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How do you know when it's your problem and when it's others?

HomeForumsPurposeHow do you know when it's your problem and when it's others?

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  • #85236
    Sapnap3
    Participant

    From one of the threads I started about my confidence, a great well wisher suggested that we talk about this. The serenity prayer says that “God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can. And wisdom to know the difference”
    All my life, I have been raised to blame myself for everything. My new boss is mean. She is crude and cruel but I still find an excuse to blame myself. Maybe I should work harder, smarter, be confident…Maybe …Maybe ..Maybe but when do I raise my hand and just say that she is a b@tch? When do I say, enough is enough? I know I can’t change her but the self blame is bigger than her cruelty. When do I say I have done my best and this is her issue?

    Love
    S

    #85237
    jock
    Participant

    I have a similar prayer that goes like this: “God give me the senility to accept my expanding waistline and the wisdom to know when to buy a bigger belt.”
    Rediscover your sense of humour is my answer. Not meaning to be disrespectful but it has helped me.

    #85238
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Hey Sap,

    I learned this the hard way. It doesnt really matter whose problem it is. You can simply adjust from your end and cant force her to magically become a different person. Yeah, one thing that can be done is be understand your motivation for working there. I remember being in tears often and angry all the time. Eventually after a super pleasant interlude where she unfairly threatened to replace me, i decided that i was giving way too much power to this woman over my mental peace. I had two choices – either stay or quit. The former wasnt possible and i gave it a thought – whats my motivation for this? I realized absolutely none. At best, I secretly craved for appreciation or atleast some kind of acknowledgment from their end.

    But i understood that i was getting way too personal and it was affecting my mental peace. Yeah, i always had low self-esteem and every criticism felt like a stab to the heart. I know it sounds silly but thats what it was. Then i concluded that i need to calm down and simply tap into an old resource – my desire to do work well for my sake. Over time, i became least concerned with what the work reflected of me as a person and rather became concerned with doing the work well – if someone suggested improvements that were required, i went ahead calmly and never let them have the luxury of shaking me up. I stopped letting my whole insecurities getting in the way of every comment, suggestion. Maybe that weekend of getting high helped haha. I think i got some strange clarity 😛

    From then on, I remember often going to the bathroom and doing power poses to feel better. Another practise was disconnecting from office when i went home – a proper de-stress hour or two before bed. However, if you really feel unhappy and feel like you’ve exhausted all options from your end, then its better to look for other opportunities.

    As for when to decide what, thats truly up to you.

    #85256
    Inky
    Participant

    Hi Sapnap3,

    I agree with the self-care. For every mean comment have a spa session at home! I’m not kidding! It reinforces that you are O.K. and WORTH taking care of! When they (try) to tear you down, do something positive to lift yourself up! I’ve actually done THREE spa/self-care/beauty routines! One to counteract the badness, one to feel “normal” and one as an act of symbolic victory!

    During one middling year, my DH would devolve into criticism. I honestly didn’t think he knew he was doing it! Well, one day he was working in our barn and saw me outside sitting on a rock ~ luxuriously putting homemade moisturizer on my feet! He huffed out, “What’s going on here??” (My wife is happy! Oh no, not that!) Well, something “shifted”! He saw me relaxed, happy, and doing an act of self care!
    He snapped out of whatever spell he was under that year and was “normal” thereafter!

    Your boss will eventually see you well rested, happy, perfumed, well dressed, bringing a healthy lunch to work, organized, and with flowers on the desk! Of course, she may amp it up, but simply become more beautiful and happy with more self-care! One day (believe it or not) she may flip over to the Light and treat you with respect! It’s like Darkness battling the Light. Simply light more candles!

    Try It! She may never change, but YOU will feel good!

    Inky

    #85257
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Sapnap3:

    I smiled as I saw this new thread. Before reading it I went to the last one and read all your posts there. I copied the following from there with the intent on posting it here and responding to it, still without reading this thread:

    “when do I stop blaming myself for ‘not trying hard enough’ ‘not givning my all’ and ‘not letting go’…when?
    …I see people having beautiful babies, getting engaged, married, getting promotions. Why am i stagnant? I have an MBA, should I get one job with an understanding boss?…”

    I copied the above because I saw the works of your Inner Critic and was going to point her out to you (that superego psychic entity, the often abusive, ineffective overgrown inner critic, also known as toxic inner critic). Reading the above post encouraged me in thinking I am on to the core problem you are suffering from: that toxic inner critic.

    You posted above: “All my life, I have been raised to blame myself for everything. My new boss is mean…” The part of your brain (the particular neural connections) that blames you for everything is that psychic entity, Superego, Internal Critic. And it is the problem, it does way too much … not for you but against you. As it blames you for everything, you take responsibility for what is NOT your responsibility. Having a certain boss is NOT your responsibility, yet your inner critic tells you that it is. “well, how is it that others don’t have mean bosses? Huh? No answer? Well, it is YOUR fault then…?”

    “And how is it that other women your age are married? Look at them! They look so happy. How is it that you are not married, and you don’t have babies? No wonder you are not happy!”

    And the part of you, the Inner Child (Id I suppose, in Freudian terms, as is Superego) says: “Okay, okay, I must get married then, and I must have babies, then I will be happy and I must make the boss not mean because it is my doing that she is mean so I have to fix it as it is my fault I am not married and ….”

    Part of you bullies the other part of you and it is very common. See my thread on bullying myself from a day or two ago.

    It is a slow process that requires extreme patience and genteelness with yourself, the process of shrinking that inner critic. It is about becoming aware of IT, of its attack throughout the day: Oh, here is an attack. Then instead of engaging in it with an argument (and the drive to do so is intense, it is like an itch that needs to be scratched), you resist it and disengage from it for now. And you do it again and again, day after day.

    Once formed, this toxic internal critic will (in between feeling good breaks) torture you forevermore. No way to please it, no matter what. Disengage from it, shrink it, over time- that is the only way.

    The mean boss will continue to bother you way more than if you didn’t have your own mean inner critic. The two work together, one from the outside, the other from the inside.

    Looking forward to your next post…?

    anita

    #85506
    Sapnap3
    Participant

    Hello All,
    I have been reading everything you guys have said all this week. I know I struggle with depression and it had rared its ugly head again. Thank you for all the kind suggestions and thoughts. I love the idea of pampering myself when others critize. I do agree with the presence of that very loud inner critic I have. I am slowing getting into my routine in Ireland. Joined a gym, walking out of work whenever I can early. I have also started reaching out to as many people as I can to get another job. What had frustrated me the most, outside of the mean boss, was the fact that I have no learning and mentoring at this job. I took a very low level job after my MBA( after working 10 years in the financial sector and making 6 figures) thinking I will learn about a new industry and work with a very successful CFO, instead, I do adminstrative and clerical job which no MBA will do for 30k. I feel belittled and unappreciaited but above all, I feel angry with myself for taking this position. Lucky for me, I am using this anger to network and put my resume out there. I will find a job that will give me mental satisfaction.

    All I am battling now is the intense feeling of tell my boss to f**k off. I am going to use the letter technique where I write down everything I want to tell her. Read it the next day and burn or tear the paper.

    Wish me luck everyone. And thank you so much for your insights.

    S

    #85520
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Sapnap:

    You wrote above that you “agree with the presence of that very loud inner critic”- well, what are you going to do about its presence? It is not like there is nothing to do. If you’d like to read more about the inner critic and the other side of the same coin, the outer critic, you can google Pete Walker’s website on Inner Critic and Outer Critic.

    anita

    #85523
    Glenda
    Participant

    Oh my goodness!telling your boss that is not a good idea at all, sapnap
    You might get fired.
    And you need this job don’t you.

    • This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Glenda.
    #85540
    Sapnap3
    Participant

    Thank you Anita. I am looking him up now. What are your techniques? I was trying to look for forum about inner critism and I couldn’t find it.

    Glenda, I wouldn’t dream of doing that. I am writing on a piece of paper and burning that paper. I don’t need anything that badly but I don’t ever want to burn a bridge.

    #85544
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Sapnap3:

    Your Inner Critic, this is a normal, natural part of the psyche responsible for you, as a social animal, to get along with others, as the voice that would tell you: “Wait in line, Sapnap3, no cutting line even though you are in a hurry!” And it is the voice that tells you: “Do not call your boss a ^%I& because it is not going to help, you need this job at the moment…”

    So an Inner Critic is there to stay. It has a good purpose. It got out of hand though, turning against you, saying something like (parallel to the examples above: “You do not deserve that which you are waiting in line for- so don’t take space standing there, in line” or “You, Sapnap3 are *&%^ for ending up with a boss like that.”

    Even that abusive, unhelpful inner critic got its start with a good intention, growing up with inadequate parenting at the least, it started this way: “it is not that your mother is uncaring, there is something wrong with you, Sapnap3, and that is the reason your mother doesn’t care about you. Fix what is wrong with you and she will care.”

    Because if there was something wrong with your mother, in this example, then there is nothing you can do to make her care. But if there is something wrong with you, then you can change it, shape up, and then she will care and you will get the caring you need.

    That is the logic behind the well intended abusive inner critic. It is misguided but didn’t mean to harm you to begin with, only to get your needs met in an unfortunate to you situation.

    WHAT TO DO NOW? Rehabilitate that misguided inner critic. There you have a parent figure in your head, that inner critic, with a whip ready to whip you at any turn. See it with the whip when it is about to raise it and land it on you, or when it already started or at any point, and you talk to it: no, this is not the way to help me, you tell IT. And you teach IT what would be helpful instead.

    You rehabilitate, reeducate that Inner Critic. Repeatedly, through awareness and replacing incorrect thinking with correct thinking as in examples.

    anita

    #85545
    Anonymous
    Guest

    I don’t think I gave examples. Maybe you can come up with examples in your life today?
    anita

    #85585
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Perhaps this will help clarify the role of self-care suggested in nothing other than good faith.

    http://explorewhatsnext.com/am-i-depressed-or-surrounded-by-holes/

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