I’ve been told [by a counselor] I have a mild form of PTSD from my last organization. – Female reference and instruction librarian, recounting their experience with workplace bullying and mobbing. (Participant, Academic Librarian Low-Morale Experience study)
I feel like, you know, I can’t trust people. I have talked about this with other [special] librarians of color. Because I’m like ‘could you please tell me if this person is a white savior or if I’m making this up?’ You know, sort of like a check-in sort of thing. ‘Please tell me I’m not crazy.’ Yea, I just, I feel like – not to co-opt the experience of PTSD, but I feel like it’s PTSD, like, I’m afraid to talk to other academic librarians. – Female reference and instruction librarian dealing with Whiteness and White Supremacy Enabling Systems (Participant, Racial and Ethnic Minority Academic Librarian Low-Morale Experience study)
When I review low-morale experience studies’ participant narratives, an insightful data point reveals symptoms and/or formal diagnoses of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR) shares, in part, that a diagnosis includes:
- exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence;
- at least one intrusion symptom (e.g., recurrent and unwanted memories of the event(s)), starting after the trauma began;
- consistent avoidance of stimuli connected to the traumatic event(s), beginning after the trauma began;
- adverse changes in cognition and mood connected to the traumatic event(s), beginning after the trauma began;
- large shifts in arousal/reaction connected to the traumatic events, beginning or deepening after the trauma began;
- trauma/disturbance period is longer than one month;
- causing “clinically significant” distress in social, workplace, or other life function areas; and
- cannot be attributed to physiological impacts of a substance or other medical condition.
(APA 2013)
Even though there is consistently increasing commentary, research, and autoethnography about various aspects of organizational dysfunction and toxicity (Thomas, Cimino & Meglich 2021; Henry, Croxton & Moniz 2022; Higgins 2023) , workplace abuse and neglect – which includes exposure to bullying and mobbing- continue to be discounted as significant traumatic events. Kendrick’s low-morale studies show that employees who reveal their abusive/neglectful experiences or identify organizational toxicity and dysfunction are ignored or pushed out of the organization (See the Human Resources Limitation Enabling System; See Oppressed Group Behavior), and the Workplace Bullying Institute’s latest annual report underscores the systemic failure and social exclusion victims deal with when they report their experiences to their workplaces (Namie 2021).
Returning to the DSM-5 PTSD criteria, there seems to be intersections between trauma causes and low-morale experience cognitive and behavioral responses:
- Threat of loss of life (including the threat of loss of career life/work-livelihood or professional/career identity)
- Intrusive thoughts
- Long-term anger
- Increased feelings of shame/mistrust of others
- Reduced ability to remember details about the traumatic event(s) (capability not diminished by injury or substances)
When somebody threatens you in a cold-blooded way that they’re going to shoot you [at very close range]…you know, I have PTSD for that. I’m dealing with that. I’m still dealing with that…because it has such a negative impact on my life and my career. I’m burying myself in my work…I’m in a lot of pain from the experience. – Female library administrator, on the outcome of receiving threats from another formal leader (Participant, Leaving the Low-Morale Experience study)
It’s almost like a sort of post-traumatic stress thing. It’s like – I, it’s like this obsessive reliving of the bad things that happened – like, ‘oh, this happened and that happened and this,’ and, you know, and it’s just sort of unbidden pops into my head every once in a while…the fact is that this key, that I have trouble letting it go. – Male reference and instruction librarian, on dealing with Leadership Styles and Promotion and Tenure Enabling Systems by being denied tenure via authoritarian library leadership (Participant, Leaving the Low-Morale Experience study participant)
Honestly, the year after I left that position was like recovering from PTSD – like, just recovering… I think a lot of it has been blocked in my mind. It was something I thought about so much for four years of unhappiness that I kind of blocked it, I think, because now I’m in such a better place. – Female reference and instruction librarian (Participant, Leaving the Low-Morale Experience study participant)
Library workers may also actively discount PTSD as a low-morale experience outcome due to the larger cultural/societal view of what kind of trauma and which kinds of occupations can claim exposure to “valid” PTSD-causing events – even when their lives are threatened. A study respondent explains,
“I have a [family member] with [military-service contextualized] PTSD, and I think I had, in my head, a false vision of what PTSD was. I think I resisted it. ‘Oh, come on. I haven’t been in war. I haven’t had to kill anybody.’ I think I just had this sense of, ‘What I’ve been through can’t be that bad.’ It was that distorted thinking, because it was that bad. I mean, I had two different people try to stab me while I was working, a couple years apart. So, I definitely had incidents that would be considered trauma, that would be triggering, but to me, I was like, ‘Eh, this is just, apparently, part of the job. So, obviously, it’s fine.’
It really took a lot of work to get through that distorted thinking and realize, ‘No, none of that was okay. None of that was normal. Nobody should have to live through that. Nobody should have to go to work and be afraid that they’re going to be hurt, or killed. Nobody should go to work and be worried that they’re going to be followed home and threatened.’ I think I had just … It’s like the frog in the pot metaphor. Right? – Female library director (Participant, Formal Library Leader Low-Morale Experience study)
Raw data also hint at participants’ ongoing low-morale experiences as precursors to formal PTSD. The following participants share their perspectives, which reveal how low-morale experience Impact Factors and Enabling Systems may contribute to solidifying PTSD-related outcomes.
And it’s interesting, when I first started reporting to my current boss he would say, ‘Why are librarians always so twitchy, like you’re always walking around with PTSD?’ And I said, ‘Because libraries are often the first places that any organization will go when they need either money, or they need physical space, or they need to cut workforce. So we’re always losing physical space, and budget, and staff. And so of course we’re walking around like we have PTSD because it happens.’ And, [he said], ‘Oh, well you don’t have to worry about that now.’ And so he was very trusting of the organization to take care of the library because we had been re-orged.” (Later, under the same boss, the larger organization unilaterally co-opted space from the library) – Female supervisor sharing intersections of Potemkin Power and Uncertainty & Mistrust Impact Factors and Staffing & Employment and Librarian Perceptions Enabling Systems (Participant, LIS Formal Leader Low-Morale Experience study)
…It is starting to traumatize me to think about looking at work email. I am starting to find ways to avoid it. In fact, today I have to send out something that is going to include some of these people who I still consider strangers because they’ve never really come and had meetings with me and they’re not respecting my boundaries. – Male library executive director dealing with the Potemkin Power Impact Factor (Participant, LIS Formal Leader Low-Morale Experience study)
It’s not a major simple one-time event of trauma, but this place is trauma-inducing. All the times when I felt unsafe, all the times when … I’m talking mostly mentally and spiritually. But yeah, this place is bad. I know good libraries exist. I know that, but this place is not one of them. – Female library director facing imminent layoff (Enabling System: Staffing & Employment) during the Pandemic ( Participant, LIS Formal Leader Low-Morale Experience study)
If PTSD is impacting you, please talk to a trusted, licensed mental healthcare professional (BIPOC? Review these resources, too). Renewals Coaching, designed to support people dealing with or recovering from low morale, also has non-clinical and empathetic pathways. Contact Kaetrena to set up a consultation!
Works Cited
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 5th ed. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association.
Henry, J., Croxton, R., & Moniz, R. (2022). Incivility and dysfunction in the library workplace: A five-year comparison. Journal of Library Administration, 63(1): 42-68. doi: 10.1080/01930826.2022.2146440
Higgins, P. (2023). “I don’t even recognize myself anymore”: An autoethnography of workplace bullying in higher education. Power and Education, 0(0). doi: 10.1177/17577438231163041
Namie, G. (2021). 2021 WBI U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey.
Thomas, B.J., Cimino, A., & Meglich, P. (2021). Workplace hazing: Toward an organizational science of a cryptic group practice. Group & Organization Management, 46(2): 286-326. doi: 10.1177/1059601121992893
