Hmmm.... I will look up Karpman then as I don't know anything about it. My boss is a pain, but it is petty, irritating stuff. I don't fear going to him... just don't want to and prefer to choose a good time to bring it up. I just thik if I were a lot less spineless and was able to state clearly and evenly what I needed in a situation, it would be great
Got any spine-growing recipes in your repertoire?
((((storm))))))))
Hi Beth
Thinking about you and your boss, and other situations too...
I don't know that I would call you spineless at all, at all. You held a family together for how long, while your husband was in Iraq? You and your dearest love are of different ethnicities and complexions. You've dealt with a narcissistic FOO, you're in recovery from alcohol abuse - and dealing constructively with people in that recovery group who aren't dealing constructively with you - I see a lot of evidence of backbone, lady.
One of the tricky things is that backbone sometimes doesn't LOOK like backbone.
Here is a link to what I personally consider the most amazing thread on this entire board over the last two years.
http://www.voicelessness.com/disc3//index.php?topic=3717.0It's not the world's happiest thread by a longshot. It begins in sadness and ends in unresolved discord. What is amazing about it, though, is what does NOT happen in it, and why.
What does not happen is a brawl, a donnybrook, a major knockdown dragout altercation.
One keeps trying to happen, but every time an invitation is profferred, the recipient declines.
Some decline by vanishing.
Some decline after making efforts to defuse the emotional tension, which do not succeed.
But all decline.
It is the most amazing collective assertion of emotional health that I have ever seen in my life.
Now: to the uninitiated, this LOOKS like a collective wimp-out, mass cowardice, a bunch of people heading for the hills.
What it is, is a bunch of people individually disengaging, in whatever way they know how, from a no-win situation. Without rancor, or spite, or malice, or vindictiveness, or ill will.
There are times when the bravest thing you can do is recognize that a situation is hopeless, at least for the moment, through no fault of your own; and walk away.
You will not be praised and lauded for walking away. People do not recognize the self-discipline required to practice disengagement as a strength. We are praised and lauded for hanging in to the bitter end... but nobody ever seems to realize that all that gets you is a bitter ending.
This thread doesn't have a happy ending, and we are a culture that only understands happy endings and sad ones. Unresolved ones... endings that aren't really endings yet, but are certainly breaks in the story... we have a hard time dealing with those.
But I look at it now, and I see amazing courage, and I feel a great deal of hope for every person who participated in it.
EVERY person.