I found the new person crying in her office today. She was hired after me to assist the designers and eventually become a sales person. The person that is responsible for training her has been acting like her buddy and now he is telling everyone she is incompetent. He keeps telling her to do one thing one day and then saying he didn't the next. He told her today that she will probably be fired soon.
This kind of treatment makes me so crazy. I think it is because it reminds me of when my step mother played head games with me. Changing the rules constantly and pretending to be my friend one minute and punishing me the next. Her behavior made me think I was going crazy.
I learned early in life that there are people that just don't play nice. They get a lot of pleasure out of playing with peoples emotions and creating drama where there doesn't need to be any. Your best defense is to not react then they get bored and move on to someone else. You can show no weakness or the game continues.
With my stepmother I thought if I was only good enough I could please her. I would do everything perfectly and then she would see how wonderful I was and love me. My perfection worked sometimes and sometimes it didn't which made it even more confusing for me and made me try even harder.
What I learned from my experience with my stepmother made me a perfect match for my favorite alcoholic. It set up a pattern of me trying to do everything right while living with someone that was my biggest fan one day and my worse critic the next. It produced the same results as before I thought I was crazy.
I married that man 30 years ago today. It lasted nine years and reinforce the idea planted by my step mother that I wasn't good enough but I should keep trying that with a little work I could win back their love.
What I know now is what I told my co-worker today. Nobody can make you feel bad about yourself. You feel bad because you think what they are saying is true. Believing what someone says about you good or bad is a mistake because it is their opinion and opinions change.
We give the people in our lives the power to define use with their opinions. If they love us all the time then all is well if they don't then we feel lost and unsure of ourselves. We spend our lives looking for some one's approval and we depending on whether we get it or not determines our happiness.
The answer for me today is to just do my best and live with the consequences. A life without applause just me doing the right thing for me and leaving it at that. If I accept the applause then I have to accept the criticism and I am just not that interested in either any more.
Well after reading all of this good information, all I can think about is that poor girl crying and I hope she doesn't lose her job! LOL so what does that say about me?
ReplyDeleteYour last sentence really hit me.....what would it be like to not be interested in either the applause or the disapproval anymore? Sounds like you live in a place of freedom. Imagine that!
I worked for an employer who like that. She changed the rules daily. I never knew if I was coming or going. She was a bully as well. It got so bad for me that my hair was falling out by the handful. One day I just had enough. I had gone into her office to ask a question and she was changing the rules yet again. It was then I had enough. I told her on the spot that I was quitting. I cleaned out my desk and walked out. It was one of the most empowering times of my life. I had allowed her to take so much from me then one day I took back the power she had taken from me. It was awesome. And yes, when I went to pick up my final pay she could not even look me in the eye and scurried into her office.
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