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That's what I've been thinking. My job is fairly safe, I work at a hotel and mostly I just have to worry about people trying to rob the place BUT... With my extensive SA history, I tense up and often have flashbacks and or dissociative episodes just from men making moves on me which happens fairly often here at the hotel. My boyfriend thinks I say it to make him feel better but in all honesty, when someone makes an advance at me, it's a pretty big trigger for me because in my experience the word "no" isn't enough. I've had melt downs, even refused to leave my apartment for weeks (not even to get groceries and had to cancel all my t appointments back then) because there were construction workers outside working on the apartment and they hit on me. They were rather vulgar with it and of course I brought it to the apartments attention but it didn't make me feel any more safe so I stayed inside my apartment until they were finished working. I have a lot of triggers that cause me to dissociate, more than I can even count for and most of them I don't know where they come from.
Working in any kind of environment where I and people of the opposite sex work I understand there will be times where I feel uncomfortable and have to blow them off but I used to work as a server/bar tender that's why I quit. I couldn't handle it any more.
I hope you find a job you enjoy that allows you to bring your service animal. I'm pretty sure my work will refuse but it's only an $8 an hour job, not hard to find another like it. But I'll stick it out for now at least. What tasks does your dog help you with?
I've been reading the things that they can do and a lot seem pretty helpful in my circumstance. The medication, losing things and having the dog be able to find them (keys purse etc), helping bring the person back from a flashback/dissociative state and mostly the waking me up from them and sleep for alarms. My alarm clocks don't work not to mention just a couple of weeks ago I was watching TV and my little 3 year old was playing in her room. The next think I know I'm laying on the couch the fire alarm is going off and the house was filled with smoke. I very very vaguely remember getting up and putting some spaghetti o's on the burner but I don't remember anything other than a flash of myself pouring the spaghetti o's into the pan. Well I wake up with the fire alarm beeping and the apartment full of smoke, the thing that woke me up was of course my dog. He started barking from the halway and somehow that over the fire alarm woke me up. I sat up and was in a fog for a few minutes before I even realized the alarm was going off. I just stared trying to make sense of anything really. When I snapped back in and realized what was going on I jumped up and went into action turning off the burner and the fire alarm and clearing the aparment of smoke, I was so lucky it didn't start a fire, it seems there was about 30 minutes unaccounted for there where a fire could have broken out.
Does your dog help you with things like these? There were a few others that would be beneficial for sure but those are my main goal if I do/can do this
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I'd lock my hands behind my head, I'd cover my heart and hit the deck, I'd brace myself for the impact if I were you.
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