Second Edition
Stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, bullying, and burnout have become “accepted realities” of the modern workplace. This book will unpack contemporary workplace realities, educate you about PTSD, and help you build your personalized recovery plan for transformation and recovery.
Each exercise in the workbook walks you through a process of self-reflection and self-discovery to help you understand and make sense of your situation.
Recovering from PTSD is a step-by-step process. Whether you want to make a change in the next couple of months or the next few years, this workbook is designed to help you achieve the following:
- Open your mind to explore your PTSD recovery options creatively.
- Identify and understand the triggered emotions that surface with your PTSD symptoms.
- Deepen your approach to life and your lifestyle needs.
- Define what you need in your work environment to feel healthy and happy.
- Outline your recovery action plan and personal recovery steps.
- Transform your passions and interests into a viable recovery plan.
- Systematically walk you through how to research and contact local support professionals so you can achieve your recovery goals.
This recovery program has six core purposes:
Validate your current situation. This recovery program begins by validating your experiences and breaking through any denial you may be experiencing by examining all the ways you could be traumatized at work.
Identify your realities. Once you understand how you’ve been traumatized, you’ll learn about how PTSD develops and how to break through the defenses that protect you from the painful experiences you’re facing.
Understand workplace PTSD. Armed with a deeper understanding of what PTSD is, how it develops, and how you react to trauma, you will be able to identify the support you’ll need to heal and recover.
Build your recovery team and develop your action plan. Useful tools and techniques will help you connect with and build your support professionals and advocates team. Once you begin working with your team, you’ll start the recovery process by acquiring skills and techniques to help you weather the storm and start healing.
Grieve, mourn, and let go. Recovery will take you on a journey of grieving, mourning, and letting go, transporting you to a new sense of calm and acceptance. I’ll break down this journey into the stages you’ll travel through to get to the other side.
Come to terms with and recover from the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The COVID-19 global Pandemic has left a lasting impact on all our lives. I will review the Pandemic’s mental health, physical health, and social implications and share tools and techniques that will help you manage the trauma and stress the Pandemic brings.
Maintain your recovery. Finally, I’ll share helpful ways to maintain your recovery, manage setbacks with compassion, and track your progress to proactively navigate the inevitably choppy waters as you continue your healthy and productive recovery.
Your career impacts your mental health in many important ways. A career that allows you to apply your unique talents and skills in a satisfying and personally fulfilling way spills over into other areas of your life in a positive way. A rewarding career enables you to express who you are and live the life you want. Sometimes, though, a job may look great in theory, but it clashes with who you are and how you want to live your life, and you cannot find a way to include your needs and desires at work.Our work environments are distinctly different from the contexts we live in with our friends and families. Switching between work and non-work time requires us to take on vastly different cultural and behavioral norms. The divergence between those two worlds often leads to cognitive and emotional conflicts within us.
The first step in your recovery process is acknowledging the workplace realities contributing to your PTSD symptoms. The main goal of this workbook section is to help you identify those realities that are also seeping into your leisure time. You'll review some workplace realities that are proven to contribute to the development of PTSD symptoms and identify their impacts. If you're being abused or have experienced a traumatic event at work, you're not alone, and many treatments and support resources are available to support you through your recovery. If you're experiencing extreme symptoms that are making your life difficult to manage, I encourage you to skip ahead to Section 3, which covers how to find the support you need.
I hope that this workbook section brings you comfort, hope, and optimism by learning to more clearly understand your realities at work. My objective is to give you clarity on how your situation at work could be contributing to the development of PTSD symptoms and impacting your mental health. Your workplace PTSD recovery journey begins by seeing your situation more clearly and opening yourself up to finding the support you need to recover.
