Trying Too Hard at the Wrong Thing

A case for selectively tuning out

My job has some annually required trainings that we all have to stay up-to-date with to remain in good standing. The trainings are meant to make us better equipped to navigate difficult circumstances in a complex environment, and to provide the organization with some plausible deniability for potentially litigious situations.

Some are online and self-paced: courses about not getting scammed on the internet, what it means to be ethical, how to keep personal records private. Others are conducted in-person during our all-hands-on deck meeting which takes place every August, around 200 of us crowded into the designated auditorium. Embedded among good-willed motivation and general updates, there are mandatory segments covering policy compliance, verbal/physical/sexual harassment and assault, and suicide prevention training.

Many of my co-workers show up to these meetings and blatantly mess around on their phones the whole time, which always bugged me. I understand that nobody necessarily wants to be there, year after year, but we all have to. And we’re getting paid to be there, so might as well be respectful of the presenter and pay attention. I’m kind of a rule follower.

Over the years, when I notice my peers absorbed in their phones, I judge them. I shouldn’t, but I do. Probably just some good ol’ actor-observer bias in effect, but my brain tells me they are entitled, irresponsible.¹ I believe it, and think a little less of them. I assume they don’t just suck it up and at least pretend to pay attention for the 90-minute meeting because they have little goldfish brains and can’t or because they’re self-important assholes and won’t. I’m not just a rule follower, but also a bit of a judgmental bitch. There, I said it.

But, judge not lest ye be judged…² We all have our turns for things. I used to sit through all of the required trainings dutifully, attentively. But the suicide prevention one became deeply personal for me after my sister’s suicide in 2019. Sitting upright and undistracted wasn’t exactly an option for me anymore, and I didn’t even see it coming.

Year 0 (2019): About 3 months before my sister’s suicide, I attended the mandatory meeting as usually. In the suicide prevention training, no red flags jumped out at me. Nothing stirred me to do a mental health check-in with my sister. I don’t blame the training, everything has its limits. The talking points are typically focused on addressing a situation in which an individual is showing significant deviations from their baseline behavior or is explicitly expressing suicidal ideation. My sister was doing neither. Her baseline behavior, and that of our entire family, however, was skewed, and had been all my life. But that was normal to me. And everything had been fine—or fine enough by our standards—so far.

Year 1 (2020): Due to COVID, this year’s annual meeting was still “live” but presented remotely. After the opening remarks and updates, I put in an earbud and listened to the rest of it while cleaning out a small storage shed in our carport. I was present in online ID only, not at all paying attention. Just like the people I’d judged so harshly for years. I know this reveals me as a hypocrite, but I told myself it wasn’t actually disrespectful because the presenter couldn’t see me anyway so wouldn’t know the difference. Plus, there was no need for me to see the same slides from the year before. So, I’m not just a judgmental bitch, but also a hypocritical one. Fine, now I’ve said that too. When the suicide prevention training came up, it didn’t register with me at all. I was engrossed in my other task. When the meeting was over, I was dumbfounded, much like when you drive home on autopilot and marvel when you arrive there in one piece. In retrospect, I wish I had paid attention. If I had, I’d likely have been better prepared for how the suicide prevention portion would impact me in future years.

Year 2 (2021): The training was back in person, masks optional. Back then, employees from our department were assigned to be presenters for the various annual requirement segments and would run the training for a few years. Most presenters did their best to keep their segment as brief as possible, just long enough to regurgitate the key points from the reference guide and check the box. A co-worker who I really like, Kate, was the presenter for the first time this year. I wanted to show her my support. I sat on the front row towards the right side of the room next to another co-worker and friend, Maria, who had previously been sexually assaulted. I noticed Maria white-knuckling the armrests during the sexual assault prevention and response training. Since she was sitting just to my left, I had to look slightly past her to see the screen and was impressed at how she controlled her face. My heart went out to her. It didn’t dawn on me at all that my turn was up next.

As Kate pulled up the suicide prevention slides, my heart started racing. My face flushed hot, tears threatened, then spilled silently. My mind raced with intrusive, involuntary images and thoughts. Scenes from my sister’s life, moments we shared, imagined visions of her alone and in despair, real memories of her corpse, all flickered like flames against a backdrop of black. My blood raged with anger, frustration, guilt, my fragile semblance of stability crackled and crumbled while I also desperately tried and failed to portray composure.

There was a door less than 10 feet away, but it didn’t occur to me to leave. I froze on the outside while burning on the inside. Kate and Maria both knew about my sister. I saw Kate see me. I felt Maria feel me, though she didn’t turn her head, for which I was grateful. My officemate, Frank, on the other side of Maria, also noticed. I don’t know who else did, probably less than I imagine and more than I’d prefer. Kate’s presentation was probably only 15 minutes long, but I felt like time expanded to make room for me to inspect my pain, to stew in it, to let any unignited embers catch fire.

All that was left after Kate’s presentation were a few closing remarks from the boss. Once the final, “Let’s have a great year!” was pronounced I left the meeting in a haze. My eyes only saw the floor. Once out of the building, I rushed across the street to my office distraught, confused, and unpleasantly surprised.

Years 3 & 4 (2022-23): Kate still had the suicide prevention facilitator task. She emailed me about a week before the training with my supervisor cc’d. She said she didn’t think it was necessary for me to sit through the training. She said she’d mark me as “completed” and if I wanted her to send me the slides or to meet one on one to go over them, she’d be happy to. My supervisor supported her suggestion. She was gracious and I was grateful. I sat near the door at the back of the room for the bulk of the annual meeting and discretely slipped out while she pulled up the slides for the suicide prevention portion. I was off the hook for a while.

Year 5 (2024): The presenter duty moved to a psychologist, Dr. Grande, who had been with the organization for a few years and was recently transferred to our department. We were informed that the annual suicide prevention training had been rebranded to “Mental Fitness.” I knew that it was still satisfying the same requirement, but the rebranding made it feel less daunting. I also didn’t like the feeling of being excused from a work requirement that everyone else still had to do. Besides, I was in a “better” place than previous years. I’d started working with a therapist after my mom’s death in 2023, and he was helping me work through grieving my sister too. I thought I could handle it. Or, I thought the only way to really know if I could handle it was to try. I still sat near the back door, but was optimistic that I’d be able to keep it together.

Dr. Grande’s presentation was much more robust. He spent a good 20 minutes talking about the physiology of the brain and proactive physical and mental health best practices. Then he switched gears to get into the more explicit suicide prevention components. I was doing fine, at first. I was almost proud of myself, for a few moments. Then, as he started talking about the critical window for intervention, a familiar fear started to swell inside me. It was coming, the heat, the fire.

At least I was aware right before it hit me, but I stayed in the meeting a little too long. I’d thought, wrongly, that I could take a few deep breaths and reabsorb the tears, dampen my racing thoughts. I slipped out the back door again, but being in the middle of the presentation, it was much more noticeable.

Later that day, my supervisor was sent by his supervisor to check in on me. The big boss had heard I’d left and was worried about my well-being. Dr. Grande had seen me leave and wanted some feedback to know if he had said or done something particularly triggering. All the follow up came from a good place, but also amplified my desire to just be “normal” again. At least normal enough to not draw attention.

I believe their concern was genuine, which I appreciate. And it also reminded me how unnerving any witness of someone else’s intense negative emotions can be for all of us humans. Especially when it’s unexpected. Like at a routine work meeting in the middle of the day.

Though they are kind and caring individuals who were shocked and sympathetic when they heard the news about my sister, it was already over for them when they got home for dinner the same night. I’m not upset by that, it’s the way of things, the way it must be. But from their perspective, they can’t fully understand that I’m pretty much always grieving my sister, that it burns in me like a low-grade fever, it’s just not always showing. So, when it shows, they get concerned. And I do understand, and I didn’t (and still don’t) want to disturb the relative peace.

It reminded me of Dr. Bruce Banner’s quote in the 2012 Avengers movie, when Captain America urges Dr. Banner to “get angry” so he can turn into the Hulk and help the other heroes. Dr. Banner calmly replies, “That’s my secret, Captain, I’m always angry,” just before immediately transforming into Hulk and wreaking havoc on their adversaries.³ The difference is that Dr. Banner had finally accepted his fever, his rage, and learned to wield it. To be able to decide when to tolerate the quiet burn and when to let it spark and show. I wasn’t so sophisticated. Not just yet.

Year 6 (2025): A couple weeks before the annual training meeting I started getting anxious about what would be covered and how I would respond, so I got on Dr. Grande’s calendar to discuss. I was kind of hoping he’d take Kate’s approach and tell me I could just skip it. Another part of me was hoping he’d have some psychological insight that would help me reframe the whole thing and be better prepared to handle it. We circled back on what we had discussed the year prior, that he hadn’t been particularly offensive or anything, it just ignited in me during that training in that environment. He didn’t offer that I just skip it, and my pride and my desire to prove to myself that I could handle it didn’t permit me to ask.

Dr. Grande suggested that I take a look at why I was still having such a hard time coping with my sister’s suicide. I told him I had been working with a therapist to do just that and also shared that I was right in the middle of obtaining evidence records of my sister’s death that I could literally look at (I didn’t look at the photos, still haven’t), and that the process was definitely enhancing some already difficult emotions for me. He was kind, but it didn’t seem to register with him. We made a plan that, as before, I’d sit near the door, and feel at ease to step out into the hall at any point if need be. I left his office feeling a little flat, but also feeling like I was taking action in the right direction. I envisioned myself coolly sitting through the suicide training, unphased, professional.

I’d also started noticing that some simple things that had formerly caused me automatic negative reactions, like (fake) dead bodies in movies or on TV, or casual suicide jokes in media or real life, weren’t impacting me as much. I’d also started writing this collection of essays, in a way doing desensitization training. I’d seen evidence of improvements in my day to day life. I thought maybe I really could handle it this time and went to the meeting with the best of intentions, still sitting near the back door.

Around the same part of the presentation, I felt the smoldering heat start to rise, and stepped out into the hall. A few other employees were just outside the doorway, peeking their heads in, “attending” the meeting just enough for it to count. I slipped past them and sat on the floor against the wall and cried. One of them who I work with at regular intervals stooped down to check on me.

“I’m okay,” I said between crying-stifled breaths. “I’ll explain later, but I’m fine. Thank you.”

He gave an acceptably small smile of acknowledgment, the only kind a sane person can muster in the face of someone else’s anguish. “I get it. I got you,” he said and turned back to the meeting. I could still hear Dr. Grande speaking, but let his voice fade into background noise with the buzz of the lights.

After Dr. Grande’s portion, I slipped back in the room and stood against the back wall for the closing remarks. Splotchy faced, glossy and red-eyed, but shoulders back, head up. Fuck it, I thought. Let them wonder. Let them worry. Let them notice. Or not. I had been there, at least tried to pay attention, got my little box checked.

Year 7 (2026): This year, again, a couple weeks before the annual meeting, that nagging anxiety started to set in. I wondered how it would land on me this year, how I would cope. I didn’t project any benefit from meeting with Dr. Grande again, and I didn’t want to go backwards and ask for an excusal from the training.

As it drew closer, I tried to logic myself into preparation. I told myself that nothing could be worse than the first time I sat there frozen, crying. Told myself the only way to see how it goes is to go there and try again. I called on that unrealized vision I’d had of myself, the one who can handle anything. I imagined that the only way to become her is to be exposed to all triggers, survive them, and eventually become immune to them. I told myself that I could do this, it would be fine, and it was ultimately for my own long-term benefit. I’d still sit by the door, be ready to leave if need be. I had a semblance of a plan, but still felt uneasy.

The morning of, though, I was tired. Heavy with dread, agitated. My stress level felt completely disproportionate to what this objectively is: one specific segment of this stupid annual meeting. In my annoyance, I had a revelation. Why the fuck am I taking this meeting so seriously? I thought of my colleagues, the ones I always judge, and had an idea.

I walked over to the meeting with my officemate, Frank, and reminded him I would sit by the door and might slip out. When we got there, the seats by the door were already taken, so I sat on the floor near the door behind the back row of seats. I popped my head up visibly like a whack-a-mole during the whole meeting, until the suicide prevention training. Then I sat back on my heels and blatantly looked down at my phone for the whole 40-minute segment. Actually, I read a couple Substack posts, something I’m always struggling to find time for anyway, starting with poring over this gem by CansaFis Foote.⁴

I was physically present in the training. I was, however, also purposefully disengaged. I decided to be okay with being a “bad” employee for a little while, to join the ranks of those I’d previously judged and disdained. But the embers weren’t stirred. I wasn’t decimated by the fire. I made it through the whole meeting, including the suicide prevention training. Box checked.

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Thank you, Coco, for your insights and feedback. And my husband, for a helpful read through.

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1. Article on the actor-observer bias

2. From The Bible, specifically the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:1, per the Internet

3. YouTube clip of the scene in the movie

4. “…believe in believeacuss…” by CansaFis Foote