I am so sad and overwhelmed right now

[Boban]

MAJOR VENT...SO PLEASE BE PATIENT....SORRY FOR THE LONG POST.....

In the first thread I posted on student envy I tried to put a good face to how massage class is going for me because I have had so much on my plate these past 2 months that if I don't keep myself together I won't get done what needs to be done...

I guess it would make things clearer if I explained what has been going on... From the beginning the teacher has been unprepared to teach us properly... He has not taught us infant massage because we don't have a doll to use. :roll:

Then... due to the fact that my classes are at a county vocational school and not a massage school we had to share for 2 months our classroom....what I mean is, a daytime group would use the classroom from 8am to 3pm and the massage classes would then start at 4pm. We were promised a new room with a glass ceiling as our massage clasroom but because the teacher did not want to bother the administrator's in asking about it 2 months passed and nothing happened.

Without fail, everyday when we'd come to class the tables would be all over the place and we would always have to straighten them out. The teacher is so frightened to speak out to the administrators of the school that we had no space to store several massage tables and other massage equipment. When two months had passed and a new shipment of massage equipment and anatomy models arrived I hit the roof and couldn't take it anymore...!!!

I went behind the teachers back and wrote a note to the school's director complaining about all of this and wouldn't you know it... the next day we had our new classroom.

In the midst of all of this I found out in April 2008 that my father had died and what happened after he had died in the hospital caused me to file a lawsuit against the hospital. I have not even cried over his death yet....

Now, I am in a horrible situation....with my father's death emotionally I feel so confused and overwhelmed. There have been two incidents where I felt that the teacher touched me in an inappropriate way....but I dismissed the first time when it happened as my over-reacting. He was demonstrating on me a few different movements for chair massage and felt his hand lightly cup the side of my breast.

The second incident occurred this past Thursday... we had just come back to class after having a student clinic at a local detention center where we were doing chair massage on the guards working there... I had grabbed one of the chairs to bring them into the classroom. I was having alittle bit of trouble closing the front legs of the chair and the teacher rushed over and told me he'd do it and then I felt him lightly cup the side of my breast.

It is very hard for me to know what to do as I am an emotional mess right now...It makes me wonder if being in such a highly charged emotional state if that is making me exaggerate my feelings towards the two incidents??

I am so worn out by not being able to mourn for my father, talking to lawyers, school being such a headache and now this with my teacher. If I review it to the school administrator's I have no idea how they will handle the situation and I may put myself in a worse situation where the teacher is not disciplined or if he is fired they are not able to hire a replacement teacher and I lose all the money I paid for the class... Financially I have nothing extra in the bank...I am stuck.

Sometimes I think that maybe I should just ride things out and get my certificate.... or discreetly speak with the MT student in my class that I trust and respect and see what she has to say...

My friends tell me I am in denial and that I need a rest from everything but I need to finish this class and if I can get a job before I finish school it would be a Godsend.... I feel so out of it and lost right now...

Thanks for listening

 

[Bobsy]

Vita,
First of all ... t056 ... you sound like you could use a hug.

I wanted you to know I'm 'here' (if only in cyberspace) and HEARing you, for whatever that's worth.

I'm so so sorry about your Dad. I lost my Mom [what a dumb expression --makes it sound like I left her behind at the mall or something :roll: -- let me rephrase that -- my Mom died] when I was twelve, and my Dad is currently in the end seforum.xxxes of dementia, so I understand about losing a parent, but I can't imagine how upsetting it would be to know someone had been negligent in his care. I'm so sorry. I hope you're able to find space in life to allow yourself to begin to grieve ... someone to hold you as you cry, if that's what you feel you need to do.

I don't know what to suggest about the situation with the teacher. I think if I were in your shoes, I would seek out that fellow student if you you feel you can trust her[?]. By nature, I avoid confrontation, so I'm probably not a good person to give advice, since my first inclination would be to do nothing, and wait and see.

I'm glad that you found this forum. You'll find it's a great group of supportive, caring people (who also usually have great advice and wisdom to share!). In this case, I'm just offering the supportive, caring stuff.

:? 8)

 

[Llado]

Hydro4Vita

I'm so sorry you're going through this. I can't really speak to the other things in your post with any wisdom, but I understand about your father. My husband died suddenly just a year ago. It's incredibly difficult to process grief on top of an already turmoil filled life. I had no idea how hard it is to go on after losing a close family member. I also had a hideous hospital experience with my husband, and although I haven't filed a lawsuit, and doubt mine would hold up - I sure thought about it. That in itself is enough to take years off any one's life. ((HUG))

Just a few things off the top of my head regarding the rest.

The teacher touching the side of your breast? Gives me big red flags, but I'll defer to some of the other folks here. Happening one time I could drum up my imagination to think it was an accident, but the second time?

Just know that even in a student/teacher environment, even if you may be "out of line" by other people's standards, it's your body. You have a right to react, pull away, sit up, speak up. Even if it embarrasses the teacher, the other students, or you. If any form of touching is uncomfortable to you, you have a right to stop that person and tell them what they are doing makes you feel uncomfortable. Violated. Don't do that. Stop. Plus if other students are witnessing this, even if he's being subtle, it gives a bad message, like it's OK to do this.

The problem with people that cross boundaries - is they get away with it over and over. It doesn't mean this guy is a psycho, but if someone is going to cup the side of my breast, they better have a damn good reason to be doing so, and they better tell me before. Or at least say excuse me if they do it by accident. I've accidentally brushed the side of a woman's breast on occasion during a massage, but I'm talking a brush. With the back of my hand. It's just too hard for me to think this was accidental. He needs to be confronted about it.

Is the massage class part of the vocational school? There has to be a grievance avenue of some sort in place. It sounds like the temporary nature of the classroom is hampering your instruction. This is a valid grievance. The fact that you had to endure two months of this seems to me would be grounds to ask for some concessions. School is like anything else, they have a responsibility to customer service.

Is there a leave of absence feature in your school contract? Your situation would be grounds to take a semester off. Just a thought.

I can see why you're feeling so overwhelmed. Maybe some others will have more profound suggestions. I'm glad you "vented". Sometimes just saying/writing it to sympathetic ears does a world of good.

savannah

 

[GlenjaminO @ YouTube.com]

I am so sad and overwhelmed right now

Then... due to the fact that my classes are at a county vocational school and not a massage school we had to share for 2 months our classroom....what I mean is, a daytime group would use the classroom from 8am to 3pm and the massage classes would then start at 4pm. We were promised a new room with a glass ceiling as our massage clasroom but because the teacher did not want to bother the administrator's in asking about it 2 months passed and nothing happened.

Without fail, everyday when we'd come to class the tables would be all over the place and we would always have to straighten them out. The teacher is so frightened to speak out to the administrators of the school that we had no space to store several massage tables and other massage equipment. When two months had passed and a new shipment of massage equipment and anatomy models arrived I hit the roof and couldn't take it anymore...!!!


In the midst of all of this I found out in April 2008 that my father had died and what happened after he had died in the hospital caused me to file a lawsuit against the hospital. I have not even cried over his death yet....

Now, I am in a horrible situation....with my father's death emotionally I feel so confused and overwhelmed. There have been two incidents where I felt that the teacher touched me in an inappropriate way....but I dismissed the first time when it happened as my over-reacting. He was demonstrating on me a few different movements for chair massage and felt his hand lightly cup the side of my breast.

The second incident occurred this past Thursday... we had just come back to class after having a student clinic at a local detention center where we were doing chair massage on the guards working there... I had grabbed one of the chairs to bring them into the classroom. I was having alittle bit of trouble closing the front legs of the chair and the teacher rushed over and told me he'd do it and then I felt him lightly cup the side of my breast.

It is very hard for me to know what to do as I am an emotional mess right now...It makes me wonder if being in such a highly charged emotional state if that is making me exaggerate my feelings towards the two incidents??

I am so worn out by not being able to mourn for my father, talking to lawyers, school being such a headache and now this with my teacher. If I review it to the school administrator's I have no idea how they will handle the situation and I may put myself in a worse situation where the teacher is not disciplined or if he is fired they are not able to hire a replacement teacher and I lose all the money I paid for the class... Financially I have nothing extra in the bank...I am stuck.

Sometimes I think that maybe I should just ride things out and get my certificate.... or discreetly speak with the MT student in my class that I trust and respect and see what she has to say...

My friends tell me I am in denial and that I need a rest from everything but I need to finish this class and if I can get a job before I finish school it would be a Godsend.... I feel so out of it and lost right now...

Thanks for listening

First, I hope that you are able to grieve your father's death soon. I see by your writing how overwhelmed you are.

Looking at the picture from how you have described it, it appears that you probably are in such a highly emotional state that everything happening around you feels like fingernails sliding down the chalkboard.

I do think you may be feeling things in a way that you normally would not feel them and reacting to things, that you normally would not react to.

An example: You had to share a classroom. I don't want to sound like I am giving you a hard time, especially with the state you are in. "But.... so?" ------- If you didn't get it, it wouldn't be the end of school. It would be something you had to work around. Now, it is a good thing you were able to petition to get that classroom, but in the grand scheme of things, it could be that it was a "final straw" for you.

I can tell you of an experience I had a number of years ago. My husband was going through immigration processes and I was a total basket case. I got angry (& loud) about the postal worker not knowing a zip code in a post office. Poor postal people probably thought the customer had "gone postal". During this time, I reacted in a very poor manner to small things that I look back now and feel a bit ashamed of. You may be going through the same thing.

Of course you have a right to your feelings, but it may be that even the smallest thing is too much for you to handle right now.

So the tables were out of place and the students had to straighten them. Big hairy deal. I've seen worse. I've taught in worse environments. At some point, you have to say, I need my education and darn it, I'll get it. Grumbling, being upset and letting these crazies ruin my day probably isn't going to do me much good. Not that you shouldn't try. But, you sometimes do have to take the good with the bad, if ya know what I mean.

If you are sure you are being touched inappropriately, you might should state something to the instructor. I suggest you speak to him/her first, before bring it up to admin. Especially since you mentioned a few times in this thread of your overwhelmed-type feelings. You want to make sure you go into a conversation like this with your ducks in a row and not looking like a basketcase, or you may have more problems arise from it.

It will be difficult, but you probably should find someone who offers grief counselling. Are you female? If so, I can also suggest a group called Woman Within. They accept hardship cases for women who have "work" to do. You sound like right now, you have a lot of personal work to do and get through.

I wish you the best.

 

[_Justified_]

I'm going to second the suggestion to talk directly with your instructor. It doesn't have to be a hostile confrontation, just ask for an appointment to sit with him for 15 minutes to discuss your concerns. See how he receives the criticism. If he is defensive, perhaps he was acting inappropriately on purpose. If he hears you and understands that your boundaries are different than his, you can chalk it up to a learning opportunity for both of you, and you will feel empowered by the experience either way.

As I write this, it seems like what you really need is to feel empowered somewhere in your life, to have a sense of control. You may not be able to control your feelings, but you CAN control your actions.

Good luck, and let us know how things turn out.

 

[Danii]

Heidi...thank you for your kind words and your support in and of itself is 10000000% more than appreciated by me. I think that I will talk with the MT student in my class as she has close to 20 years experience in the industry and to be honest she seems more experienced in massage than my teacher. We shall see what happens on Monday. Thanks again.


Savannah... I'm so sorry for the loss of your husband and for the added slap in the face of the way the hospital treated him.

I am angry with myself for not reacting immediately and telling the teacher that I was not comfortable with his touching me that way but I have been in a mental fog these past two months and so it seems like I am out of body in experiencing everything around me. I don't know if this makes any sense to you....

The class is indeed in a vocational school and we weren't given any contracts to sign...we just registered for the class and were given a receipt stating we had paid for the class. I don't know what are the policies of the school for vocational classes and so I shall talk with the MT student in my class and see what she advises me.

Thanks for listening to my vent. Take care and major hugzzz to you.

Pueppi... yeah, sharing a classroom may not seem like so much of a big deal but if I were to write every single thing that has gone wrong with the class just focusing on the teacher alone it would probably take 3 forum pages in length. I just wrote a few examples...as long-winded as my descriptions may be. The teacher has been unprepared from the beginning... period.....and since I paid for the class in full I don't expect to have to carry most of my teacher's weight in pushing to make sure I get properly taught.

I am indeed overwhelmed and truly hate going to class. The only thing I want is to be able to keep myself together so I can get through this crappy class and not look back. As for therapy...I have a therapist that I am seeing and my cousin is a counselor at a local clinic....so I do have an outlet to vent...but they can't be there for me 24/7 and so I let off some steam here with you guys/gals.

Thank you for your best wishes and wish for you the same. Take care.

Ella....at this moment I just cannot confront the teacher alone with this....I have got court dates, meetings with lawyers and so many of things that I need to take care that I would not be able to do this on my own... If I am going to do such a thing then I am going to need the support of another student and that is why I am going to talk about this to a MT in my class that I trust and has close to 20 years of experience working in this industry.

Thanks and take care.

 

[lovincupcakez]

I spoke to the MT yesterday and she advised me to just stay close to her and that even when she leaves the room that I should accompany her. She told me that should he try to do anything inappropriate again that I should file a police review.

Yesterday was a day that went from strange, to aggravating to feeling a great release... When I was outside the school building in the fresh air telling the MT what had happened...5 minutes later the teacher came out and was looking at us both talking. In class the teacher made a comment that I looked like I was in a bad mood (geez, I wonder why?? :roll: )

When we got our first break in class I was talking again to the MT in the hallway...all of a sudden the teacher puts 5 dollars in my hand and I had this WT*? look to my face and so did the MT... When the MT and I went back into the classroom I put the stupid 5 dollars inside his teacher's book.

The teacher kept looking at me strange all during class and in the second break he came up to me in the class, pointed at me and told me "Don't get mad with me, OK!....Don't get mad with me!"... This set me off and I told him that he had no write to try to intimidate me by pointing at me nor did he have a right to touch me inappropriately and that if he ever touched me again or try to intimidate me again that I would call the police on him.

This made him back away fast and he left the room in a rush... The cat is pretty much out of the bag now as this scene occurred in front of other students in the class. The good thing is that now all the students...even the envious student are on my side and watching to make sure that the teacher stays far away from me. They all agreed that should he even as much look at me strange that I should skip speaking to the administrator and just file a police review.

I seriously think that the teacher has psycological problems... It makes no sense that he gave me 5 dollars and then tried to intimidate in the classroom. Anyway, at least I feel a huge load off my shoulders and that the other students are very protective of me now.

 

[Ash T]

I don't understand---why did he give you 5 dollars?

 

[Graigorax]

Sorry about your loss.

Seems to me you are NOT in a good place right now so you could be seeing things happening in the wrong light.

Sharing a class room is very common.

This teacher?? Is this the teacher you bought flowers for or something?? If so, what changed?? Why did he give you money??

I hate to say it but it might be best to put your training on hold and deal with your life right now.

 

[Joris D]

Had you borrowed five dollars in the past? Or maybe gone out to lunch? Why the five dollars?

Jason

 

[ledzepfan203]

I spoke to the MT yesterday and she advised me to just stay close to her and that even when she leaves the room that I should accompany her. She told me that should he try to do anything inappropriate again that I should file a police review.

Yesterday was a day that went from strange, to aggravating to feeling a great release... When I was outside the school building in the fresh air telling the MT what had happened...5 minutes later the teacher came out and was looking at us both talking. In class the teacher made a comment that I looked like I was in a bad mood (geez, I wonder why?? :roll: )

When we got our first break in class I was talking again to the MT in the hallway...all of a sudden the teacher puts 5 dollars in my hand and I had this WT*? look to my face and so did the MT... When the MT and I went back into the classroom I put the stupid 5 dollars inside his teacher's book.

The teacher kept looking at me strange all during class and in the second break he came up to me in the class, pointed at me and told me "Don't get mad with me, OK!....Don't get mad with me!"... This set me off and I told him that he had no write to try to intimidate me by pointing at me nor did he have a right to touch me inappropriately and that if he ever touched me again or try to intimidate me again that I would call the police on him.

This made him back away fast and he left the room in a rush... The cat is pretty much out of the bag now as this scene occurred in front of other students in the class. The good thing is that now all the students...even the envious student are on my side and watching to make sure that the teacher stays far away from me. They all agreed that should he even as much look at me strange that I should skip speaking to the administrator and just file a police review.

I seriously think that the teacher has psycological problems... It makes no sense that he gave me 5 dollars and then tried to intimidate in the classroom. Anyway, at least I feel a huge load off my shoulders and that the other students are very protective of me now.

The whole $5 thing sounds weird, but I guess that has something to do with those flowers you mentioned before?

More importantly though, you've now accused the instuctor (in front of someone else none the less) of touching you inappropriately before going and speaking to him in private - already knowing you are in a compromised emotional state. Next you talked about going to the police. This type of talk, is the type that does provide for concern.

Although inappropriate touching is no doubt and in no uncertain terms unacceptable, so is accusing someone of this when your not completely sure this happened at all.

Recall you wrote:

It is very hard for me to know what to do as I am an emotional mess right now...It makes me wonder if being in such a highly charged emotional state if that is making me exaggerate my feelings towards the two incidents??

I just hope you aren't falsely accusing your instructor. That would be very wrong on many levels and could cause a person their ability to work or be treated properly in the community. If you aren't for sure, why would you jeopardize another individuals life? Sexual misconduct allegations are no walk in the park.

 

[lindsay b]

To answer the questions on the $5... I had never requested that the teacher give me $5 for the flowers or for lunch or anything else and I don't owe him any money. I have no idea why he gave it to me.

softy515... Thank you for your condolences....I agree with you, but I can't afford to take a long time off from the class...this is not a college course where I can come back the next semester...it's a vocational school class and I would have to repeat it all over again in taking a long leave of absence. I am feeling alot better with everything out in the open and in the future if I have to leave class early because I am stressed out or take a long weekend then that I will do...but to leave class I can't.

Thanks for your post. Take care.

Pueppi... The teacher had nothing to do with the flowers and if anything I had called him to apologize that the other student put him in a position where he had to pretend that he had something to do with the flowers...I NEVER asked him for any money for the flowers.

In the first incident I gave the teacher the benefit of the doubt BUT when he cupped/pinched the side of the same breast the second time it was not a mistake at all.... Yes, I have ALOT of stress that made me doubt my own feelings but now I am much better.

I just want to explain the chair incident alittle bit more clearer... I was to the right side and the teacher came to my left side to help me get the chair open...I was still holding the chair with my left. He started to pull the chair from me using his left hand when I felt the cup/pinch....The massage chair weighs 15 pounds tops and only takes one hand to carry...That his right hand went all the way under my left arm to cup/pinch my left breast (the same breast he touched the last time) is not a mistake...unless he mistook my left breast for one of the metal bars on the massage chair... :roll:

I took today off from school and spent several hours speaking with my cousin who is a counselor and went to see my therapist as well. In talking with both of them they agree that what happened with the teacher was not accidental and that being under such stress could make me doubt my feelings as to whether it was inappropriate or not.

Why would he point his finger at me in class and harshly say for me to "Don't get mad with me, OK?.... Don't get mad with me!" if he didn't sense that he did something wrong? Why did he choose the next class day to point at me and say these things in an aggressive way?

If you had seen how he tried to intimidate me you would not think that my response in calling him out in class was wrong on my part.When it comes to net it can't really replace seeing something with ones own eyes. And I know that no one has the obligation to even believe what I am saying in this forum.

I don't regret anything and if telling him I will go to the police keeps him far away from me then all the better.