A couple weeks ago, I decided it was time to finish writing and publishing Burnt Out Bitch. I went on medical leave (AGAIN) because of a traumatic situation at the school I transferred to in the middle of Year 4!!Why had this happened again?!?!?
To figure it out, I thought, “I need to finish the Burnt Out Bitch completely.”
It was late May. I was sitting at my local fav coffeeshop, and had just finished my morning journaling ritual. It was time to focus on the Burnt Out Bitch.
I opened up Year 3 to read and revise. As I read, I felt this wave of panic and nausea and I stopped reading. It felt like being forced to identify a corpse of someone I love all mangled and bloody. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reexperience my trauma yet. I wasn’t ready.
It’s now July. I haven’t reopened the Burnt Out Bitch since. But I have to decide if I am going to resign or not by the end of the week. And I don’t know what to do.
These last couple of years are starting to feel like one never-ending nightmare. Just thinking about teaching next year makes me start to spiral. What’s going on? What is the trigger? Was it teaching? Did I need to quit?
In order to go on leave again, I was asked to go to a three week outpatient program through Kaiser. It was a time!
I learned some new skills and concepts, as well as had a refresher on some things, and decided I need to approach the revising of year 3 and year 4 like surgery.
I think that the reason I got so triggered re-reading the Burnt Out Bitch was because the only thing documented currently in Year 3 is my perspective, my shame and negative emotions, my victim experience, and that I need to identify the cognitive distortions as well as try to consider the situation from other perspective’s and more neutrally. I need to be more objective.
Thus, I have typed up a list of cognitive distortions to help me learn them before going in to the operating room.
I also think that (as I learned by sharing Update #12 in my Stability Sammy blog series) these situations require me to expose other people’s vulnerabilities and I am very afraid of what they will think about me when I do that. I also don’t want to harm them in the process of healing myself. I want what I share to be healing for them as well, and to repair our relationship.
I want to help them see their limitations so that they can learn and grow and continue developing as a human; I want them to see how their behavior harmed me so that they can take action to repair the harm if they would like to. I would like to show them that I can see my own limitations, that I wish I had acted differently, and have learned and will improve.
I do not want to shame or blame or bully them (or any other toxic relational strategy) that has been used on me many many times in order to get me to change, improve, or meet the needs of others that are not compatible with my needs – often as a strategy for avoiding open conflict (again a cultural norm in America!), and that I have probably used myself.
I want to help them learn. I want to be honest with them. I want to love them. I would like the same in return, for them to help me learn, be honest with me, and love me.
The reason I was so traumatized by these interpersonal experiences at work was because I trusted these people and I felt betrayed by them. Being forced to engage daily in high stakes situations with people I feel betrayed by and who I do not trust anymore, with no support or time to restore justice and repair the relationship, is what really fucked my brain up.
In October of 2024 in the intro post to this series, I shared that I healed my rape and workplace bullying experience through writing the first blovel How to Value Your Own Thoughts. Reading that back in June of 2025, I realized that I actually didn’t heal my workplace bullying situation. I mentioned it, but that was not the trauma story I healed.
From what happened to me at the school I transferred to and looking at what caused me to take medical leave again, I have realized that the trigger and the behavior is the same trigger and behavior as when I quit my job at SAGE Publications and moved to Greece in 2018.
Which is the same trigger and behavior as what caused me to change therapists; change schools in high school, as well as constantly change friend groups, friends, and boyfriends starting from pre-k and still now!
This learned behavior is deeply rooted, a childhood behavior that may have served its function then, but is definitely not serving me now.
A few conversations happened that made this click for me recently.
First, I was talking to my mom’s friend who has worked for LAUSD for almost 30 years, and I shared that the trigger was that my female administrator had bullied me, and that’s why I wanted to quit.
In response she said, “You survived Calabasas, that school is filled with mean girls. How did you survive there?”
I said, “I kept quiet, hid in the corner, and got the highest grades in the school, but you can’t keep quiet when you’re the teacher!”
Second, visiting with my Grandma in the hospital yesterday, I was trying to help her with eating and drinking water, and sitting comfortably since she was having trouble. They literally had to put her on an IV twice because she is not drinking enough water. I kept prompting her to drink water, and she snapped at me, “Quit nagging me.”
I felt so many emotions anger, shame, guilt, resentment. I felt the urge to scream, “You can’t talk to me like that! I’m an adult! I’m just trying to help you.” But I didn’t. Instead I laughed and said, “Okay,” and stopped talking and started to read my book instead of talk with her (disassociation).
The nurse, overhearing her response, came over and said, “She’s not nagging you, she’s trying to help you. She is being a good granddaughter and she loves you.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” my Grandma said. The look on her face was that of a guilty child.
“Tell her you love her,” said the nurse.
She looked over at me and gave me an air peck. I came back over and we started chatting again.
I asked her about her grandparents. She told me that her grandmas were both named Emma Jane and were both stubborn old women who bullied their husbands. Isn’t that funny, huh?!
These same triggers, smaller, milder. With time and space to process and learn from them now that I am on summer and have time, as well as living alone in my Grandparents empty home in Bishops Stortford.
Now I am safe enough with the time, space, tools, and resources to go into year 3 and year 4, and to heal.
Also – I am literally planning to resign as a teacher this week and it feels urgent to go and process these experiences before I sign the document!
I was going to do it today because the nicer male admin keeps calling me even though he says he doesn’t want to rush me, and also it may complicate the paperwork to do it after June 30th because technically the new school year started and I may get paid money and then have to return it.
But fuck that, I’ll quit when I’m ready!
And perhaps, I won’t even quit. I would love to send the Burnt Out Bitch to the people I have written about and see how they respond. What will happen?
If I don’t quit, they will be forced to work with me, to engage daily in high stakes situations, they will experience what I experienced. The fear and anxiety.
I don’t want that. I don’t want to perpetuate the cycle of oppression! I want to work with people who want to work with me.
From their behavior, I have concluded that I don’t think they want to work with me, as well as I don’t really want to work with them.
At the same time, have I tried?
Finish writing and publishing the Burnt Out Bitch! When I’m done, I will know.
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