The thing that keeps living in my head rent free is the job I left because of my boss. With time and distance, I've begun to sort out what happened there and how it's affected me. Having to be afraid to go to work is never okay. My boss was an irrational terror. He constantly put me down, my work (and the work of my peers) wasn't ever good enough for him, though he never communicated what he actually wanted, he even wrote several of us up for talking to one another. It became a situation where we literally couldn't confer with our co-workers for fear he would see us talking to one another and be angry. He once spent a half an hour berating me, while I cried, because he believed I was rolling my eyes. He went so far as to accuse me of victimizing the people he perceived I was rolling my eyes about.
Our department had ten employees when I was there. Another girl, who he also terrorized, left around the same time I did. The team's videographer moved out of town. And one of the other employees left for a better job. All four of us left because our boss was completely awful. After I left, I learned he had told those who remained that he wanted to move them into one big room and have all the desks face the walls (which he did), where he could watch them to make sure they weren't talking to one another.
Here's the thing. Since leaving that place, I cannot bring myself to even apply for another professional job. Any time I even consider it, I have to take my anxiety rescue meds. I cannot even contemplate working for anyone, because every single ounce of belief in myself is completely gone. That job left me empty, doubting myself, and feeling so small that I can't fathom that anyone would even hire me.
I think the worst thing of all, though, is that I absolutely feel that that job completely robbed me of my new career. I was training (at substantial personal expense) to be an instructional designer and I was good at it! Now, I can't even think about returning to instructional design without getting sick to my stomach.
I believe I have workplace PTSD, which I've recently learned is actually a thing. At this point, the only person being hurt by this is me. I know that, but I can't seem to move past it. What hurts the most about that is that this boss is just going to go on treating the people who choose to work for him the same way he treated me and my peers, but because he's a VP at the college, he's out of reach. It doesn't matter how many people file HR complaints about him (I did and so did some of my co-workers). He's more valuable to them than we are, so we end up fodder while he keeps his $150k a year job. It's pretty gross.
I work for myself right now, doing independent contract work, and I still teach comp online. I do a great job at what I do, but I still can't move past what happened with this job. So, 2023 turned out to be difficult, but so far 2024 has been pretty great. Let's hope that with enough time and separation from that job, that I can begin to move on. Or maybe, I'll get therapy. Here's hoping, because I suspect that I won't ever move past this alone!
