Recently I walked into a section of the building that I work in that I had never seen before. It was a room of cubicles. Desks, fluorescent light, and that weird boring badge/gray color that covers old school office furniture. My body literally reacted like I had walked into a murder scene suddenly (that’s extreme but I had a physical reaction, you get what I’m saying).
My heart started to race a little bit and I had to calm myself down. I hadn’t been in an environment like that at work since I was an engineer back in 2006. 17 years later and my body still remembers the tension of that time. I was doing a walk through the building as a part of my security job. There was even a moment that flashed through my brain where I thought someone was going to come and make me sit down and start working at the computer.
I’m not sure what it means. In times past I would have told you that this confirms that I should never do office work again. As I have matured over the years I’ve realized that interpretation is oversimplified. In 2006, I didn’t understand having balance in life and I didn’t understand myself well. This led to having my reality flipped on its head when I graduated college and started working in Corporate America. Depression, anxiety attacks, and suicidal thoughts marked that time of my life and the physical symptom I experienced when walking into that office space is just a sign that my body is still holding something from that time.
You could probably call it PTSD but I don’t want to limit myself in that regard. I like PTG (Post Traumatic Growth). I associate the office with the time, that doesn’t make offices or Corporate America bad. And maybe that is a sign of growth… I recognize that it was my own lack of balance and lack of attention to my own needs that led me to the burnout and mental breakdown I experienced at the time. It’s not the office, the desks, or corporate culture that did it. I did it. If I fall into the same patterns today with security work or writing, the same thing could happen. I’ve grown to understand that bad situations exist in an entire continuum and are the result of lots of small decisions. Now I have to get my physical body to understand that.
Has anyone had a really bad work experience that left a mark on you? What was your experience?
Travis Daigle 