Post by primrose on Sept 5, 2010 13:39:12 GMT -5
I am reading a great book about self sabotage at work. It is full of information about how adult children act out at work. I am the child of two workaholics and I worked from the age of 12 so I have a LOT of issues in this area.
The author says untreated adult children will inevitably have a work crisis in their life at some stage, often more than one. It's very true of me. I acted out my love addiction and codependency at work far more than I did in my relationships before I met my POA.
One thing that has been particularly useful for me to examine is when childhood feelings overwhelm an adult child. The auther suggests that there is usually a key feeling that is so painful and difficult to process that the AC falls into paralysis or an horrific act out.
I know for me the most terrible feeling I had when I was bullied at work was that noone protected me. I felt completely alone and singled out for abuse. I was scapegoated. I felt very angry about it and I also felt unprotected because my husband had cancer and I had to take care of him when it was going on. That experience broke me. I felt destroyed by what happened. Now in retrospect I can see how overwhelmed I was because that feeling of not being protected was something I felt throughout my childhood. And the truth was, I couldn't protect myself. I was a target for scapegoating. I became more and more unhappy and tried harder and harder to be perfect and reasonable so that I wouldn't be scapegoated. Of course, nothing worked. I had as my outside focus the need for the approval of people who withheld it in order to have power over me.
It's the classic love addict pattern and I broke myself on it. The intensity of that feeling of not being protected was simply too much for me. But it also held me. I sought to re-experience it. I opened up that wound and threw myself into it.
Now examining that experience I can see that it isn't anyone's job to protect me. I have to learn to protect myself. I have to feel the feeling and be able to contextualise it. Not being protected feels agonising for me, but I'm an adult today I'm not the child begging her drunk father to come home with her knowing that if he carries on drinking she'll be screamed at for not being able to control him. That stuff in my childhood was wrong and abusive and made me very scared. Noone protected me from my father's behaviour, noone helped me. Noone comforted me. I was alone then and at the mercy of abusive adults. But I am not that frightened child today. I have to process the feelings as they are triggered, not act out on them and PROTECT MYSELF. I need to set boundaries, I need to seek help when I am struggling, and I need to keep myself safe. It's not always easy to do all of that as the template I learnt as a child was to be stoic and put up with abuse. It's why I stayed in a firm where I was bullied and it took me 2 years to leave. But it is very helpful to see that the feeling of not being protected draws me so powerfully because it was such an integral part of my experience as a child.
Now I know that if I start to feel that, I must take a step back and look objectively at what is happening for me. I have a responsibility to myself to seperate my emotionality from my work life. Work is for making a living. Therapy is for feeling childhood feelings. And I no longer want a blending of those two worlds. Who said compartmentalising was a sign of poor recovery
P.
The author says untreated adult children will inevitably have a work crisis in their life at some stage, often more than one. It's very true of me. I acted out my love addiction and codependency at work far more than I did in my relationships before I met my POA.
One thing that has been particularly useful for me to examine is when childhood feelings overwhelm an adult child. The auther suggests that there is usually a key feeling that is so painful and difficult to process that the AC falls into paralysis or an horrific act out.
I know for me the most terrible feeling I had when I was bullied at work was that noone protected me. I felt completely alone and singled out for abuse. I was scapegoated. I felt very angry about it and I also felt unprotected because my husband had cancer and I had to take care of him when it was going on. That experience broke me. I felt destroyed by what happened. Now in retrospect I can see how overwhelmed I was because that feeling of not being protected was something I felt throughout my childhood. And the truth was, I couldn't protect myself. I was a target for scapegoating. I became more and more unhappy and tried harder and harder to be perfect and reasonable so that I wouldn't be scapegoated. Of course, nothing worked. I had as my outside focus the need for the approval of people who withheld it in order to have power over me.
It's the classic love addict pattern and I broke myself on it. The intensity of that feeling of not being protected was simply too much for me. But it also held me. I sought to re-experience it. I opened up that wound and threw myself into it.
Now examining that experience I can see that it isn't anyone's job to protect me. I have to learn to protect myself. I have to feel the feeling and be able to contextualise it. Not being protected feels agonising for me, but I'm an adult today I'm not the child begging her drunk father to come home with her knowing that if he carries on drinking she'll be screamed at for not being able to control him. That stuff in my childhood was wrong and abusive and made me very scared. Noone protected me from my father's behaviour, noone helped me. Noone comforted me. I was alone then and at the mercy of abusive adults. But I am not that frightened child today. I have to process the feelings as they are triggered, not act out on them and PROTECT MYSELF. I need to set boundaries, I need to seek help when I am struggling, and I need to keep myself safe. It's not always easy to do all of that as the template I learnt as a child was to be stoic and put up with abuse. It's why I stayed in a firm where I was bullied and it took me 2 years to leave. But it is very helpful to see that the feeling of not being protected draws me so powerfully because it was such an integral part of my experience as a child.
Now I know that if I start to feel that, I must take a step back and look objectively at what is happening for me. I have a responsibility to myself to seperate my emotionality from my work life. Work is for making a living. Therapy is for feeling childhood feelings. And I no longer want a blending of those two worlds. Who said compartmentalising was a sign of poor recovery
P.
