u/Unlikely_Vehicle_828

I hate discovery with a burning passion. I’m convinced it’s designed to overwhelm the everliving crap out of the plaintiff by requiring an insane amount of specific details and dates that no reasonable person keeps record of or can recall off the top of their head. What do you mean you need the exact name of my childhood best friend’s pet parrot and the date I first met them???? (Not a real question btw just pointing out the ridiculous amount of specificity required and how far back you’re asked to remember things)

And literally do not even get me started on all the requests for production, which is apparently every document you’ve ever owned in your entire life and then some.

Anyway I’m overwhelmed and this is an insane mental burden that I genuinely don’t know if I can handle, the fact that there’s such a tight turnaround on producing such an ungodly amount of info is stressful.

I probably will not actually end up walking away from this nonsense, but it IS IN FACT nonsense and I’m already exhausted. I guess I need encouragement or something? Idk.

Long post incoming. The bulk of it is intended for people considering whether they want to pursue a lawsuit. If that doesn’t apply, you probably won’t get much out of it, so please feel free to skip it… but my hope is that people will post their own advice either way.

I’ve noticed lots of people feeling unsure of whether to follow through with a lawsuit, or having regrets about filing or not filing one. I thought it would be helpful to make a thread for people to get honest insight, ask questions, etc. There are a lot of things I wish I’d known in hindsight. There are certain realities about a lawsuit that don’t always meet our expectations. Sometimes choosing not to fight it this way is the better choice. Sometimes it isn’t. My hope is that this thread can help people make informed decisions about what’s best for them.

I’ll start. I think it 100% depends on what your expectations are and what’s truly important to you.

In my situation, I was impacted heavily in every area of my life, but at the end of the day I value my mental health more than I value money. If I had a crystal ball, I’m not sure I would have made the same decision. Like many people, I believed a lawsuit was the only way to feel seen, have my truth be told, force accountability, and ensure protection for other employees. I know I deserve compensation, but I find myself asking “at what cost?” a whole lot these days.

& then there’s the expectations vs. reality thing.

Expectation: the company is forced to look at what they did, take some damn accountability of their own, reimburse the financial losses I suffered, and create better protections & policies for employees. I’d then ride off into the sunset with enough money to survive and a sense of peace in knowing I did all I could do, that the world is a better place for it.

Reality: the company spends money to dodge accountability at all costs. They fight to avoid making things right. There is a small chance I get no compensation. There is a 100% chance I get no apology. Vulnerable people continue getting hurt. They win in the sense that I’m unable to do meaningful advocacy work because litigation means I have to lay low. I find myself signing off on legal strategies that water down the full weight of what I went through, all for the sake of simplicity because I’m tired of having to defend myself. I have projects and business ideas and meaningful things I want to engage in, and words I want to speak, that I cannot do/say until it’s done. I constantly have to self-monitor. I’m not free to just exist and be me or to share about my life as openly as I’d like. I can’t meaningfully engage in public discourse about things that are important to me, and if my name is attached, it’s a hard no altogether. I have to be suspicious whenever I get a DM or friend request from someone I don’t know. My values and ethics are at constant war with the reality of needing to be made financially whole. My character is consistently misrepresented, the truth is twisted, and I have to read about it and defend it over and over again. I feel like I’ve accidentally chained myself to my own abuser and didn’t realize it until it was too late.

My lawyers are incredible, but someone else still has control of the narrative. The justice system has its place, but it doesn’t guarantee changed behavior. Money is important and necessary to survive, but it isn’t everything.

When it comes to filing a lawsuit, I want people to know that your experience will be narrowed in the process. A judge or jury will never hear the full weight of what you experienced; only the parts that survive the legal proceedings. The employer will never look at you as a human being. They lack the self-awareness and integrity to understand how their actions had real life consequences, and they don’t want to make it right. You can’t force that out of a business who would rather engage in a whole lawsuit than simply acknowledge they caused harm. They run on fear of liability alone, and they are void of empathy or meaningful repair.

I don’t know yet if there’s money at the end of this, but I do know now that there’s no validation or apology. I know this will be a blip on the company’s radar, a small line item in a spreadsheet, while I’m changed by it forever. I know that I can survive any outcome. I know I should have never needed their validation to feel whole, and I know that particular wound is constantly being reopened and tested. I know I want to help people, and I know that I can’t right now. I know that my life matters, my story matters, and my experience matters… and I know I can’t share it the way I want to right now. I know all of the pain is being transformed into something purposeful. I know that I’ve inadvertently exposed myself to more of their psychological abuse through this process, and I know that I have no idea how to reconcile that. These are the things I’ve learned through filing a lawsuit, but that’s just my personal experience. Maybe yours is different.

My advice (TLDR version, kind of):

If your primary motivation is money, there was a time I would have been judgmental of that, and I’m sorry for being an asshole about it in the past. Now I say go give them hell, both for yourself and for the rest of us. Show no mercy. Your emotional detachment puts you in the best possible position to not fold.

If your primary motivation is closure, a lawsuit can either help with that or temporarily hurt it, but somewhere along the way I believe you’ll find it was never a necessary component.

If your mental health is in a precarious spot because of your employer, know that a lawsuit is time-consuming and draining and highly triggering. Yes, even with a lawyer. Even more if you’re pro se. I recommend sincerely evaluating how much more you’ll sacrifice. You don’t have to face them in a court of law to heal.

If your primary motivation is reform and making the workplace more inclusive, know that a lawsuit is only one avenue, and it’s not always the most effective one. There are so many other ways to do that. An active lawsuit will limit you from pursuing 99% of them, at least for the time being, so make sure you’re okay with that.

& if you’re somebody who expresses themselves primarily through words, or if advocacy is a core part of your identity, know that a lawsuit will force you to turn that part of yourself off for a while. Make sure you’re okay with that too.

I admit I’m still in the thick of it so maybe I’ll feel different a year from now, idk. If you get anything out of this long ass post, I hope it’s simply to be mindful of what a lawsuit will mean for you before you decide. You don’t know how future you will feel or think. Good questions to ask yourself are: “What do I hope to get out of this? How might it hold me back? Would a more healed version of me still believe this lawsuit is the only thing that can give me what I need?”

I’d love for other people to share their thoughts and advice too. Thanks for reading and I hope this thread can help some people ❤️

Discovery is ramping up, deadlines are heavy, and I’m going through some major stressors in other areas of my life as well. I just need some encouragement to keep going bc right now I want to ignore everyone, stay in bed, and eat cheesy potatoes for like two weeks straight.

Could def use some happy stories and encouraging words from people who’ve made it to the other side. Or who are just less mentally fragile than I am right now in general. Thanks ❤️

I’m not talking about people you recognize from the sub (those DM’s are fine and almost never fish for info). I’m talking about old coworkers (if on socials), or if it’s on here, random DM’s from new-ish accounts or ones you’ve never seen posting on the sub, and their messages only ever consist of short, invasive questions like: “what state are you in?” or “who’s your employer?” or “what are the exact complaints in your case?” or “what stage of the process is your case currently in?”

Then when you inevitably either a) tell them you’re not willing to disclose certain information at this time, or b) answer with something very generic up to a point and THEN tell them you’re not comfortable discussing it further… and then follow it up with “Can I ask why you wanted to know?” or just generally ask why they reached out to you, they suddenly completely ghost you even though they were clearly very interested in trying to talk to you about your case up until you asked them why.

It seems kind of excessive at this point and I figure surely I can’t be the only one. It started happening a lot after my actual lawsuit was filed, both on socials and on here, and something about it feels suspicious. Am curious how many other people on this sub get those types of DM’s frequently? Am also just curious whether I’m being reasonably suspicious of people or not. All of my social media accounts are locked down hard right now, and I’m not really posting anything atm so it doesn’t matter much either way, but I’ve gotten a few follow requests from private accounts with no pfp (or at least no face in the frame) on places like Instagram and Facebook. Currently I have it set up so I have to approve all follow requests, and so that I can’t be messaged on socials unless the person is following me. The one time I accepted a request from an old coworker, I got a DM immediately afterwards asking me about my case. So now my default thought when those random requests come in is that it’s either a private investigator or somebody at my old company using a fake profile trying to snoop. Maybe I’m being unreasonably paranoid, but this is kind of starting to feel like the Reddit version of what’s been going on with my socials and something about it isn’t sitting right.

Not exactly EEOC related, but definitely related to the sub itself, and I’m interested to hear other peoples’ thoughts and experiences with weird requests/DM’s. Bonus points if you’re a private investigator, employer, lawyer, or other person who knows what a suspicious interaction *would* actually look like.

I recently learned my local clinic is closing. I’m in a rural area, so that was the only option I had. I’m considering switching over to the troches in the interim, but I prefer IM since the dosing frequency is less often than with other less bioavailability-friendly methods. From what I understand, oral ketamine has to be taken a few days a week, and I don’t really want to do that. I’d prefer to stick to my current schedule of once every few weeks.

The timing of this really sucks because I feel like I finally started finding relief only for it to be taken away. I’ve already looked for other local providers and there are none. I know it’s a really long shot, but are there any online providers who will prescribe infrequent at-home IM treatments?

Thanks so much!