Gentle Reader, this evening I am going to do the extraordinary. I am going to attend a dinner with some of my coworkers to celebrate Creeping Christmas ("He sees you when you're sleeping; he knows when you're awake; he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake." Now if that isn't creepy then tell me, prithee Gentle Reader, what else could it be?) So, following my final work assignment of the week I will sequester myself in a comfy coffee shop with my sketchbook for a couple of hours then walk the three kilometres or so to the elegant Thai restaurant where we will hold our little soiree.
I generally avoid these events, partly because the people I work with are not my friends, nor do I expect them to be. My track record with professional social events has been rather unfortunate. Either I am treated as though invisible, or some crass blowhard will suck all the oxygen out of the room. I have had similar bad experiences in other group situations, notably in Spanish meetup groups. There are always a handful of idiots who ruin it for everyone. I used to stand up to these idiots but I was given even shorter shrift for being upset, which is a very un-Canadian trait. I will not go into what happened in some of the church groups I have been connected to but I will say this: group dynamics involving professed Christians are among the worst of my experience.
Only this week has it occurred to me that I have been isolating myself from groups. Self-protection, you know. I am reading an interesting book borrowed from one of my supervisors about Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, presumably to better inform the way I work with clients. It is turning out to be of personal value as well. It was reading something about avoiding group activities that gave me pause. Then it occurred to me: I have been intentionally avoiding groups for the last year and a half, everything outside of professional obligatory arrangements. It isn't that I don't like people, I often love being around people. But I'm exhausted. I've had such a lion's share of dumbasses, doofuses and douchebags to have to cope with in recent years that I have become downright gun-shy.
Whether from having to cope with patronizing and passive-aggressive snobs in the Anglican Church (one of many reasons why I am an ex-Anglican), to poor-bashing idiots in meetup groups making judgmental and horrible comments about poor and homeless people, without realizing that at least one of the participants has been both, and then the professional retreats and dinners.
Over a year ago at a professional retreat I was treated like garbage by other staff, presumably because they still think that peer support workers with our personal lived experience of mental illness are somehow contaminated and contagious, or perhaps they just see us as inferior beings. While one coworker was sharing a website with two coworkers, I innocently asked from the other side of the room what they were looking at. The case manager replied in a snotty and offended voice "Pornography", or, mind your own business because you are beneath us and I don't have to talk to you. Later, I asked her for an apology. She denied everything and walked away. She remained hostile towards me for several months after. Then there was the other peer support worker, who tends to suck all the oxygen out of the room. We had a particularly ugly confrontation, he refused to stop harassing me when I asked for a time out and I tried to leave the retreat. A coworker was kind enough to intercept me and allow me an hour to debrief with her. But I was traumatized.
Gentle Reader, what I wish to say through all this is the injury has accumulated and I am socially exhausted. On the other hand, I have to start reaching out again if I don't want this to turn into something pathological. I suppose if I revamp my approach a little, it could help. On the other hand, it just might be that I will be around rather nicer people during tonight's dinner than what I've become accustomed to in other worksites.
We'll see.
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