It just makes me look like the crazy office lady. Which maybe I am but I don't want them to know.
Honestly Sosmall the particular issues you mention may seem small but they are so clearly linked back to something huge, which you have identified, so that is great that you see where it is really coming from. I have the same kind of experience as you. My FOO issues really come out to play especially at work. It took me soooo long, and the help of a therapist, to actually connect what was going on with me at work, to my FOO. Then it took me longer to own it as my own stuff. Oh my. I know just what you mean about being just absolutely paralyzed in certain circumstances. My stuff is related to - I cannot advance myself. It feels SO WRONG. Sorry for shouting.
But on the other hand, I am now an old hand at office life.
Lighter's description of the lion ladies jerking around the youngster - so familiar. There are always people who will do that and I remember one particular lady who yanked my chain - but that's another story.
I think it helps to practice different solutions in your head. Go ahead and use the situations that actually happened and run them in your head in different ways - trying out the various suggestions about, and any other ideas you come up with. Run them in your mind a whole bunch of times and make up different outcomes - including funny or silly ones. Anyway, that's what I do.
Here's what I would do regarding the magazines. She comes up and asks to look at them and I would explain why I bought them and tell her my alternative offer, which she can take or leave. "I bought these to read on my break now, but you can have them when I am done with them."
I once did a brief stint as a door to door environmental whatsit - asking for donations and so on. It was a horrible job and I only lasted one week (one of the longest of my life). But I learned some interesting things. They told us to do whatever we could to get the person to open their storm door and take the clipboard from our hands. Then we were supposed to make it difficult for them to give the clipboard back, through keeping our hands at our sides or through ignoring body language cues to take the clipboard back. In this way, the person would be more likely to give us $$ to make us go away. Can you believe they have this down to a science? They also had down to a science browbeating and brain washing their employees. Whew.
The reason I bring that up is because it is the principle of the thing - once you give the magazine over then it is harder to get back without being more blunt and more direct, just like it is hard to make somebody take something if they are not helping you/being unreceptive etc. So keep the magazine and only give away control when you are ready to do it and that is easier than trying to get it back once it is out of your hands.
As for the real problem of our conditioning through fear and rage by parents and how it keeps cropping up in our lives now - I'm still working on that one too!
