After a very busy week at work I felt I needed to blog about reasonable adjustments for people with mental health illnesses and why I think these need to be so carefully tailor made for each indIvidual. Even though I have bipolar I am very careful about what reasonable adjustments I have and very rarely ask for any in the workplace. Basically the main reason for this is because I think I could feel worse if I were to feel uncomfortable in anyway about an adjustment even if someone else thought it was in my best interests or if it had worked for someone else – everyone is different.
For example work are keen for me to have a dedicated parking space, as because of my anxiety and past trauma I am unable to park in the multi-storey car park near the college if there is no space in the college car park. To get a parking space you have to get in by 8.30am which is not a problem most of the time as I prefer to start work at 8am. Sometimes though I need to get in later due to side effects of medication or for a doctors appointment and it is a nightmare not getting a space and it causes me lots of added stress. This means that I don’t use my late morning and flexible working reasonable adjustment as often as I should and I don’t want a saved space because other people won’t understand and the anxiety of thinking people might be annoyed by this or are talking about me would be harder for me to cope with. I have comprised on this one and said that when building work starts which will reduce the number of places for a time I will have one but not until then.
Part of how I cope is to keep busy and this works for me – it might not work for everyone but that is why I am trying to ensure that people understand how different one case of bipolar is from another. I am sure that this same principle works for other illnesses as well.
Because work has been so busy this week friends and family gave urged me to take it easy, to contact HR about workload but this is really not me and therefore I haven’t done so. I might regret this further down the line but actually I know myself very well and believe me I am close enough to my last episode to be careful. I think as it stands today asking for some time out, flexible working or extra support could in fact make me worse as I will give myself a hard time. I just need to convince others of this as well.