Traumatic Recall
17 April 2020
This week during lockdown I've been thinking about trauma and traumatic recall. Being stuck at home with too much time to think and the anxiety of the situation affecting sleep, whether through horrible dreams or insomnia, is a perfect combination to unlock the brain's cage for past difficulties. Ranging from agonising if that text message was annoying to holy-mother-forking-shirtballs realisations about what your past self experienced, everything seems at once amplified and dwarfed by the enormity and seriousness of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. But it's there and isn't going away and it does matter, so what do we do with it?
I've been managing anxiety and symptoms of PTSD for what feels like a very long time, certainly in different forms throughout most of my 35 years. This has mostly been rooted in grief from the deaths of close family members and friends on a fairly regular basis for the first 22 of my years. Then came abusive relationships, and hating myself for being so stupid. This was alongside finding myself in toxic workplace and educational environments. It took me a long time to see these situations for what they were and to forgive myself and see that they weren't my fault. As is customary, they became much worse before they got better, and I learned hard lessons in who were my true friends.
I had always latched onto study and academic achievement to give me a sense of worth and ploughed myself into revising for exams, research and honing my argumentation and use of evidence to distract me from the pain I carry. There were times when it would erupt to the surface and people around me would think I had gone from cold and aloof to crazy and intense, none of which reflect what I feel I am. Inside I feel like the scared nearly-nine-year-old whose dad died at home on a Sunday afternoon. I feel like the many-times reassembled broken bits of a person, some of which didn't make it back to me. I feel tired from constantly having to justify my existence, my presence, and exasperated from never being listened to when I can work out future consequences to present in/actions. What hurt the most was when it was my sanctuary - my work - that began to hurt me in all these ways.
My doctoral research led me to studying trauma and traumatic recall specific to the Northern Ireland conflict. During those years of study and the subsequent years of working on the book and further publications, I carried many other people's experiences while my own got pushed deeper inside. I was also trying to begin an academic career, which for me like so many others meant constantly fighting the multiplying fires of applying for jobs, grants and postdocs, worrying about being homeless, lurching from one temporary contract to another across the UK year after year, months spent staying with people between those contracts, starting from scratch in a new city time and again, making friends and leaving them, excelling in jobs only for them to come to an end, countless rejections even when I couldn't have performed better in interviews and was being told I was impressive and clearly a good teacher, all while marking dissertations and essays and films and advising my students on their own career options and having to listen while they blurted out their traumas without warning, not in any way considering that that's not what I was there for and not realising I would get through the conversation then stumble home and cry alone for hours before I could pick myself up to work late into the night to make up for the lost evening because I was pulling at least 60-hour weeks just to stay vaguely afloat.
And then a job came. I didn't feel right. In fact, it felt very wrong and not at all a good place for me. But I took it because I was beaten and had no confidence and thought it was my last chance. There were personal reasons too. It wasn't the right time to move in with my partner, which I would otherwise have had to do. And there was no point in returning to Belfast either, as there was even less for me work-wise there. So I took the job, and it was the worst decision of my life, a decision I felt I had no choice but to make. Even when I took the phone call offering me the position, the person who became my line manager put me down and made me feel like crap. I was on a crowded train and was exhausted from schlepping around the length and breadth of the country (no exaggeration) for interviews all that summer. I said yes and took the abuse with a grateful smile. This person and my team leader who hated each other became united in their mental and emotional torture of me over the ensuing months.
Having survived an abusive relationship, I knew all the signs. I was being gaslit. They would say they have to do certain things a certain way because of university policy. When I would check the policy to back up my objections, they would deny what they'd said in previous emails or meetings. When I told my line manager I felt I was being bullied by my team leader, she would tell me I was upset and distracted because I was homesick (inferring mental imbalance) and recommended counselling. When I raised concerns about our students' well-being and the implied expectation that they work all weekend and weekday evenings on their film practice, I was told that's what they were there for. When I was worried about a specific student not coping with his severe depression, I was told he was just partying and hungover all the time and that he was lazy. There were others I did - without judgement - reckon were doing this for reasons of being first-year undergrads, but they were given preferential treatment and happened to be of European rather than of recent African origin. There were students who were being put down for their 'lack of effort' in their practice who I knew were first-generation students working two jobs to just about cover their food and accommodation costs. Some had never been away from their small town before and were overwhelmed by greater Manchester, as was I. I was made to work in an open-plan office even though I was more productive at home or in the library. I am hypersensitive to sound, movement and bright lights. The lighting gave me headaches. Freezing air conditioning blasted in a room full of windows that could not be opened. I was tortured continually with people talking at me and never letting me work. I asked for discussions to be kept for planned meetings and was told I was unreasonable and called a complainer. I took training from a university that was pushing increased use of online teaching resources, seeing it as a great solution to these practice students never having time to do their theory work and who were struggling to attend because of their relentless production deadlines (and because they were getting the implied message that the theory wasn't important even though that's the only thing that differentiated the degree from the B-Tech qualifications many of them already had). My team leader also tried to bump my teaching in favour of talks (i.e. exploitative recruitment) by 'industry professionals'. I figured if I wasn't important enough to have around, then surely they'd welcome the provision of my materials online. But it wasn't about that, it was about control.
When I became so ill with stress that I could no longer go to the building, I kept working and released my lectures on the virtual learning environment, which also, even three years ago, had capacity for online seminars and discussion - everything many universities and schools are very quickly adopting now during pandemic lockdown. I was trained and ready for that. But no provisions or allowances were made for my ill-health caused by my work environment. Although I proved using time-stamped documentation (I know a thing or two about surveillance, after all) that I never stopped working - even after going to A&E with extreme chest pain and breathing difficulties - my line manager reported me to Human Resources for unauthorised leave and they moved to fire me via disciplinary action in which they would make me face my abusers. With great support from the UCU representatives who fought against this and fired a rocket when my line manager called my mobile and emailed my personal account daily when I was on doctor-approved sick-leave, I just about survived (I cannot stress the precarity of my being alive through this enough, really).
I slowly put together a dossier, an activity which, while difficult, gave me purpose every day. I had to do something to confront the injustice, the cruelty, their blaming of me for problems I could prove they caused, and their lack of reasonable adjustment for my health issues. It wasn't just for me that I was fighting it; these same two were bullying other colleagues, and in general this is how far too many disabled and ill people get treated in their workplaces. It's not the fuck okay. I delivered the dossier to HR with my resignation. I got a pay-off. Not a big one, because I had no rights, but enough to keep me while too ill to work. Under strained circumstances I returned to my partner in Newcastle where I've been since.
Having only recently felt like I'd turned a corner and regained enough of myself back to properly restart, we're now faced with the pandemic. I was already concerned with the climate crisis, and I want more people to take the connections between the two seriously so that we may rethink how we live in the world. I want to crash these cruel systems and cruel actions once and for all. A few weeks ago I experienced a deep panic and tidal wave of painful memories so ferocious that I was prepared to let the virus take me. A painful death to end a painful life. I have more resolve now to survive and live well, and to accept that the pain is part of me, to carry it but not be ruled by it, and, importantly, not to ignore it. It doesn't go away, and it doesn't necessarily get easier. It's just part of who I am and that's okay. I hope if you're struggling with the pain you carry, you find a way through it.
If you enjoy my posts, consider donating to liberapay.com/peablair. Thank you!
This week during lockdown I've been thinking about trauma and traumatic recall. Being stuck at home with too much time to think and the anxiety of the situation affecting sleep, whether through horrible dreams or insomnia, is a perfect combination to unlock the brain's cage for past difficulties. Ranging from agonising if that text message was annoying to holy-mother-forking-shirtballs realisations about what your past self experienced, everything seems at once amplified and dwarfed by the enormity and seriousness of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. But it's there and isn't going away and it does matter, so what do we do with it?
I've been managing anxiety and symptoms of PTSD for what feels like a very long time, certainly in different forms throughout most of my 35 years. This has mostly been rooted in grief from the deaths of close family members and friends on a fairly regular basis for the first 22 of my years. Then came abusive relationships, and hating myself for being so stupid. This was alongside finding myself in toxic workplace and educational environments. It took me a long time to see these situations for what they were and to forgive myself and see that they weren't my fault. As is customary, they became much worse before they got better, and I learned hard lessons in who were my true friends.
I had always latched onto study and academic achievement to give me a sense of worth and ploughed myself into revising for exams, research and honing my argumentation and use of evidence to distract me from the pain I carry. There were times when it would erupt to the surface and people around me would think I had gone from cold and aloof to crazy and intense, none of which reflect what I feel I am. Inside I feel like the scared nearly-nine-year-old whose dad died at home on a Sunday afternoon. I feel like the many-times reassembled broken bits of a person, some of which didn't make it back to me. I feel tired from constantly having to justify my existence, my presence, and exasperated from never being listened to when I can work out future consequences to present in/actions. What hurt the most was when it was my sanctuary - my work - that began to hurt me in all these ways.
My doctoral research led me to studying trauma and traumatic recall specific to the Northern Ireland conflict. During those years of study and the subsequent years of working on the book and further publications, I carried many other people's experiences while my own got pushed deeper inside. I was also trying to begin an academic career, which for me like so many others meant constantly fighting the multiplying fires of applying for jobs, grants and postdocs, worrying about being homeless, lurching from one temporary contract to another across the UK year after year, months spent staying with people between those contracts, starting from scratch in a new city time and again, making friends and leaving them, excelling in jobs only for them to come to an end, countless rejections even when I couldn't have performed better in interviews and was being told I was impressive and clearly a good teacher, all while marking dissertations and essays and films and advising my students on their own career options and having to listen while they blurted out their traumas without warning, not in any way considering that that's not what I was there for and not realising I would get through the conversation then stumble home and cry alone for hours before I could pick myself up to work late into the night to make up for the lost evening because I was pulling at least 60-hour weeks just to stay vaguely afloat.
And then a job came. I didn't feel right. In fact, it felt very wrong and not at all a good place for me. But I took it because I was beaten and had no confidence and thought it was my last chance. There were personal reasons too. It wasn't the right time to move in with my partner, which I would otherwise have had to do. And there was no point in returning to Belfast either, as there was even less for me work-wise there. So I took the job, and it was the worst decision of my life, a decision I felt I had no choice but to make. Even when I took the phone call offering me the position, the person who became my line manager put me down and made me feel like crap. I was on a crowded train and was exhausted from schlepping around the length and breadth of the country (no exaggeration) for interviews all that summer. I said yes and took the abuse with a grateful smile. This person and my team leader who hated each other became united in their mental and emotional torture of me over the ensuing months.
Having survived an abusive relationship, I knew all the signs. I was being gaslit. They would say they have to do certain things a certain way because of university policy. When I would check the policy to back up my objections, they would deny what they'd said in previous emails or meetings. When I told my line manager I felt I was being bullied by my team leader, she would tell me I was upset and distracted because I was homesick (inferring mental imbalance) and recommended counselling. When I raised concerns about our students' well-being and the implied expectation that they work all weekend and weekday evenings on their film practice, I was told that's what they were there for. When I was worried about a specific student not coping with his severe depression, I was told he was just partying and hungover all the time and that he was lazy. There were others I did - without judgement - reckon were doing this for reasons of being first-year undergrads, but they were given preferential treatment and happened to be of European rather than of recent African origin. There were students who were being put down for their 'lack of effort' in their practice who I knew were first-generation students working two jobs to just about cover their food and accommodation costs. Some had never been away from their small town before and were overwhelmed by greater Manchester, as was I. I was made to work in an open-plan office even though I was more productive at home or in the library. I am hypersensitive to sound, movement and bright lights. The lighting gave me headaches. Freezing air conditioning blasted in a room full of windows that could not be opened. I was tortured continually with people talking at me and never letting me work. I asked for discussions to be kept for planned meetings and was told I was unreasonable and called a complainer. I took training from a university that was pushing increased use of online teaching resources, seeing it as a great solution to these practice students never having time to do their theory work and who were struggling to attend because of their relentless production deadlines (and because they were getting the implied message that the theory wasn't important even though that's the only thing that differentiated the degree from the B-Tech qualifications many of them already had). My team leader also tried to bump my teaching in favour of talks (i.e. exploitative recruitment) by 'industry professionals'. I figured if I wasn't important enough to have around, then surely they'd welcome the provision of my materials online. But it wasn't about that, it was about control.
When I became so ill with stress that I could no longer go to the building, I kept working and released my lectures on the virtual learning environment, which also, even three years ago, had capacity for online seminars and discussion - everything many universities and schools are very quickly adopting now during pandemic lockdown. I was trained and ready for that. But no provisions or allowances were made for my ill-health caused by my work environment. Although I proved using time-stamped documentation (I know a thing or two about surveillance, after all) that I never stopped working - even after going to A&E with extreme chest pain and breathing difficulties - my line manager reported me to Human Resources for unauthorised leave and they moved to fire me via disciplinary action in which they would make me face my abusers. With great support from the UCU representatives who fought against this and fired a rocket when my line manager called my mobile and emailed my personal account daily when I was on doctor-approved sick-leave, I just about survived (I cannot stress the precarity of my being alive through this enough, really).
I slowly put together a dossier, an activity which, while difficult, gave me purpose every day. I had to do something to confront the injustice, the cruelty, their blaming of me for problems I could prove they caused, and their lack of reasonable adjustment for my health issues. It wasn't just for me that I was fighting it; these same two were bullying other colleagues, and in general this is how far too many disabled and ill people get treated in their workplaces. It's not the fuck okay. I delivered the dossier to HR with my resignation. I got a pay-off. Not a big one, because I had no rights, but enough to keep me while too ill to work. Under strained circumstances I returned to my partner in Newcastle where I've been since.
Having only recently felt like I'd turned a corner and regained enough of myself back to properly restart, we're now faced with the pandemic. I was already concerned with the climate crisis, and I want more people to take the connections between the two seriously so that we may rethink how we live in the world. I want to crash these cruel systems and cruel actions once and for all. A few weeks ago I experienced a deep panic and tidal wave of painful memories so ferocious that I was prepared to let the virus take me. A painful death to end a painful life. I have more resolve now to survive and live well, and to accept that the pain is part of me, to carry it but not be ruled by it, and, importantly, not to ignore it. It doesn't go away, and it doesn't necessarily get easier. It's just part of who I am and that's okay. I hope if you're struggling with the pain you carry, you find a way through it.
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| View from the fells near Kendal, Cumbria |
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If you enjoy my posts, consider donating to liberapay.com/peablair. Thank you!
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