Lived Experience Forum

[TheVorticon]

As per the title, at my workplace there's going to be a speech from a mental health ambassador. That's great for awareness and all, but I'm well along my journey of awareness. Based on the written description of the event and the speaker I reckon I'll be triggered in a particular way by the presentation. I'm not really in a place to be hearing other people's stories without it making my own challenges harder to deal with.

I'm thinking it's best for me not to attend. It's not mandatory, however it's on the day that everyone around me will be in the office. It will likely be conspicuous if I don't go. They're also having a free lunch afterwards so I'll miss out on that... which is a bigger issue to me because I hate the lunches that I bring to work.

I'm not sure what excuse I can come up with for not attending. I can't really lie about having lots of work to do. I can hide out in the bathroom when it's time to go (or tell people that I'll head over in a moment), and do the same when it's time for it to finish, but I'm sure it'll still be evident to someone that I didn't go. If I only get asked once then I'd be willing to pull off a "I was looking after my own mental health by not going" as a throwaway joke line but I don't want anyone to take that seriously, which they would if I had to repeat it to another person.

So yeah, I dunno. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Bow]

Oh that’s a tough one @TheVorticon 

its good that you are aware of your own limitations and where your at. 

back when I was working, I worked with kids in out of home care, we had to do some training around self harm and suicide. I pulled my boss aside and mentioned that it had been something that I had struggled with in the past and wasn’t sure how I would go with the training. My boss was super understanding and gave me the option to attend or not. In the end I did attend, but did duck out a couple of times to have a breather. 

can you speak with your boss? Would that be an option? 
Could you go into the meeting room…. But pop out as they begin to speak to use the bathroom? 

[tyme]

Does going and ducking out because of an 'emergency phone call' work??? @TheVorticon 

[TheVorticon]

Thanks for the suggestions @Bow and @tyme. I don't think the room is very duck-out-able unfortunately, as I think they're doing it in the restricted access area where they'll let us in for the talk but normally I don't have access.

[NatureLover]

@TheVorticon  Can you take a sick day that day? 

[TheVorticon]

Yeah I could theoretically @NatureLover.

[nervouswreck]

@TheVorticon Just call in sick with food poisoning.  Nobody ever questions explosive diarrhoea!

[TheVorticon]

I ended up going to the presentation. I didn't want it to stop me from going to work and then someone else cancelled a meeting that was during that time period, saying that it was worth attending if I hadn't seen him before. Before it started my boss asked if I was going and so I just decided to say yes.

Thankfully it didn't really bring up the thing I thought it might. I got my free lunch afterwards lol. There's something that I could get out of the presentation even if I didn't need the 'awareness' section of it. So all in all it was a relative success for me.

[tyme]

I've just breathed a sigh of relief for you 🙂 @TheVorticon  Well done!

[nervouswreck]

@TheVorticon amazing how our minds conjure up *absolute certainties* that turn out to be imaginary, eh?

Well done for turning up!  You faced things head on and won.