Trust betrayed and damage done

Every day I get a visit from a support worker for an hour. I’m closer to a few of those support workers than others and I hoped that that closeness was reciprocated.

This week I’ve had some difficult health news from my GP and up to now I’ve not talked it over with anyone because I’ve waited for the right opportunity and person to talk about this news “off the record”.

Normal practice for the support workers is to write a few notes on their system about everything that is discussed and those notes are available to all the other support workers to read. I guess continuity is the goal here.

Today I asked one of the support workers who I particularly trusted if we could talk off the record. I feel that at this point if she wasn’t willing to go off the record she should have made that very clear there and then and I would have stopped the conversation before it went any further. In saying nothing and just waiting for me to speak she was indicating to me that she was open to going off the record.

After I opened up and talked about my situation she then told me that while she would not record some of our conversation in her official notes she would record the essence of what I talked about.

WHAT THE FUCK!

I’m now left feeling absolutely totally betrayed and any trust I had has been utterly smash to bits. I actually feel sick.

Trust is vital in the relationship between me and my support workers and this has left me feeling that I will never trust any of them again. That feeling is so strong that I actually feel like putting into motion actions to withdraw from my support completely.

Right now I need to slam the breaks on and just absorb what has happened, maybe I learn from this and never talk about anything other than the weather with any of the support workers who come and see me from now on.

I don’t really know just now.