well,

[mee]

Long-time listener hoping to tap some people in the know. This is pretty long and I apologize.

I'm a 15-year employee of a company. My employer is attempting to make me attend a professionals therapy program for what is projected to be 2 months. This is a program of my employer's choosing. This service has evaluated me and determined that my crummy childhood and recent divorce are largely contributing my being disruptive. At this time, my employer is telling me to either go to this program or I will be fired.

As background, I am a driven individual with very real responsibilities. I have had zero issues with performing my responsibilities at a very high level on demand day or night. My profession is a large part of my identity...probably too large.

There have been/are zero substance abuse or physical altercation issues. I do ask difficult questions. I have very high expectations of myself and expect others to provide the the level of performance of which they have guaranteed customers. I am not interested in gossip or facebook. As a result, I do not participate in most workplace conversations. People do not like such things, claim to be intimidated by me and I have now deemed me disruptive.

The problems are that this program will charge me $25K to attend, room with 5 other guys and require that I leave my kids/house/pets for 8-10 weeks. Insurance is unlikely to pay for this treatment.

Quitting my position will likely result in my having to leave town for employment elsewhere (if I can find re-employment now). Relocation would cause a real hardship in that it would mean leaving my kids as well as the associated shifts in placement and child-support payments.

An attorney I spoke to has offered the preliminary opinion that local outpatient therapy seems to be a very reasonable alternative that would cost much, much less and would likely be partially covered by insurance. This would also be much less of a hardship for my kids and myself. I suspect that my employer is uninterested in this opinion.

The initial evaluation states I must be immersed in a therapy program for it to be effective. There is no guarantee that either sort of therapy will be effective in helping me with any/all of these issues.

I am deeply concerned about a marked conflict of interest in finding a problem then being forced to buy the $25K treatment...on top of the lost time and wages (not to mention being painted as mentally ill). I am also concerned that I am and will always be an easy workplace target now that it has come to this.

As most would imagine, this is upsetting to me and I'm hoping to obtain some clear-headed opinions on my situation.

Thank you.