I am going to assume that this question isn’t regarding laws or required accommodations for depression or narcolepsy, but rather how to deal with your coworkers. (I wrote about accommodations for narcolepsy previously, if you are looking for legal type help.)? Falling asleep in a meeting is easily noticed.? If your coworkers don’t know about your medical condition, then they are thinking that you stay up too late, are lazy, are not paying attention or that you just don’t care about your job or what people think of you.

Is that the image you want to project?

I didn’t think so.? First of all, it’s false.? You have a medical condition that is being treated by a physician.? It has real consequences, and I’m sure you wish you weren’t afflicted.

But, perception is reality.? If your coworkers think you’re a lazy slacker who doesn’t even care enough about his job to stay awake in meetings, that is how they will treat you.? You won’t be up on the latest projects because they won’t want to work with you.? They’ll lose respect for your boss because he’s not “doing anything” about this horrible employee.? It ends up being a bad situation all around.

Now, I know, in an ideal world people would give each other the benefit of the doubt.? “Gee, Jim fell asleep during that budget meeting today.? I bet he has narcolepsy!? Let’s get his ideas on the Snyder project!”? But, we live in the real world and that’s not what they are thinking.

You need to control your own information.? I’m not a fan of the TMI coworker who tells everyone details about their various illnesses, but this particular illness is affecting how your coworkers perceive you.? This will affect your career in general.? So, speak up.? “I’m sorry I fell asleep in that meeting today.? I have a condition called narcolepsy and sometimes I fall asleep without warning.? I’m taking medication, but I guess there isn’t a pill strong enough to overcome budget meetings.”

Some of your coworkers won’t believe you anyway, but some will.? If they have reason to believe you’re sleepiness is due to medical reasons and not due to laziness, you’ll be treated better.

Now, may I also suggest that if your condition is triggered by longer meetings that don’t require active participation, that we try to limit the number of these meetings?? Businesses aren’t generally run like college seminars where one person is doling out information to everyone else.? Sure, sometimes these type of meetings are necessary, but they should be rare.? If you are having a ton of them, take it upon yourself to come up with a better solution.? Perhaps the person droning on about the budget could send everyone an e-mail instead.? If you have to suffer through them, get up and walk around every 15 minutes or so.? (Let the person leading the meeting know of your condition in advance, or he’ll think you’re rude.)? (I realize I don’t know if that actually helps in the case of narcolepsy, but since you said it was the long nature of the meeting that brought on the flare up, I thought this might help.)

I don’t know how your depression manifests itself either, but if it’s noticeable, you’ll want to use the same, honest approach.

I know that you don’t want to share.? I know that you’d prefer to wave a magic wand and be healed.? I also know that that’s not going to happen over night.? Instead?? Control the situation by letting people know what’s going on.? You may be surprised at how compassionate people can be.

Got a workplace dilemma? Email your questions to EvilHRLady@gmail.com.

Photo by Murray Barnes, Flickr cc 2.0

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