A new start (kind of)

hi @Sam3 good to hear from you, what a nice surprise! yeah, my mood can change back to calm for no reason whatsoever. That's great you are well and work is ok, you sound super busy. Well done!

hi @Zoe7 and @TAB off to work today hope it goes well for you, hope the people are nice TAB

hi @MDT good luck with following up, I think you're handling a very tricky situation really well

well done @MDT I hope the people are nice, you're there to interview them as much as they you. Fingers and toes crossed for you even tho I know you don't need it, you'll be great! let us know how you go

Hey @MDT I’m glad to hear you can enjoy your achievements & be optimistic about potential work tasks. @TAB your employer clearly has confidence in you getting solo work done so I hope they remunerate you appropriately for that level of responsibility.

@BryanaCamp and @Zoe7 you always reply with attention to individual circumstances with encouragement - thank you!

One of the hiccups at work I referenced was negative feedback from my senior (in name only, as she is effectively a new graduate whose authority I’ve endeavoured to respect). Not sure if she actively sought residents’ opinions of me or that 2 residents spontaneously made the comment that I “asked too many questions.” One of them was a lady who volunteered information about her family, including how her adult son with a wife & children had suicided several years ago (NB. not surprisingly this is not the first time an aged care resident has decided to tell me of a suicide). In order for her to not feel stigmatised etc I believe I engaged in active listening & asked how his family were doing these days. My lovely colleague with bipolar reckons that particular resident must have regretted something she’d said & this is how it manifested. Similar deal with the other resident possibly, as all I asked her about respectfully was how she was going with arrangements for her husband’s funeral & possible reasons why she consistently didn’t want to receive therapeutic massage (which I’m compelled to provide to individuals selected by another allied health professional 4x per week). Anyway, the senior told me she thought I’d had those interactions because of my background as a mental health professional (& I wanted to say also because I’m a human being with compassion not just a massage robot!) She summarised the phone discussion in an email which was fine. Mainly I feel ok but a bit peeved that I was judged a little unfairly (there were other points about things I had NOT been involved with from a difficult staff member - I corrected that misapprehension but it still appeared in her email). Anyway, just interested in whether others feel that being themselves (ie consistent with own values & temperament) results in sometimes being judged unfairly in a work context?

hey @MDT high five!

you don't know how mature you sound, I'm really proud of you.

hi @Sam3 first off, well done for coping with this potentially disturbing workplace politics. You're doing awesome & that is not easy. I'd be furious (rage is my reaction to pretty much any difficulty but you sound much calmer)). Being managed by someone much younger than me can be especially annoying.

I've been judged a lot in the workplace as "unapproachable" and had a colleague lodge a complaint against me for that reason more than once. which I then had to answer to with my then manager. Indeed I did not like that colleague and did not want her to approach me! When I'm stressed at work I tend to get extremely angry so rather than express that I withdraw, it's my, "I'm protecting my colleagues from my rage by withdrawing into myself & staying away" strategy. In my mind I'm doing the right thing, getting on with my job & working hard. In my managers eyes I was unapproachable & not a team player. So in the end I took the feedback & now I try to be all about friendliness & approachability but when I'm volunteering & I get enraged, I still want to be left alone to calm down & don't want to be approached or talk about it. It's hard - I have so much of my anger medicated away but it still comes up.

You sound like an unusually caring and kind remedial massage therapist. It's unusual to come across someone who has that extra care and who you can confide in, trust & feel better for it. Personally I find having a massage is awesome but also requires me to be totally vulnerable. You're just being friendly & supportive which probably helps them relax their tension so they get the most out of the massage. Those patients probably enjoyed confiding in you, if they didn't want to they could have said "I don't want to talk about it". Old people are weird and stubborn in their own way, they have that strange, older generation-stiff-upper-lip thing of, "it's bad to talk about private matters and problems" so probably felt vulnerable after the fact and rather than acknowledge that they needed to confess, instead eased their discomfort by blaming you. Not fair. Maybe a more experienced manager would see all that & value your kindness towards the patients? Seems especially relevant if you have an ongoing relationship with the clients & they develop trust.

That said, sometimes feedback can be very hard to take but have a little bit of truth to it - e.g. me & my approachability. So if there is anything useful in the feedback that rings true could be constructive if only in a small way.