Repairably Damaged

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, customers weren’t applying for loan modifications. Work was diminishing in TJ White’s department. Without warning, an Executive Director offers her a reassignment to a new role. Having only the evening to decide, she nervously accepts the following morning.

Instantly, as if Send on her response email was the fear detonator, TJ was overcome with panic. What had she done?

The last twelve years had been smooth sailing. Sure, there were changes and challenges: A divorce, a new relationship, moving to two different states to either keep a current job or be closer to family (while keeping the current job), and co-parenting a bipolar daughter with an oblivious ex-husband. But nothing compared to being thrown into a new position where TJ would be unable to complete her job without relying on a mentor and unfamiliar managers.

Vulnerability was TJ’s nemesis. She avoided it at every cost. But now she couldn’t. And that reality grabbed hold of her brain and wouldn’t let go.

After five weeks of enduring debilitating panic attacks over fearing the daily unknown, and worried she was slowly seeping into a depression, her husband, Dean, insisted on her seeking therapy.

Something was failing her mentally, and TJ knew it too.

Although in a happy relationship and having a successful career at a top bank, the secret of TJ’s social anxiety had finally surfaced with this new role, and she wanted to know why it was no longer in her control.

Repairably Damaged is TJ’s story of understanding the carnage left behind from years of child sexual abuse, having an alcoholic mother, and moving back and forth between divorced parents, never feeling like she belonged. Through therapy, TJ examines what led her to having general anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, then realizing how the diagnosis made a positive impact on her life.