Posted by violette on July 11, 2010, at 17:12:19
In reply to Is Anybody Responsible for Their Own Feelings?, posted by ron1953 on July 9, 2010, at 13:36:29
"The ongoing push for "civility" clearly illustrates an illogical (and IMO unhealthy) desire to externalize the responsibility for one's feelings. Appalling."
Hi again Ron,
Years ago, a new boss was transferred from another office. For whatever reason (I can only guess) he started to repeatedly point out my deficiencies-this was after getting high marks on my personnel reviews for several years from at least 2 different supervisors. I wondered why he was singling me out as these mistakes were common to our field partly due to ongoing, unresolved company policies that were contradictory to the interpretation or application of the policies that many did in order to get certain types of jobs done. There were a dozen other people having the same problem.
I sucked it up, and it got worse, to the point where it seemed he was taking out his anger on me. All I could guess was that I had outperformed him on a particularly important job duty, since his attitude towards me only changed at that time. I could only guess as logic can't explain why he singled me out--and besides that, he seemed angry and hateful to me. I suppose I could have gone around thinking there was something wrong with me, and I think at first I did unconsciously in some way or another-and that in itself is unhealthy.
This person was highly regarded by the departmental manager due to high marks in performance measures upon his transfer to the dept. (Again, I don't think there's much logic to emotions) In starting to guess maybe this person might sustain his self esteem by sort of over achieving, thinking he wouldn't appear so angry if it was due to love of career, and thus thinking this very confident person was really fragile inside--I approached him in the most humble, non-confrontational manner I could. Using "I" statements (before I had ever stepped foot in a therapist's office and learned of this) I said softly-maybe I am mistaken or seeing this wrong, but I felt hurt by the way I was singled out when you (again) strongly pointed out issue xyz in front of everyone, while others who have the same issue have been overlooked.(While I confronted him in private, people had witnessed him doing this--but no one stood up for me at the time as this person was 1. the boss and 2. highly regarded at the time and 3. new so no one really knew how this person's character.
This totally backfired on me-this person yelled at me--the worst was that he did not even pause to at least consider what I just said to him; instead, he just yelled at me saying how dare I question his authority.
I left the meeting in tears (sensitivity!). Later, I had a discussion with his boss about it, and was basically told to suck it up. I did. No one at the local office confronted him aside from me, as it started subtley-and could be justified by policy even though I was singled out...Others eventually started to notice this behavior, as it later happened to some other people aside from me and became less subtle as no one stopped him or were afraid to confront him, or maybe just sucked it up too.
This progressed to the point where people from satellite offices--who did not know of this person's 'outstanding work history'/high regard by upper management--would call to complain about how nasty he was to work with. These types of complaints were uncommon to the job field--so finally, management realized how his behavior was hurting morale of the office and causing major conflict all around, affecting the integrity of the entire company.
Going to work everyday while taking responsbility for my emotions in regard to this boss--though this may work for some--enabled this person to continue this destructive behavior. It got to the point where it became more obvious how this guy seemed to be channeling his anger towards certain people. I no longer had good feelings about my job I was once dedicated to, fought myself to go in every day, and started calling off work for the first time.
When others started realizing this and seeing it more clearly-the person was finally fired. It took years for this to happen, a large part of it, I feel, was that the person did it subtely for X amount of time because it wasn't until it escalated to outside the local office that upper management noticed it.
Do I base all my opinions from this one experience? Of course not. It simply illustrates an example of how it can be very unhealthy to suck it up--to take 100% responsiblity for your own feelings. Maybe it could work in the short term, or in different situations, but in this case and I can apply this to other situations, it allowed this person to continue and be more destructive.
Why should everyone at the office have to suffer because of this person's issues? Why can't the person with the destructive behavior take responsbiility for his contributions to the unhappiness of other employees and the overall morale? Why did it have to wait until so many others were affected before this person's behavior was addressed? I can only imagine how this would have affected me had he continued to be hateful towards me, had he not started becoming abusive to other people outside of the local office.
BTW-I'm totally cool with anyone who says, "yeah, maybe I did do something that led you to feel hurt. I'm not sure, but let me think about this and get back to you" partly because I'm an extremely forgiving person who can overlook various hurts if the person merely TRIES to see their personal contributions. If this guy at least acknowledged his responsibility, and perhaps thought about it-I don't think the situation would have gotten so bad, affecting so many people. I can't say for sure.
I think taking responsbility for one's feelings is important but it also needs to be acknowledged, or at the very least, considered by both sides of the coin. It doesn't appear appalling from my view.
In regard to "externalizing": It seems the harmful boss was the one 'externalizing'--channeling his anger towards others, while the people who were hurt were forced to internalize it for some time via sucking it up. Not healthy at all.
My 2 cents. :)
"The ongoing push for "civility" clearly illustrates an illogical (and IMO unhealthy) desire to externalize the responsibility for one's feelings. Appalling."
poster:violette
thread:953893
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20100321/msgs/954137.html