In 1996 I was driving in the lake district UK, went round a bend hit a rock in the road and went flying (literally) off the side of the hill through a drystone wall off into a forest and into a tree. The car (a shiny red For escort XR3i) did a full 360 spin and landed the right way up having gone over the top of several trees. Pretty spectacular. I got out and walked away. Not a scratch on me.

About three weeks later the nightmares started. They went on for over a year. Screaming ab-dabs every night. could hardly sleep. drank like a pissed fish. Work was not good anyway and i was trying to leave. Work suffered because i couldn't concentrate and was jumping out of my skin every time someone walked in the room. I was very depressed. I was very down at work and my boss started writing to personnell saying i was destroying the morale of the group. I was a disruptive influence on everybody. Within a month i was being summoned to meetings with middle management ouside my management chain where unrealistic demands were made of me. I rebelled and started looking for another job. Eventually i got one but i was enormously bitter. The symptoms got sowrse and i drank more and more.

After a year, my girlfreind walked out and i don't blaim her. But i did at the time. My brother laughed and said it served me right. My best mate sadi the same thing. I was fat, pasty, angry, bitter and nasty. I didn't like me. One morning i got up and decided to be the sort of person i liked and admired. I finished my PhD thesis and submitted it. It was only a couple of years late!
Started running. Went from 16 stone to 12 stone 10 lbs in a year. Still drinking. But the running really helped. At 28 I went back to academic research. Post doctoral. Still doing it. Slowly i put myself back together. Met a girl. Had a lovely daughter. She is just seven now. got married, had a son, stopped drinking, he is three and lovely.

Three years ago I had just finished two years of really top research and wanted to get published. I have enormous difficulty writing due to the inability to concentrate but I do my best. Started a new research project as a follow up to the previous reallly good stuff. One of the industrial partners refused to do anything and my boss passed their work onto me. I did it. Then, one of the other post docs left and i did her job so my boss wouldn't lose the funding. I was working a seventy hour week for one wage and no overtime. After about 18 months of this, working two jobs both to 3 month deadlines, I developed the most awful diarrheoa. Went to the quacks and the process of investigating me for bowel cancer began.

I didn' realise it but i went into full blown PTSD again. I started going home early (i.e. working 9-6) so i could spend time with my eldest who was five at the time. Maybe if i had cancer i could at least leave a happy memory in her head and she could forgive me for leaving her? My wife was pregnant again at the time. Less work got done. I told my boss i was being prodded and poked. Because less work got done he started coming in twice a day and setting highly unrealistic tasks and then demanding why i had not completed them. This culminated at easter 2007 when i took one day off to see my briother for possibly the last time while i had my health. My boss phoned me at home and played hell and called me a "selfish bastard". I had taken no holiday in 2005. I had two weeks off in 2006.

I cracked. Went to a counciller. Got diagnosed. In july my new daughter stopped breathing and was rushed to hospital. She was on oxgen for a few days and eventually pulled through. She is fine. I felt absolutely no emotion over the whole time. I got run over on my bike. Battered and bruised. A mionth later i was run over again. Broke both hands. I took on some teaching work, which pissed my boss off and he started bullying me again. After christmas he was lecturing me on what a bad scientist i am when i detonated. I left the building and went back into councilling. Got headhunted.

Currently working one day a week for my old boss. He expects a 40 hour week from my one day. At the end of june i go full time for the new boss. Can't wait.

Back running again. Still not drinking. Occasional cigar. Occasionally happy. Occasional rage. Almost dealing with it.

Thanks for your time.

Slighty update. Last week my old one day a week boss, gave me a batch of work which amounted to about a months work to be done in six days. A few days later he was shouting at me because i hadn't sent an email to someone with some information they already had. (I forget trivial rubbish all the time) I detonated! It was bad! I had a jolly good swear at him and told him to leave me alone. Aware i might hit him if things got worse i ran off and hid in my office telling him not to follow me. He followed. I was ranting like a loon telling him to get out so i wouldn't hit him. He was shouting aboput how he was going to have me arrested and thrown off site. We weren't really getting anywhere and i was really in danger of losing it so i did another runner out of the office. As i went past the gaffer he stepped across my path and shoulder checked me.

Within a slit second i had him by his lapels asking if he thought physical violence was good choice! Then i left.

I have been through all my problems with my employer buit it is like talking to a wall.

So, at the time of the above I was working partime for my old boss who was laying into me and part time for a new boss. So i told the new boss everything. All of it. Car crash. The bullying. Everything. And something really odd happened. For the first time, someone believed me. And I am being protected from my former boss. Unbelievable! ?I am stunned.

Over the years i have bottled all of it up. Never let anything show. Now I am right out about everything. I've got PTSD. I have anxiety attacks. Panic attacks. I'm hypervigilant. I don't like cars. And car crashes are even worse. I never rubberneck at RTAs. I don't sleep good. And its all going to go away and diminish till i barely notice it. For the first time in 18 months i am on the up. I have a little girl just turned one and i am just starting to get to know her.

wow, you have had a rough time of it! I just put a post out about the details of my meltdown at work, than I read your story. I feel for you.

Very similiar with the MVA accident and crashing at the workplace. Definitely not a safe place to do so, but I learnt something from it.

I learnt that when I'm anxious I need to deal with it, if I try and stuff it...I'll snap and I never want to experience that again. It's not easy dealing with anxiety but necessary for me. I love to put my feelings in a compartment and stuff them so far down...sadly they don't stay there any longer they come out in a rage or a feeling of hopelessness.

Not sure, if you have a good therapist to talk with? Mine has helped me greatly, she is working on behavioural therapy with me...fantastic results for people with PTSD.

Take care,

Roxanne

Welcome Irton....

thanks. It means so much just to know I'm not alone. Not that I would wish this on anyone!

Hi Irkon,

Wow. I had an accident too. Lead to loosing a very good job because of my behaviors, related to PTSD. I am...was...thought...i was an easy going patient person. WRONG. PTSD, is a hard confusing road. But at the moment work is great. PTSD symptoms somewhat controlled. At least I know more of who i am and what I am capable of good and bad. For me accidents have been the WORST triggers by far. Life changing events! Anyway...thanks for posting, it nice to here someone elses experience that is so easy to relate to. Best of luck to you, i hope to read more about your journey through this maze.
Tachiku