How do you feel in your workplace relationships? Do you feel relaxed, open and friendly, or you feel frustrated, angry, upset, unappreciated? Do you feel like you go to work every day with your stomach tied in a knot, feeling like you are going to a battlefield?
Usually when we feel angry and frustrated, it is because we believe we can't do anything about the situation we find ourselves in. We feel helpless and unable to change anything. Or if we would to change anything, we fear repercussions and perhaps even losing our job. So we endure the situation, getting more and more frustrated, perhaps even desperate. This leads to chronic stress and burnout, and may even affect our health.
How to help ourselves? The first is to realize that we do have options. We are not helpless as we think we are. There might be a voice in our head telling us that we really have no other choice, that we need to stay at that job, enduring poor treatment and a toxic work environment, because we have nowhere else to go.
I know a highly educated, intelligent and capable woman, a great expert in her field, who believed she cannot leave her current job – which was causing her burnout and all sorts of health problems – because there are very few well-paid and relatively secure jobs out there, and she didn't want to risk losing her handsome paycheck. She hated going to work, but she believed she had no other choice.
Fears and false beliefs run the show
Why do we believe we have no other choice? Because we allow our fears and false beliefs to run the show. Our fears and false beliefs are telling us that we're not good enough, that we'll never get what we want, that life is hard, that work isn't supposed to be fun, that we must sacrifice our happiness for the sake of others.
If we are to quit our job, or even just speak up and express our needs and expectations to our employer, all sorts of fears may come up, e.g. fear of rejection, fear of losing our livelihood (existential fear), fear of disappointing our parents who have expectations on us.
For example, someone might think: "What kind of person would I be if I just followed my passion, without thinking of providing for my sick mother? I need this horrible, but well-paid job so I can provide for my mother, whom I owe so much".
In other words, emotional enmeshment and co-dependence with our loved ones can be a big reason why we stay at a job we don't like. We'd rather sacrifice our own well-being than disappoint the parent whose approval we are seeking. The subconscious belief behind it might be: “I don't have the right to be happy while my mother is suffering”.
Low self-esteem can be another reason why we don't dare to speak up. "Who am I to say anything? Who am I to demand anything?" We believe we deserve to be treated poorly. The subconscious belief behind it may be: "I am not good enough. I am not worthy."
Sometimes, we like to complain about the job rather than try to change our situation. We may complain for years and years, and yet, we never get the courage to stand up for ourselves or leave. It's like we expect other people (our boss or supervisor) to change, to finally "see us" and validate us, to see how hard we work, to stop bullying us and having impossible demands on us, to give us a raise already…
Waiting to be seen and validated by an authority figure is often related to our childhood, where we hoped to be seen and validated by our parents, but it never happened. That left us with low self-esteem and a longing to be validated by other authority figures later in our lives, such as our bosses.
The same dynamic is now at play with our boss, who might be equally demanding and hard to please as our mother or father. We are in a role of a child, trying to prove ourselves to a parent. We may be taking on extra work, hoping that the boss will finally notice how much we are contributing. But to no avail, he is oblivious and/or never pleased with the results.
How to take back our power and realize we do have options regarding our job?
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We need to improve our self-esteem (as a result of which, we'll be more assertive and able to set healthy boundaries),
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We need to work through our fears,
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We need to realize that we don't have power over everything in our environment, so we should only focus on changing that what we can. So for example, we don't try to change our boss or our colleagues, but ourselves. The only person we can ever really change is ourselves.
When we realize that we do have options and are able to change things – starting with ourselves and our attitude – we take back our power. We place ourselves in the driver's seat and we decide where we want to go.
Our change really starts with item No3: realizing what we have power over, and what is out of our domain. It's very much like the Serenity prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
Once you know what it is that you can change, you can start working on it. You can work on items No1 and No2.
No1: Improving your self-esteem
You may need to learn how to be more assertive and set healthy boundaries.
You may also need to heal the core emotional wounds from your childhood, which are affecting your self-esteem. It may be the feeling of unworthiness, of not being good enough, of not being lovable, the feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong with you.
When you heal the wound of unworthiness, you'll be able to stand up for yourself, be able to express and articulate your needs, be able to share your ideas and opinions more freely. Also, you'll be able to set boundaries, so that people don't take advantage of you.
No2: Working through your fears
You may need to dig a little deeper to address the core fears that are keeping you stuck at a job or career you don't like or in an unhealthy workplace dynamic. It may be an existential fear, e.g. fear of being laid off and never finding a better job. It can be a fear of rejection, e.g. fear of being rejected by your family for quitting the career they thought was the best for you. It may be the fear of being a failure, which keeps you in your comfort zone, enduring a job you don't like and not daring to follow your dreams.
More often than not, those fears stem from our childhood. As children, we have experienced existential fear (fear for our survival without our parents or care-takers). We might have experienced rejection by our parents if we haven't behaved like they wanted us to. Many of us have also experienced being criticized and shamed for our mistakes. All that is deeply engraved in our psyche, and is causing our present-day fears.
Inner child – a container for our painful childhood experiences
The part of us that holds the memory and the painful experiences from our childhood is called our inner child. Our inner child also holds the false beliefs about ourselves, that we developed based on those painful experiences. Those false beliefs may be: I am not lovable, I am not good enough, I am not worthy, I will never succeed, I just don't have it in me. Or: Life is hard, you need to be tough, crying is for losers, your parents had it much worse and they didn't complain, who do you think you are to have it easy, etc.
This kind of negative self-talk, combined with our fears, is what keeps us stuck.
The bottom line:
We make important life decisions based on our fears and false beliefs, largely formed in our childhood.
In other words, we allow our painful past to determine our present. We make decisions based on our childhood wounds, severely limiting our potential for happiness in the present.
In order to get unstuck, we need to get in touch with our inner child and reassure him/her that we've got it – that unlike in childhood, we aren't helpless any more. Likewise, we can give unconditional love and acceptance to our inner child, so that it doesn't fear rejection. We can also give validation and appreciation to our inner child, so that it doesn't fear failure and being criticized and shamed for making mistakes. That's how we reparent our inner child.
The result is that we won't be held back by our subconscious fears and false beliefs any more. We will be able to live in the present, unburdened by the wounds from the past.
It will affect our ability to see our job situation more clearly too, and make decisions that support our growth and well-being, rather than keep us small and miserable.
To sum up
In order to change the unfavorable job situation, you need to improve your self-esteem and work through your fears and false beliefs that are keeping you stuck. A very efficient and transformational way to work with your fears and false beliefs is reparenting your inner child. By doing that, you can heal your childhood emotional wounds that are still affecting you to this day. This will allow you to make better decisions - decision that promote your growth and happiness, rather than staying in your old, fearful mindset that keeps you in the status quo.
