Mental Health Friday #31

Today’s Mental Health story follows Lisa, who used to work as a therapist in prison, and her personal struggles with suicidal thoughts.

Firstly, I’ll say I haven’t had any intense suicidal thoughts the last few days. I’m trying to focus on- this is the Universe letting me know I’m supposed to go down a different path now. I’m telling you (my friends and family…and you too reader) who read this, so you don’t have to worry about me. But man, the day I was fired and the day after, I was thinking of suicide. I was thinking “I’m tired of this shit…” and I sobbed and sobbed. And I thought of how I would do it, and I thought of my furry babies and who could take care of them. And I would sob some more.

I REALLY would like a place of employment where I don’t have to worry about losing my job. The more I think about this past firing, they had NO reason to fire me. It all had to do with a personality conflict with my boss which sucks. I miss that job SO much.

After the first couple of days of suicidal thoughts, they disappeared. I spent the rest of last week depressed and not eating much (which is SO unlike me…I love to eat…I eat 3 meals every day). This week, I’m basically back to normal…I’m focusing on a test I need to pass.

Honestly, this is not the first time I have had suicidal thoughts. This is the first time I’m writing about it though. I don’t think it’s written about enough. More people need to know they are not alone in their darkness. That it’s scary when it’s dark. And I understand why people have thoughts of wanting to give up.

Many of my patients at the jail were scared to say they were having suicidal thoughts. They didn’t want to talk about it because they were scared that they would be put in what they called a “turtle suit” (it is a safety gown that has no sleeves and is heavy). I told them I did the job because we need to talk about suicide…as long as they didn’t have a plan or intent on how they are going to end their life, we can continue to talk.

Then, this is when I looked into someone’s eyes and see if they have any hope. I really did base on what I thought was best for a patient, by how they physically presented and if they had hope. So if I asked if they have a plan or intent, and they shake their head no but I can tell they are hopeless, they went on suicide watch. And I would tell them, you are not going to like me for doing this, but I’m worried about you and we have to put you on watch.

Back to me and my suicide thoughts. Do I have hope? Yes. I do. I have hope that I will past this test and I guess if I don’t pass…well, if I don’t pass, I’ll just have to figure out what is next.

And you, dear reader, if you have no hope right now…PLEASE know every problem has a solution. Every dark tunnel eventually gets light again. A horrible day, week, month, or year, will eventually end and there will be days filled with laughter.

And now why I was fired…I never thought I’d be a good supervisor but after having such terrible supervisors the last two places of employment, I know I could be one and be a good supervisor.

I got a new supervisor back in September. She slowly started to micromanage me. She then increased the case load of patients each day so I began to stress. About a month ago, I walked…ok stormed…out of my boss’s office cause I was tired of all this. (I just told this story to my LCSW supervisor and he said I had a right to be frustrated…so glad he saw this). We met the next week and I got written up for this and I apologized. I also agreed to see the patients that were assigned to me.

Then, a couple weeks ago, we met again and this time we discussed the overtime I was now getting. It was only a couple hours a month but my boss’s boss did not want me getting any overtime. I asked if I could go to 4 10s since I had an increase in patients. They wouldn’t do that. They asked that any overtime I thought I had to do, I had to first run it by the boss’s boss. The day I was fired, I was told I was being fired because I clocked in for a half hour on a day that we had a staff meeting and I didn’t get approval for this half hour…wait…what?!?! Yeah, I came in on my day off for a staff meeting and so since I was there, I decided to complete charts from the previous day.

This was NOT overtime though because I took my Friday off and I didn’t even want to use my PTO for this time off….I was only getting paid for 32 hours that week. Anyways, that is what they started with and I knew I was getting fired so I checked out of what ever else was being said because I was so upset. I think they said there was also a complaint from a Deputy (I have no idea what the complaint was).

So I lost this job that I LOVED due to that…Since I have no kids, my job is my life. I treated every person like they were my brother or sister (ok, there were a couple that gave me the chills and who I didn’t really want to talk to because their crime was so intense). Ugh, just thinking about this makes me sad again so I’m gonna end this blog entry now….

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Thank you very much Lisa for sharing your storu. You can catch up with Lisa at her blog (https://lisaf74.wordpress.com). If you would like to share your story on Mental Health Friday, please send me an email: Mykahani@yahoo.com Looking forward to hearing from you.