trained me on anything because they wanted to control the work they weren't doing.
My new job is so wonderful but my trauma is like eating away at my brain and I'm kinda douchey to men, I can't concentrate on my training because I don't feel good enough to be treated with respect and I'm basically anticipating harassment. I'm on edge and I'm scared that this perfect job is just going to come crashing down on me. My job requires a lot of math and I'm getting overwhelmed during training, I can do it but I've met so many people (men obviously) who have treated me like I can't fuckin do anything right (after not training me of course.) and it's psyching me out when I'm trying to learn shit.
Not to mention my creepy roommate downstairs, it's all breaking me down and I've been very emotional lately. I miss being confident in everything and not man hatey and paranoid.
Sometimes wording everything out into a public post that's meant to be read helps me deal with my problems.
I think the best solution is moving away from this overpriced trashland but I gotta pay off my debt first 😔 and the job I'm panicking about is the step to doing that.
I used to have absolutely nothing at 20 and I'm just panicking that if I mess one thing up I'll revert everything WITH debt. Looking for jobs is traumatic, dealing with men is traumatic. Even getting my license involved dealing with shitty biased men and scammy schools. I'm just panicking that I'm going to somehow lose it all and I still can't accept that I'm in a decent spot right now and I feel really bad because my trainer is really nice and my coworkers are really nice and I'm worried that my crying in the bathroom is showing that I can't handle my job or that I'm not grateful or something. Also one of my bosses gives me weird vibes and it reminds me of retail where they fake smile and talk shit right after, I just feel like I'm in a time loop of only the crappiest things that have ever happened to me.
I can't even look at my body in a mirror without thinking about men who have bothered me, it's like they're bundled up in a ball judging me and I hate it.
I drank over the weekend and I think it fucked with my gut bacteria or something because I'm so sad, angry and worried all the time about weird shit these past few days.
I think you might need trauma therapy.
Sounds like you’re overwhelmed and struggling to process the impact of distress on your emotions and thoughts, maybe letting it get the better of you. Avoidance, i.e. moving away, won’t help with this. Wherever you go, you’re still stuck with you. Maybe your external environment might improve temporarily, but learned behaviours and reactions stay the same until we actively challenge ourselves to unlearn them.
You will repeat the same negative thinking patterns and unmanaged emotions unless you break the cycle through skills learned via therapy and other interventions to help with developing emotional intelligence. It takes time and effort, but investing in ourselves to learn to cope with general life stressors as well as traumas is definitely worth it. If you can’t afford therapy right now, have a look at the reading list in the FDS handbook to give you a start.
I'm Still nice to older men but when younger men smile at me or try making small talk I immediately put out a vibe that I want the interaction to end and I don't smile at them. I'm paranoid that they're going to throw a hissy fit or that they're actually going to be shitty and the cycle of me hating men will just perpetuate itself and get in the way of my job. I'm a nice person but I generally feel disgust when young men or obvious pick-mes talk to me because of my previous experiences.
Also during training I accidentally do this thing where I act cute to make something happen easier and Ive been doing that instinctively to my trainer (Using improper grammar, changing my voice octave, cracking jokes.) It's all because I don't understand something and I want the answers to be revealed faster/ something explained better so I can take it more seriously ( I'm trying to not do that), I'm worried it makes me look incompetent and it's reinforcing the voices in my mind every time I don't understand something.
It's an old trait I've acquired (at Lowe's) when I didn't want to use a forklift to get stones down and I make a man do it so I'm not responsible for anything. It was fair since I did the rest of the work at the time anyway lmaoooo.
I forgot to mention a solar company I worked for where I literally had to approach strangers and humiliate myself+ drive around without my gas covered , trying to sell solar but they weren't using effective lead grabbing techniques and I literally couldn't tell them the benefits of solar half the time because the company was like "no that's for the sales person to tell them, don't give them any details that could potentially get leads" , that job was like 14$ an hour and definitely contributed to my debt holy shit. I could only log in 35 hours a week despite probably working 50. My brain is practically mush and math is just harder now. But I'm getting the hang of it, I can do this. Working from home is definitely better than dressing up and driving an hour to an office filled with strangers and dry air