Confused

The day of my occupational health assessment arrived.  I spent most of the day walking on the beach with my dog and a friend in the unusually warm sunshine.  The coastline here is stunning and we walked on golden sands, climbed across rocks and around clear rock pools.  My dog lay in pools and rolled in the sand – it was glorious, and a perfect distraction from the impending encounter with occupational health.

I arrived for the appointment in good time and feeling unusually calm.  I went in and found the nurse doing the assessment to be lovely and easy to chat with.  It was easy to talk about my BPD and how that affects me in general terms.  We discovered she knew Joy from a few years ago.

At the end she advised me not to worry and told me she would need an additional report from joy to make sure that doing the job will not cause me harm.  She said I might get called back in to see one of the occupational health Drs.

At first I was relieved, but having had time to reflect I am now very uncertain of how things will go.  I still have the fear that having got this far I will not be allowed to take the job after all.

The Summons

The letter arrived at the weekend, the dreaded summons for an occupational health assessment. 

It isn’t even in a morning.  I will have until 3.30 in the afternoon to worry about it.  By that time, subject to a miracle I will be in such a state of anxiety that I won’t be able to get a sentence out with the words in the right order, I will be hideously sweaty, I will need a toilet very close at hand and my blood pressure, should they decide to take it, will be through the roof.

That cliff edge I talked about – the one where I was waiting to be pushed.  Well, the hand is now applying steady pressure to my back.

I know they are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of a diagnostic label – but what if they do?  What if they want to check my blood pressure or take a blood test and ask me to roll up the sleeve on my left arm.  It does not look good at the moment, with recent cuts as well as old scars.  You can’t begin to imagine how much I hate her (private self).  She is so pathetic.  How can I explain that the BPD / private self is separate to my professional self and social self.  I know that sounds mad.  I can’t talk about myself in three persons at an occupational health assessment, they’ll think I have trinitarian delusions or something silly. 

What should I do?  Do I risk the fall and the ensuing devastation if they do push me over the cliff with a rejection?  Do I withdraw from the job offer?  Do I use lots of beta blockers and blag my way through the appointment? 

It’s typical isn’t it – the time I really could do with some help to start trying to use DBT in a real situation, where I am very vulnerable and anxious - it coincides with Joy being on holiday for two weeks.

On A Cliff Edge...

Back in January, in an “Up” moment and aware of our financial precariousness, I applied for two jobs.  Much to my surprise I was invited to two interviews.

The first interview, as it loomed towards me got me thinking.  I realised that being committed to regular hours would, at the moment, be setting myself up to fail.  There was no way I could manage set hours plus DBT, which when it starts properly will involve 3 hours a week of therapy in a two hour and a separate one hour session, plus a minimum of three hours travelling time, plus homework, plus recovery from the emotional battering it seems to be creating.  I therefore withdrew my application. I felt pretty rubbish that with the equivalent of 2 degrees and years and years of professional experience I can’t even manage a simple job.

I was just swinging into a big low over this when the second invite to interview arrived.  This job gave me the option to choose from week to week how many hours I work and therefore the scope to work around my ups and downs.  I decided to attend the interview.  

At the interview my professional self graced me with her presence and so it went very well.  The upshot is I have been offed a job subject to CRB check (which I know is OK) and occupational health approval.

Occupational health approval!  Terrifying!  I know they are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of a diagnosis alone.   They can only turn me down on health grounds if the specific job would make me a danger/risk to myself or others.  What if they interpret my history of self-harm a  “a risk to me?”  If they do I am probably barred from working for years till I can prove it is a habit from the past (which it isn’t yet – but I am working on it through the DBT).  What if, bearing in mind the reputation a BPD label has, they just find an excuse to say no?

I don’t deal with rejection well.  I cope with failure even less helpfully.  When faced with being judged unfairly or discriminated against, I am a disaster!  

I feel as if I am standing on a cliff edge, waiting to be pushed off.