Does your boss make you sick?

IV. What can it (employee abuse) do to my body?
   Your abusive boss can kill you.
   Everybody has a "stress balloon" that will pop if it is inflated with more stress than that person's unique mind and body can handle. Every problem and change (good or bad) "blows" stress into that balloon. The stress will either seep out over time or can be released with such de-stressors as laughter, rest, recreation, rewarding relationships, and therapy. But, when the balloon becomes over-inflated, the rubber stretches and becomes thinner, and less resistant to things that make balloons pop. Eventually the rubber becomes so weak it breaks or a wee incident pops it.
   Normal levels of stress are enough to keep your stress balloon inflated. Then your boss blows in more stress every time he messes with your head. If the abusive incidents occur too often or are too intense, and more stress is forced in than that can seep out or than you can release, your immunity system becomes thin and weak. You become susceptible to everything from flu viruses to cancer, and eventually your head may "pop". The clinical term for it is "depression".
   When your balloon gets stretched tight, you become uptight, and your mind looks for escapes--places to hide. Some people hide in booze; others hide in bed. The ultimate hiding place is permanent sleep: suicide. (I was not being melodramatic when I said your abusive boss can kill you.)
   Stress and depression cause physical symptoms that tell us something is wrong, often before we realize our minds are being affected, and it's important to pay attention to them.
 

   For people who have chronic conditions such as asthma, arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome, heart disease, and back pain, the first signs of over stress are usually an increase in the number and/or intensity of attacks or pain. (Do report the changes to your doctor and get medical treatment!)
   For instance, I have a humungous (my doctor's word) herniated disk that only hurts when I'm stressed. During the last few months before I left my abusive employer, the pain was so intense that my right leg kind of dragged, even though I was taking 8-mg. doses of Ibuprofen. About two months after I quit, I was pain free.
   However, I filed a lawsuit against my former employer, so I've had to spend a lot of time recalling the abusive incidents in detail, which made my leg hurt. Three days before a 2½-day hearing, it started to ache, and it hurt so much during the hearing that I could hardly take all the sitting. After about three days the pain was gone.
   Below is a list of physical symptoms that commonly accompany stress, which gives you a pretty good idea of what the stress of mental abuse can do to your body. More important, if you have symptoms like these and there is no physical cause, your body is telling you something's awry in your head and you probably ought to get some professional help.
   Do not try to measure your stress or estimate how close you are to serious depression by the seriousness of any symptoms. Mental health providers factor in such things as other stressors in your life, and yours and your family's physical and mental health history before they even make educated guesses about how stressed or depressed their patients are.
   These are some common symptoms of stress and depression: