Dear Prudence,
This doesn’t show me in a great light. I am aware.
One of my co-workers lost her daughter in a freak accident recently. My office is somewhat woo-woo, so management brought in a grief counselor for us to process this sad news in three different afternoon sessions. I thought it was a waste of time for me, but some of my other co-workers were closer to the family and seemed to appreciate it. They gave out “Grief Journals” and asked us to fill it in during the sessions, with our responses to various ideas and prompts. At the end they collected them, which I questioned. Mostly because, as previously stated, I thought this was a waste of time and hadn’t really engaged. They assured me the process was anonymous and not to worry.
Turns out they are giving these journals TO the bereaved family. If they’d told us that before, I’d have approached it a lot differently. Instead of, for example, responding to the challenge to “transform our experience of death through storytelling” by writing a short and gory horror prompt about being aware of your body decomposing in the grave (to be fair to me, that was a huge preoccupation of mine after my stepmother’s death when I was a child).
I intend to challenge this with my manager—since even people who approached this process in good faith were asked to write down very personal, painful experiences. If it goes ahead, however, what should I do then? Contact the family and ask them to weed out my journal? Wait and see if they even bother to look at nearly 20 notebooks while going through the worst thing that ever happened to them? I have considered just starting my job search now, in case.
— Never Engage With Work-Sponsored Therapy