The incident

Once I realised that I needed to get out of teaching, I started looking for another job. I wasn't really awake enough at this stage of my life to know what would become my life's work so I was just looking for another job. The Defence Force was advertising for Education Officers and so I looked into that. One thing lead to another and I joined up six months later.

It was during my time as an Education Officer which really changed my life for the better and for ever. Depression hit.  Yes for the better - read on!

Let me outline what lead me into depression. It was a number of things really but one thing was the catalyst so let me start with that.

I was working overseas for a short period of time. Because it was only going to be a short project, few months, my family stayed home. The job I was sent over to do wasn't there when I arrived, so my new boss put me into something which I had never done before, had no experience with, not training and provided no support - great management skills right from the get go!

So there I was away from family support, overseas doing a job I didn't know how to do. Bad but not the end of the world. I did some research, talked to others and made the rest up. After about two months I was starting to get on top of things and thought, "I can do this".

But then it all started to go down hill. The boss, in his great management style started to belittle me in front of all of management; work me hard and make me present my work at board meetings where he hadn't before, pick apart my work to the smallest degree, in front of everyone. I took some solace in the fact that he was also doing this to others - it wasn't personal.

The whole general feel of the office went down and down until people were all being very nasty to each other, blaming each other (sometimes for things that didn't even happen). The Boss' PA quit because she was sick of him yelling at her and throwing his coffee at her. The local medical adviser quick because he was sick of his public bullying and belittling. I couldn't quit as I had a family to support and I just kept hoping that this project would be completed and I would head home to my regular position soon. He wouldn't let any of the ladies sit or meet together without a man in the group because he said that without a man, all the ladies would just gossip.A real catch right!!!

I could go on but I think you get the general idea - this man was a pig.  (I know now that he was suffering, but that took me a while to come to terms with.)

Bit by bit the fear/anxiety arose in the pit of my stomach, I didn't want to face it anymore, then came the inability to sleep (which was a big deal for me as I use to fall asleep on the plane - before takeoff) and when sleep did come, there were nightmares, and the constant and total feeling that I was simply not good enough; for anything.

At the time I thought that this was the only issue bothering me, but through mindfulness (and some professional counselling and Psychological support) I was able to guess (I would like to say confirm but can you ever really be sure)  that I had unresolved issues from my past which also lead to my feeling of total inadequacy. I will not go into them now but let them come out throughout the rest of these blogs as they did for me, little by little.

What I have learned most about this is that it doesn't take a major incident to push someone out of balance, I mean, I didn't have a near death experience, I didn't see someone die in front of me or loose a loved one.....I was a victim of workplace bullying.

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Please be gentle with yourself and others as you never know how they are, what other pressures they are under and what a little bit extra stress might do to them; or that just a little bit of compassion might be enough to help them out.

Thanks for reading.