A friend visited me for my birthday and got a chance to tell me about the hostile work environment being created for many employees in his department by their shared supervisor.

He told me he was glad to get away for a brief vacation because he’d been so stressed out at work. He even said that his office mate, a quiet and mild-mannered woman, was pushed to the point where she screamed at the supervisor before walking out on the job—never to return. The woman had already quit once. But, the company offered her a raise to come back to the job. They promised things would get better. They did. For a few weeks. Then, the hostile work environment was right back. And, that led to the woman telling off her supervisor and walking off the job.

My friend and this woman had been enduring the stress of working for this person together. With her gone, that allowed by my friend to be subjected to more negative behavior from his supervisor.

In fact, things got so bad that my friend said that he’d been getting tension headaches. Like clockwork, the headaches came every day on his way to work. He had knots in his shoulders from being tense all day. And, he was absolutely stressed out because his harasser was making his presence known all day. He barely got any relief from the behavior.

This immediately took me back to my ordeal in the workplace. I remember tension headaches well. I also remember the sleepless nights, hair falling out, and my diagnosis with stage-1 hypertension.

What’s strange about it is that it took me a while to really register how bad I was feeling. When you are being subjected to discrimination, harassment and/or retaliation, you are so caught up in every incident at work, in avoiding your harasser(s), and in surviving each work day without being set up for failure or set up for blame that you don’t really absorb what your body is going through.

I think it was weeks before I realized that I was frequently getting headaches on the way to work. I had problems concentrating. I went from not eating to overeating. There was one thing after another going on and none of it was really registering for me until everything pretty much registered all at once. The onset of hypertension was the biggest shock.

My doctor gave me a week to see if my blood pressure would decrease before starting me on a lifetime regimen of medication to keep my pressure down. I spent that week doing yoga and taking walks outside, when I felt stressed at work. When I went home, I made myself talk to my family about something other than work. I watched movies and forced myself to be distracted.

It worked. My pressure went down, but it was still elevated. That’s when I knew I had to make some really important decisions about whether or not to remain at that job and what to do with my future.

The point of this post is to remind anyone whose going through issues at work to remember their health.

This will sound harsh, but the people violating Federal statutes at work (or dancing on the line of violating the law) won’t miss one night’s sleep if you die from a heart attack. They’ll help collect money to send flowers to your family for your funeral and they will go right on attacking the next person.

In the midst of race-related issues at work, you should make appointments to visit your doctor because elevated blood pressure is no joke. When I realized I was having headaches, I never connected it to hypertension. I just thought it was a simple stress headache. But, it was more. Visit your doctor. And, if you need to really speak to someone about your issues, visit a psychotherapist or psychiatrist to discuss your issues.

I know Black folks like to go to church and not mental health professionals, but sometimes you have to go there if you are having serious issues coping with the realities of your job. It’s not always enough to speak to friends and family about your issues. I will be the first to admit that, for a short time, I needed anti-anxiety medication to sleep and deal with the stress. Things had gotten that bad over the YEARS of issues taking place at my job.

I want everyone going through issues at work to come out of it with their health, if nothing else. Whether or not you file a complaint against your employer or you find a lawyer to assist you is secondary compared to living to see another day.

Look after your physical and mental health, before all else. That’s easy to forget in the midst of racial drama at work.

There should always be a balance between your job, your social life, your leisure/rest/relaxation time.