So as the title says, my job caused me so much stress and anxiety that I ended up having an “acute psychiatric emergency” and had to be hospitalized.
Backstory: I started working for this non-profit in June of last year. It was contracted through one of the HS in my city so he had like a lot of summer activities before we actually went into the office with each other. Also it was a really small team, only 10 of us.
Another important detail is that I’m Afro-Caribbean, and my team was essentially all black with the exception of one person and my boss. This is relevant because my boss was always very vocal about wanting an all black staff—despite not being black himself.
So anyway, through the time I was there I really struggled with being “othered”. I was pretty consistently bullied and harassed from everything to my work ethic—my nickname was the “beaver”— to the fact that I date outside my race. One person in particular made my life pretty miserable. He was constant harassing me about how I “don’t love myself” because my then-partner was white. Another woman constantly made comments about how I’m “not a real black women” whenever I didn’t understand a black cultural reference. It was hell.
When I finally decided to go to management about this, I was labeled a snitch which made things way worse for me. As time I went on, I pretty much only hung out with the one whites person who has become a really good friend to me, and OF COURSE the comments rolled in. “Of course she hangs out with the only white girl”. I am also good friends with someone from a different site because we share mutual friends outside of work, and it was the same. “Leave it to her to be friend with the white man”.
It ended up getting so bad that I took the week before and after Christmas break off due to the stress. When I went back it was more of the same and in the first week of February I ended up being hospitalized because I had a mental break down on a Sunday when I started thinking about going back to work.
Since then I have no gone back (I filed for fmla) and my life is pretty fucked up. Last night was the first night I could actually be in my house without completely breaking down.
I have told some friends and family about what transpired and some have recommended I talk to an attorney. Part ID me wants to but another part of me feels like it’s a waste of time. I suffer from bipolar and I’m worried it’ll be used against me and I won’t have a case anyway.
Anyway, if anyone else has dealt with sometime similar or had advice I’d love some insight.