Anxiety, Trauma, and Training

Just short of 15 years ago, I was hired into an industry in which I had never considered working.  It was the best career decision I’ve made.  I truly enjoy my work – the challenges and the learning opportunities.

I work for a larger company now.  This one has a more varied offering of products.  It also has a significant union-attached workforce.  During contract renegotiation years, those of us who are not union-attached are required to take training in certain jobs that are typically staffed by union employees – just in case there is a work stoppage.

This is the first year I’ve received such an assignment. 

Over the last few months, there have been several days where I could feel my checst constricting and breathing seemed difficult.  This is typically the greatest indicator that I have some anxiety.  

This morning, I was driving to training for my contingency assignment; my chest was getting tighter the closer I got to the training facility; and I was having trouble breathing.  As I kept trying to figure out what was bothering me, I started to remember my college days as an intern.

Prior to entering the workforce myself, my entire experience with a union strike was that, for the few years he worked in a union shop, my dad would be home during the day during a work stoppage. 

In college, I was a co-op student (intern) at UPS.  This was in the mid to late 90’s when the company experienced it’s first ever nationwide strike.  Our facility was quite large (16 acre building plus grounds) and was, at the time, the sole driver dispatch location for a fairly large metro area. 

During the strike, I was told that I needed to start parking inside the fenced area of the facility to ensure the safety of my vehicle.  I was given no other information on what to expect or how to handle any sort of situation.

The first day that I had to drive off of the company property, the picketers yelled personal attacks and came close to my car.  I was afraid that I might hit one of them and the insults were difficult to take.

The second day, there were more insults and the started pushing on my car from either side as I tried to slowly drive through.  I became afraid for my physical safety.  My doors were locked but I had no way of knowing whether someone would break the window of my car.

I expressed my fears to my dad.  His response was essentially that the Union was in the right and I was in the wrong.  Since I had spent my whole life hearing that if I made a commitment to something (i.e. a job), I needed to follow through, it was confusing for me to hear that I should not follow through on the commitment.  I left that conversation with the understanding that if I continued to go to work, then I should be afraid.

The next day I went to work because I still had a job to do, even if others were not able to do theirs.  When I began to exit the grounds and people started nearing my car, I laid on the horn and kept my foot on the accelerator.  It had the desired effect.  People moved out of the way.  It was a totally fear-based response and I felt enormous relief when turned onto the street to lead me away from there.  I didn’t dare express my fear at home again.

The next year, a labor-law class was offered at school.  It was a totally optional elective class and did not really fit with the rest of my studies.  I signed up. 

While it was an informative class and I learned a lot, I never really dealt with all of the fear surrounding the experience of driving through the picket line.

This morning, I suddenly realized that my enormous anxiety in recent weeks is related to the idea that I might have to cross a picket line again.  My last experience was traumatic and the fear has been building that my physicals safety will be at risk.

Being able to name a trauma is often half the battle at learning to address the associated fear.  So, after I was able to name my anxiety source this morning, I was able to also think through the differences between then and now.  First of all, there is not actually a work stoppage in progress.  This is contingency training and, in all likelihood, will probably not get used outside of training.  Secondly, this time I have some training on what to expect in a work stoppage, how to handle driving through a picket line, and what the “rules” are regarding picketing. 

Given the differences in what I experienced 17-ish years ago and the training on what to expect in a work stoppage, I imagine that the rules on what can and cannot occur on the picket line have changed quite a bit.

The anxiety has been relieved.  And I found myself with a personal example of what traumatized children go through day in and day out.  I cannot imagine the intense fear of having more than one traumatic event cropping up at one time.

Many people believe that a child who has been removed from a place where trauma occurred will be grateful to be in a safe environment.  Unfortunately, just as my overwhelming fear has shown, an environment does not appear safe until those fears are addressed.   If I had a fear-based aggressive response (laying on the horn and the accelerator), then I cannot necessarily expect that a child with even less life experience would be able to adequately handle such intense fear. 

My fear was overcome by a combination of being able to name it and training.  I hope that I never have to use that training, but if that day comes, I am more prepared to handle it.  I may not be perfect at it, but it will be better than before.

Similarly, children with a trauma past need to be able to process their fears, drill down to the source, name it, and get some training on how to handle it. 

This training most often comes under the label of “therapy” or “counseling”.  Sometimes people consider the need for therapy or counseling to be stigmatically negative.  Therapy is nothing more than training tailored to address the unique fears and anxieties of a single individual.  The word “training” is typically stigmatically positive. 

The major difference between “therapy” and “training” is the label.  No one learns a new skill without some sort of training, either formally, informally, or by experience.

All of this leads me to the question:  how do we begin to change the perception that therapy is needed because someone could handle life to an understanding that therapy is training in life skills?