Hey, fellow travelers. I'm Lari Gottlieb. I'm the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the Dear Therapist advice column for the Atlantic.
And I'm Guy Wench. I'm the author of Emotional First Aid, and I write the Dear Guy advice column for Ted. And this is Dear Therapists.
Each week we invite you into a session so you can learn more about yourself by hearing how we help other people come to understand themselves better and make changes in their lives.
So sit back and welcome to today's session.
This week, a young man finds himself at odds with his boss and her lack of boundaries outside the workplace.
She would kind of contact me outside of work to keep that conversation going. I would just see my phone light up and it'd be a text message, and I said, Hey, if this is work related and I'm not at work, I really would like if you could just email me instead.
She didn't really do that.
First. A quick note, Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only. It does not constitute medical or psychologue advice and is not a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions you may
have regarding a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and clarity. In the sessions you'll hear. All names have been changed for the privacy of our fellow travelers. Hi, Laurie, Hey guy, So what do we have in our box today?
We have a work situation, and the workplace is a library, so I'm already into it. I like libraries, all right. Here's the letter deotherapists. I work at a medical library and I've had the same boss for over seven years. I started as a college student assistant, and after grad school, I was promoted to a professional librarian position. My boss, Sharon, is about fifteen years older than me, and as someone predisposed codependency, I immediately slipped into a role where I
felt responsible for her work performance. I found myself working unplanned shifts, sometimes with as little as an hour's notice. As she has a chronic illness and calls out frequently. I would also listen to her complaints about what was going on with the staff and give her information she needed to do her job. She quickly added me on social media accounts and would text me outside of work, usually to gossip, including about graduate students who she thought
were interested in her. I've come to realize that her behavior was familiar to me, as I was brought up around this functional extended family and have a parent with narcissistic tendencies. As my career progressed, I realized that my boss wasn't supportive of me unless it fit her narrative. If I didn't recognize music or movies she liked, I was uncultured. If I wore an Apple Watch, I was a nerd until she bought one for herself years later.
When I got an article published, she didn't acknowledge it. When we started working from home last year, as the pandemic began, I took it as an opportunity to reset and to be firmer in setting boundaries. I wouldn't allow her to involve me in her gossip. I wouldn't respond to her text or messages when I wasn't in the mental space to do so. Unsurprisingly, she has had a difficult time with my changing role. If I didn't respond to her until the following day, when I engaged, she
dismissed her previous communication. If I engaged in one conversation, she would take it as an invitation to contact me daily. On my last performance evaluation, she rated me lowest in ability to deal with others. And I can't help but interpret that as passive aggressive, especially since I've never received feedback like that from anyone else. I feel stuck and this has causing me a lot of stress and anxiety
with my extended family and parent. Completely removing myself is the only thing that has worked for me, But I don't have the same option here. I'd appreciate any advice. Paul.
Well, you know, people don't realize that the same relational issues that they struggle with outside can occur in the workplace. And it sounds like this is something that Paul has dealt with in his family and now he's seeing it again with his boss.
And I find that when people try to set limits, they're really not that great at it. Setting the limit is half the battle. Maintaining it is the other half, and that's the half that most people have a really hard time with because they figured Okay. Once I had that difficult conversation, I don't have to repeat it or do it again. So I'm interested to see how much the limits were set and really how much they were maintained.
There's this misconception about boundaries that when you set a boundary, you are asking somebody else to do something and they are supposed to follow the boundary. And I think boundaries are really something that you set with yourself, that you make up your mind this is what I am going to do. I'm going to tell the other person what I am going to do in this situation, and then I'm going to follow through and do that. So it's not so dependent on whether the other person does what
you ask. It's really dependent on whether you follow your own boundary and do what you say you're going to do if the other person does that thing.
Right, So let's find out what actually happened.
Let's do that.
You're listening to Deotherapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after a quick break. I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm Guy Winch and this is Deotherapists.
So Hi, Paul, Hey, how are you great?
And thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thank you guys so much for having me.
You're very welcome. So it's a workplace situation with your BOS, and we're curious a little bit about the history of it. When did those boundary violations begin and what was the first signs of trouble there.
I think it probably started really when I first started working there. I think that maybe a I didn't think of them as really being boundary violations.
That I kind of thought about it.
As, Hey, I have a really laid back boss, and this is pretty cool. Maybe I can be myself and I can joke around a little bit more or not have as much of that awkward period you know when you first meet people at a job, you kind of think to yourself, Okay, so how much of me can I be? And what's the rules here? And is are my jokes funny? Here are they not? And all that kind of stuff. But what I started to realize is that, you know, I would work till eleven o'clock at night.
That was my shift, so we were kind of the late shift in when I worked to eleven, I didn't go straight to sleep.
When I went home, I would usually.
Be eating snacks and watching TV shows and trying to unwind, and so I think sometimes some of the conversations that we had at work would bleed into outside of work. She would kind of contact me outside of work to keep that conversation going. I would just see my phone light up and it be a text message.
When you started that job, you were still in college, right, Yeah, so you were young. This was one of your first professional experien operiences.
Yeah, I was nineteen when I started.
And did you know that was going to be a career move for you or did that come about because of the job.
So when I first started there, I think I just was happy to have a job. But as I spent more time working there, I thought to myself, maybe this could be a career for me. And so I started to contemplate that and spent more time talking to not only my boss, but some of the other folks who worked there to get an idea of what would this look like. And so I ended up making a massive leap of faith to go to graduate school to get this job. And I such myself, you know what, I'm
going to go for it. I'm going to try to get this master's degree, and I hope that something opens here for a job, because if not, I may have some trouble finding another job. But it kind of worked out well because I did end up getting a job there, so I'm super fortunate.
When did you start feeling uncomfortable about the interaction between you and your boss? And I asked about your age because I think when people have these early professional experiences, they don't know what to expect in the workplace. What are the rules here, what are the boundaries here? What does it mean to connect with my coworkers but also be professional? And so there was something that internally went off in you where you said, wait a minute, this
doesn't feel right. At what point did that happen?
I think it was once I moved from the temporary part time position to my first full time position. If you're friendly or friends with people at work, that's great. But for me, when I left work, I wanted to leave work at work, and I felt that once the full time job came about for me, that clicked in my head that Okay, this is the time where I don't think this is appropriate.
So what did you do once you had that uncomfortable feeling? How long did it take for you to start actually taking action or setting limits? And what did that look like when you started.
I think it took a long time to realize that I should do something or I wanted to do something, to be honest with you, because I just thought like, it's okay, this is what my boss is like, and that's kind of what I have to deal with. And kind of going back to what Laurie was saying about, you know, you're not really sure what you know, what works here and what doesn't. I'm still trying to figure out the culture, right. I feel like I have this
weird need to respond to people. So even if I didn't necessarily care what the conversation was about, or I felt like we shouldn't have this conversation, I would just try to keep it very short and brief and just kind of say like oh, okay or cool, you know, or these kind of one word answers, which I think
is not really effective and hasn't been effective. Otherwise I wouldn't be in a situation where I feel like I'm not really sure what to do at this point, because I think I've let it go on for so long of not really saying, hey, you know what, I really don't want to have conversations outside of work, or Hey, i'd appreciate if you want to communicate them at work, that we have a time at work that we do that versus whenever it works for you.
So have you not yet said those kinds of limits with her?
So I did one time and it didn't go over that well. I said, Hey, if this is work related and I'm not at work, I really would like if you could just email me instead. She didn't really do that, and going forward, there's been several occasions too where if it's work related, she still has texted me. So I kind of just got to a point where I said, you know what, it's not worth my stress to try to control how she's going to contact me.
So the stress of that versus the discomfort that you feel, because what you're tolerating now is the discomfort and stress associated with that.
Yeah, I'm so good at tolerating discomfort that it's just one of those things where it's natural and normal to me. What drives me kind of crazy is that I have the awareness, right, I can say this is making me uncomfortable, and this is what I'd want to happen, But I just don't have like the mental energy to keep trying to get someone to do something that I prefer them to do.
And I don't want to be in a position.
Where there's there's a difficult relationship between the person who signs my paychecks or the person who writes my reviews. I feel like I'm kind of in a bind there.
That's what I was going to ask about, is the power dynamic that's inherent in this relationship. And I think that trips a lot of people up in the workplace because there's one thing to set a boundary or to make requests, it's another thing to do so when there's potentially negative consequences to that person not responding well to the request. And you mentioned earlier the culture of the workplace, and I wonder what is the culture of this workplace?
Meaning how casual is it? Are people friends outside of work?
Yeah, some of us joke that there's like the new guard and the old guard. There's the older folks, and then there's the younger crowd, and the younger crowd tends to be more aligned with each other.
It's definitely a very very laid.
Back the conversations that people have, the behaviors of people have, which is not what I expect from a professional environment. Now, do people contact each other outside of work? Sure, I think there's some people who get together for parties or other things. But the people in my department, for instance, who I get along with, I think really well and we really enjoy working together. You know, we don't communicate
outside of work. I see them when I'm there or if we're in a meeting together, and if not, then I don't see them.
I'm asking because I wonder if your boss supervises other people as well, and whether she has this kind of relationship with the other people that she manages.
So she manages two other full time people, and she manages the smaller team of college kids that I used to be back when I was in that position, And I would say with a full time folks, she does not do this, but she definitely does it with the group of college kids.
So the full time people. No, I don't think she acts the same way.
Did you ever feel like there was some kind of romantic element to this.
She's actually married, and that's not something I've ever felt in nor did I ever feel in this situation where that was ever a thing.
Well, you're kind of like her wark husband. What I meant by work husband, is that you are meeting her emotional needs. So I don't know when she goes home and it's eleven o'clock at night, why she isn't telling her husband the gossip and talking about TV shows and things like that with him. But you've sort of become the person that she's using for some kind of emotional gratification. You know, it's one thing to be friends with people
at work. It's another when you go home at eleven o'clock at night and you're married and you're texting your younger male coworker. Did that ever strike you as unusual in that respect?
Yeah, I mean I think I've probably had the thought. I don't know, I always joke around that I'm like such a sheltered, innocent person that like I just didn't think, or maybe didn't want to think, that that was something that was going on. I mean, now I step back and I think to myself, oh, God, like this is kind of a really bad situation.
One of the greatest gifts a manager can have is an employee who's really conscientious, which you sound. You sound conscientious because when there's a gamp, you rise to fimit. So you said, she has a chronic illness, she's absent a lot, and then you, independently, spontaneous, will fill those gaps, will do part of her job for her. You get the responsibility, but you don't get the actual credit for it.
You don't get the recognition. And that's another way in which you really provide significant service to her is to be there as a safety net, and she sounds like she needs safety nets quite frequently.
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because there was a period of time where, you know, a promotion went through for her and I felt frustrated with myself because I said, you know, I really feel like, you know, she was getting so much credit for a lot of the things that I did. I carried a lot of mental load that just was not mine. Yeah, that was an interesting learning experience for me because it really felt awful.
Now that you've had that learning experience, what would you do differently next time?
Well, I think what I did right after it was I immediately took a look at what I was doing and what I was offering and the kind of imbalance that it existed there, and I really have pulled back and I just don't do any of the things that I was doing, because there's been situations, unfortunately, where people have taken time off and then there's not coverage. And so some of my colleagues have been in a position where they're covering a service desk for the entirety of
their day for eight hours, and she's not there. It's a day that I'm off, and so people have no lunch break or no water breaks or bathroom breaks, and I mean that's just really unacceptable to me. So what I've done is I've really pulled back and I don't keep on top of all those things, and I just hope that my colleagues will reach out if they need the support.
So what has happened in your relationship with her? Since you've decided that you're not going to do the things that she should be doing as a manager.
I have felt so much better from my perspective.
I mean, it was kind of like feeling this physical load lifted off of me. Honestly, when I stopped filling my mental space with responsibilities, I think that were hers. What has happened too with the text thing, especially since the pandemic, we started working from home and I just don't respond to them if it's not specifically asking me a question that's pertinent to my job. I don't respond
to it. But what's been really difficult for me is I know another text message is coming, you know, in a day or two, and it might be the same kind of thing. I think, like two days from now, if she's bored or something, I expect another you know, message maybe to come through.
So it sounds like you've made some significant changes, right You're not responding to text, you're not picking up the slack when she creates it. So you've done quite a bit to kind of step back so that at least you're not as resentful for doing so much or not getting recognized in her getting the credit, other than the fact that those things still happen and you have to continue to ignore them or manage them. What are the
biggest pain points right now with her? Given that you've done some stepping back.
What's the most difficult for me right now is sitting with the fact that I might have two or three days where you know, she might not bother me.
Now I have to ignore or not respond to or see a name, and just the name is just so frustrating me because I'm burnt out just from like, why are you asking me about when is this class? When you know the answer, you can find the answer, Or why are you sending me this link that is something that you're interested in and I'm not really interested in then you're really trying to badger me to read it to have a conversation about it.
Just really frustrates me.
Are other people at work aware of this relationship that you have with Sharon? I'm curious to know if you have any other relationships at work that are actually nourishing to you, or relationships that you enjoy with other people at work, and can you tell us about what those are like.
It's a good question because most of the people there we are very different generations. I don't really have anyone who I consider similar to me in any way. I don't really think there's anybody who who i'd be really close with.
I'm asking only because I think that a lot of people forget that so much of our lives is spent at work, and so I think there is this question for a lot of people of well, I want to enjoy the work that I'm doing, so primarily the work needs to be fulfilling, it needs to pay my bills, and once those two things are checked off, there's also this element of I spend so much time here, I
want to enjoy the people that I'm working with. Or maybe it's the people who come into the library that you really enjoy working with.
I think it's the people who come in the most, especially students. I love working with them. It takes you fifteen seconds to help them. These people are so thrilled about it. I mean, I get a lot of joy from that, a lot. I love that, I love teaching and I love working with students a lot.
So I want to point out to you, Paul, that I think part of the problem, the double edged sword of conscientiousness, is it takes a lot of effort to not do the thing that your insights are telling you, but I should do that. That's the right thing to do, that's the good citizen thing to do. So I think that there's still a lot of emotional labor we call it, that you're putting in to resist your natural impulse to help, to assist, to be there to make sure the mission
is on track. And I think that's part of why you're exhausted, and that's why you're feeling burnt out despite the significant steps back that you've already taken.
I think you're absolutely right when I see there's an issue or I see there's an opportunity, it's physically like chaining myself down to say, yes, you can do it, but you know what, don't because you're going to get to this point where you're just going to be resentful or burnt out or angry later, So you can't. It's like this crazy back and forth in your mind of
trying to find this happy medium, this balance. It's a very second guessing kind of mindset where I feel like I'm in, you know where I think to myself, can I do this? And should I do this?
And is it okay to say you can only email me here or there.
When you got that evaluation from your boss that you were having trouble dealing with others, what did you do when you got that?
My thought process was I don't want to react because I thought in a way, if I reacted, then it kind of validated why she did that. So I just thought, Okay, go ahead, and it really doesn't affect me in any way. I don't really agree with it, but you know.
What are you going to do?
Well?
I guess the thing is sometimes you might want feedback on that you might be curious about. Well, I'd like to learn and grow from this, because I don't know if you really know what her perspective is. So to you, a lot of this feels very inappropriate, and from us hearing it on the outside, we can understand why it makes you feel uncomfortable. But you might have gotten more insight if you were to say to her, hey, I'm
really curious about this. I want to understand more about it so that I can do better and hear what her perspective is, and that might have opened up a conversation too, about boundaries and expectations. There hasn't really been a let's sit down and let's have a conversation about what's going on for each of us, which you can do and should do by the way, in a workplace environment. So people think, well, we're not allowed to talk about
that kind of thing because it's work. But work is all about relationships.
Too, especially at review time, because that's when the door is open to it.
Laurie, I think you're absolutely right. It would be helpful and really interesting to hear her perspective. I think the error in my judgment, maybe is as I'm thinking, I can already tell what you're going to say, so I don't want to have this conversation with you because you're probably going to point out things that I don't agree with. You know, but obviously that gets us nowhere.
If you took Lorie's suggestion, If you had taken it and said, oh, that's an interesting comment, I'd like to hear a little bit more about how you see that. Where you see that? What is it you think she would say?
I think that because of how uncomfortable I feel. Maybe you know, I I come across abrasive or I just don't really want to have the conversation. I think maybe she'll pick up on that and then say, well, this is why I think you don't get along with other people, because when I try to have the conversation or point something out to you, you aren't really engaged in the conversation.
Well, let's say she did say that, like, look, I'm just trying to give you the heads up so I don't have to troubly at work with it and you Peter Poyten says that I promise you'll check emails every morning, and I really prefer to have some separation between work and home life. So I'd like to kind of keep the door closed once I leave the office. What's wrong with that? Like, why wouldn't that be a fair conversation to have.
I think it'd be a fair conversation to have. I think I just don't know if she would respect it. Just really don't want to have a conversation with someone who who's not going to respect what I'm saying.
There's the two parts to limit setting. Is the moment where you explain the limit, but the real limit setting comes in the maintenance of the limit. It's very rarely sufficient to do it just once and then the person hops too when you're good. If you need to set limit in the first place, it means the person is probably likely to violate it. Then they'll do so again, and then you just have to do it as a
reminder each time. Oh, just to remind you. I really would rather have this as an email, thanks so much. I think that what happens to you is you get thrown into this helplessnes that maybe got developed when you were a child, when you were younger, and it just makes you feel a little paralyzed and hopeless that you'll be able to do anything about it. So you do the first step kind of, but then you don't do the follow up because you're worried that it won't be sufficient.
But what you really need practice doing is being able to verbalize the limit and then maintain it in the most polite and respectful way possible, instead of going into this hopelessness and paralysis of like, well, I'm screwed. There's really nothing I can do that'll get her to stop. You you haven't really overtly made her stop yet.
Yeah, I definitely think it's something I could work on. I've sort of done this before, it hasn't really gone the way I want, and I just don't want to keep going into the situation and get that response every time.
Yeah, but when you say I don't get the response I want, it means she keeps doing it. That is normal. That is part of the process of limit setting. And I think you see it as a failure or as it didn't work. When that's part of the process, you'll keep doing it and you'll keep calling her on it until she stops. But if you keep experience seeing each incident as oh, that didn't look then you're completely demotivated to maintain the limit and then it keeps getting violated.
I'm glad you pointed that out, because I think you're right that I sort of looked at it as you know, I did it this one time, and I have this like fantasy in my head that it takes one time of you being what seems clear to me, But I imagine the more consistent you are over time, eventually you know correct.
And if you are consistent over time and nothing changes, that's information too. So either way it's a win win because you will either make your work situation more pleasant or it won't become more pleasant, but it gives you information and then you can say, Okay, so what do I want to do, knowing that it's not going to change. You mentioned in your letter that you have some history in your family with feeling like you couldn't set boundaries,
and you called it codependency. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and what feels similar to you about this situation.
When I think about codependency, I think about my dad, who was very inconsistent kind of person, angry, aggressive, punch a hole through my door, knock all my things off of my shelf that meant a lot to me kind of person, and it got to the point where I would listen to his footsteps coming through our house and I'd be able to tell if he was going to be an okay mood, a bad mood, like a you can't talk to him at all mood.
Kind of thing.
Basically, I trained myself to be so in tune with what he needed or how you can communicate with him or how you couldn't. And that's taking me a long time to process and understand. And I find connections between some of the behaviors of sharing in some of the situations that make me feel the same way Sharon, for example, I kind of went back into that situation where you know, just by her walking in, I'd be able to tell by the look on her face if she was going
to be crouchy all day. So I think generally it's just this predisposition to being so into and in tuned with people and then modifying my behavior to make sure that I'm not making them angry and anything. That also goes along with why I have so much difficulty with like the second guessing kind of thing, where if I do set a boundary I think to myself.
Am I being mean? Is this you know? Am I presenting it in the wrong way?
Is it reasonable?
Yeah?
Exactly, And so I think to myself when I'm communicating this boundary, am I being rude? Am I being abrasive? And I recognize this is a separate situation. So it frustrates me because I recognize what I experienced, this is not the same person being at my job, completely different environment, but it hits a nerve in me that makes it very difficult, I think.
And this goes along with what we were talking about before.
I think with like this helplessness of any time I did try to say something, it never ended well. There's always getting screamed out and invalidated and just was a really negative, bad environment.
So I think it's really challenging for me.
Can you give us an example of a time when you tried to say something in your childhood and it didn't go well?
Yeah?
So I remember one time my brother has special needs and who's my best friend, So he had a lot of issues growing up with being able to use the bathroom, like just learning how to toilet train and all that kind of thing. And I remember one night I was sitting at my kitchen table and he had an accident. And my father was livid, just so angry, you know, because it would be anywhere and you might have to clean a couch or a chair or whatever where this
would happen. And I was just so upset because I said to myself, this person, you know, my brother did not intentionally choose to do this, and you're a parent, and it's going to take a second for us to clean it, and heck, I'll clean it.
It's not that big of a deal. And you know, he just.
Kind of went into the bathroom where my brother was and just was brating it, was yelling at him for having an accident, and I was just really irate, and I said to when my father walked out of the bathrooms near me, I said, you know, he can't control this, and it's just why would you ever scream at a
person like this is outrageous. I can't believe this. And he just basically screamed at me and told me that I wasn't a parent, who am I to tell him what to do, and then called me mister college educated as a pejorative, because I mean, he dropped out of high school and I think he was always really threatened and intimidated while I was living at home going to school, and so that just moment kind of sticks.
In my head.
It sounds like there's another parallel too, which is that sometimes you are doing Sharon's job for her, and here you were trying to do the job of a parent for your father. I'll clean it up, I'll take care of it. Here's how you should really handle this, because the person who was supposed to be the manager was not doing his job.
So that sounds very familiar to Yeah. I mean that's why I think it's so hard. And I see there is that parallel.
What about your mom? Were you ever able to talk to your mom in a different way than you could talk to your dad?
Yeah?
So I feel really fortunate to have her in my life because she is number one support kind of deal, you know, no matter what, always started to listen to me, always supportive of what I'm doing, helped me study in college, not able to pronounce any of the words when I was trying to, you know, study for exams and all this stuff. And she still, you know, tried her best and did everything and always listen. I mean, unfortunately, I think she was also a victim of my father as well.
So they're divorced. They've been divorced since twenty sixteen, and a lot of what, at least in conversation with my mom and I that we've had is a lot of just kind of talking about what happened in our house and talking about our perspective. So it's been really cathartic.
Well, when you were waiting outside the bathroom for your dad to come out and then you give him this assertive Hey, what are you doing? What did that feel like? Do you remember what you felt like when he was saying that to him.
I think in the moment, I needed to say something, and it felt good saying it, but then afterward was like, oh, this isn't good. I mean, he was livid.
I mean he just started screaming at me, basically shut up, like what are you talking about? I'm a parent, You've never been a parent, you don't know what you're talking about, and so just completely shut down anything that I have to say. And then I just kind of thought in my head, you know, like, well, this is why I don't normally say things.
To you, Paul. I think part of the problem you have is that you measure your success by whether you get the person to do what you want them to do or to accept what you have to say. And the way we look at success is that the best you can do is your part. And as long as you're speaking up, as long as you're saying what you need to say, as long as you're speaking your truth, then that's what assertiveness is about. That's what empowerment is about.
That you can speak up. But if you do speak up but you don't get the result you want, you actually miss out on that feeling of empowerment because the other person didn't say or react the way you wanted them to. And that's a bit of a miss for you. I don't think you give yourself enough credit when you do it, and I think it goes down in your head as a fail because, well, your dad yelled at you, but that was a really important moment in your life
that you remember clearly. I'm sure your brother does as well, and yet it doesn't quite get catalogued as that's me speaking up and really risk getting screened at which indeed happened. But good for me because I stood up for my brother.
Anyway, if you had not stood up for him in that moment, I think you would have remembered that moment very differently, even though you didn't get the result that you wanted. That was the example of all the many examples that you can probably give us, that was the one that first came to mind that this happened with my brother. It was so unfair, and I spoke up
because I believe something different. And so even though you didn't get that result, it sounds like it was an important moment for you anyway.
Yeah, I mean, thinking about it now, if I had it, it would have been so disappointing to me.
And it's funny because this is all coming together now, you know.
I think in that moment if I if I didn't do that, I mean, I probably would have thought about it for the rest of my life. Of like that one time that I just watched my brother get berated just completely inappropriately and for no reason at all, and that I just sat and watched it, even though I knew this was so wrong and I had to say something about it, and so I'm really glad that I did. And you know, just speaking to what guy was just saying too one hundred percent.
I mean, I agree with you guys, because I.
Think for me, my default is always I'm not going to get the response I want out of them. So instead of sticking up for myself or saying something, I just internalized being angry or frustrated or annoyed with them, because it's just well, why bother?
When you've done this with friends or romantic relationships, has it gone better than it went with your father?
Sticking up for myself?
You mean, yeah, or just share you call it sticking up for yourself. I would say, you know, telling them how you feel about something that's going on in the relationship.
Yeah.
I can think of a situation really a close family friend where it was another one of those situations where there were things that they were doing for the longest time, and I eventually had a conversation where you know, it was like pent up frustration for months, and you just told them exactly how I felt, and you know, they were like mortified. Had no idea, of course, because how are they supposed to know that this is how I'm feeling.
And when you wait a really long time when you talk about this pent up frustration, probably took you a long time to say to your dad, this is not Okay, that probably happened so many times before you actually said that, And the same thing with this friend that you mentioned, and so part of it is recognizing something and being able to speak about it as you notice it happening, as opposed to waiting months or years to bring something up,
because it's much harder than because people get into these patterns. It's kind of like with your boss, she had already gotten into this groove with you, and first you weren't really sure how you felt about it. But once you were more clear about how you felt about it, it still took you a while to say to her, hey, wait a minute, and it's so comfortable with this. And then it's harder because people are already doing something that they've been doing for a while, and they're confused. You
never told me this bothered you before. It was working fine before, but it actually wasn't working fine before exactly.
So let me tell you something about how therapists score these kinds of situations. We a lot to point based on the effort you put in to try and speak your truth. We accommodate no points to how that other person reacted because it's not relevant what's relevant for you is whether you can see yourself through the discomfort and speak up about the relationship, whether it's an intimate one,
a familiar one, a work one. Laurie and I are always impressed when our patients are able to do that because it's so difficult.
Yeah, I mean, I'm so ready to try something different. It's funny in this moment because I feel like I don't know. Just the thought of it makes me kind of excited.
And it also translates into other areas of your life. So every time you have one of these conversations, it's not just that conversation, but it also will help you to have those conversations with other people. The more practice
you get, the easier it's going to become. So we do have some advice for you, and not surprisingly, what we'd like you to do is to have a conversation with Sharon, and we would like you to go back to her and say, I've been thinking about the performance evaluation and I should have come to you earlier because I've been really curious about that one comment and I really value my work here, I really value our working relationship,
and I want to understand more about that. Can you tell me what it is that motivated that remark and see what she says, and when she's saying this, you might have the tendency to regress a little bit, to go back to that young child and then teenager who really had trouble being seen and heard. And we want you to comment this from I'm an adult, and when she says these things to me, it might be difficult, it might be frustrating, but I'm an adult now and
I have choices. I didn't have that, and so she will probably justify her behavior in certain ways. There might also be some points where you say, oh, I hadn't seen you know, to yourself, I hadn't seen it that way.
That's interesting, that's a learning experience for me. So we want you to take in that, but we also want you to be able to tolerate the places where you have different interpretations of things than she did, or you have different feelings around what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. And then you hear what she has to say, you thank her for sharing that with you, and you can also say it's interesting that you see it this way. I want to let you know that here's how I see X.
Y or Z, and I think you can say to her, you know, when I was working as an undergraduate, things were quite different because it was just a job as an undergraduate. And as you know, this is now my career path and it's something I take very seriously. So I know we used to text each other after work and chat about all kinds of things, and that was fine for me then, but right now, because I take work really seriously, I really need that recovery and rejuvenation
after work, and so I really need that separation. And that's why I haven't been responding much to texts. And I'd really like to ask if it's possible that we don't text each other after work, barring real work emergencies, so that I have that separation. And then after you have that conversation time she texts you after work, you don't ignore it. You right back and you go, Sharon, just to remind you, I really prefer to keep things separate so I can really recover and rest. So I'll
see you tomorrow week and talk. Then you're gonna just remind her nicely, gently, respectfully each time until she stops, and she will stop if you're consistent.
I'm really excited about it, especially just because hearing you guys speak about it, it gives me some.
Ideas on what to say.
I think sometimes that can be difficult too, and like, how do you say this in a way that's respectful of yourself and of the other person.
So I'm definitely excited to try it.
This is one of those things where it was about work, but it's also about what we bring ourselves into the workplace. And I'm not just talking about what Paul brings in, but what each of us brings in to any situation. Things do come out in the workplace. I think that Sharon has her own history that she's bringing to this, and maybe she's not that able to respect people's boundaries.
Relationships or relationships. And the way we tend to relate to other people, whether it's at work or with family, or with friends or with loved ones, tends to repeat We have our same stick, and we tend to repeat it. We bring the same business to work and to wherever we go. And so it's really useful for him to address this at work because it will help him address it really everywhere else. You're listening to Deotherapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after a quick break.
So, Guy, we heard back from Paul, and I'm curious to hear what happened because I think that talking to your boss can be nerve wracking in a way that's different from, say, talking to your family talking to a friend. So let's hear what happened.
Hey, Laurie and Guy, it's Paul.
So I spoke with my boss, Sharon, and we had a conversation about my last performance evaluation in texting when I'm not at work. Leading up to the conversation, I was a little anxious because I wasn't sure how she was going to react, and I felt a little awkward about vocalizing my perspective and the limit I want to set on texting after work. But I reminded myself that
the conversation was a great opportunity to express myself. When I asked about what motivated her decision to rank me lowest and ability to deal with others, she gave examples of other colleagues in my department and the ways that they had trouble dealing with others. When I followed up asking if her rating was motivated by my interactions just with her or with my colleagues and the students I
work with. She said that there was one time she noticed that it looked like I was struggling and she wasn't sure if I was okay, and that's why she chose that rating. Those answers weren't particularly helpful to me, But instead of focusing on that, I steered the conversation
toward me sharing my perspective. I told her that because I work full time now and put a ton of energy and effort into my work, I really need to have separation between my work life and personal life, and it's not worth it to me to have conversations about work and life if they're not constructive and negative to that, she mentioned that life is really stressful right now and gave an example of how she was writing for fun to alleviate her own stress and suggested that I do
the same. So overall, Sharon seemed to deflect the questions I asked, and her reasoning for the evaluation didn't really make much sense to me, but I felt that behind what she was saying, she knew why I was having the conversation with her and what I was asking her, even though it was difficult for her to acknowledge. It also turned out that The anticipation of what the conversation might look like was way more anxiety inducing than the
actual conversation itself. Time will tell if Sharon falls through with not texting me after work, but if she does, I really feel confident reminding her that after work is
my time to de stress and to relax. I think the greatest gift I got from talking to you both was in getting help changing my mindset from if this person doesn't acknowledge my point of view, it was a pointless conversation to have, so I just won't bother trying again to how anyone responds to me is about them, not me, and I get a positive point on my rubric for having the conversation, regardless that, in focusing on the choices I have, I can choose how to set
and maintain limits and boundaries. I can choose how to react to someone's response to my boundaries, and I can choose what kind of conversations I have and how often. And knowing all of that makes the conversation I had with Sharon a win for me.
What impressed me there was not just that he actually had the conversation, but he actually asked follow up questions and he was proud of himself for having the conversation, which was the point all along. So that made me feel good about his prospects going forward and being able to set limits with her.
Yeah, he did ask follow up questions. I think that it's tricky in a workplace situation because if this had been maybe a friendship or a family relationship, I I would hope that he would ask more pointed follow up questions so that when she did deflect, that he would bring her back into the conversation. Because she really didn't
address anything that he brought up. He didn't really get a clear answer that you would get from your employer about here's an example of when I saw you have difficulty dealing with a colleague or dealing with me, that would have been the answer. It doesn't sound like she is really capable of providing that kind of feedback, right.
I also think that she's maybe one of those people sharing his boss that maybe she will enact it in future behavior, but she's not going to give him the win in the moment.
That's exactly what I thought. That she understood what he was trying to say, and hopefully she'll take it to heart. I think people don't like when someone wants to change something that you want to do, and she sounds like one of those people who maybe will try to slip in a text here and there. But I think that it created a new dynamic between them where makes him
seem like the more mature person in the dynamic. Absolutely it does, and so I think that that's why he felt like there was a win at the end, where he feels like, first of all, not only might it change what happens between him and Sharon, but I think that it allows him to do this in other relationships as well. And that's the important thing. That he isn't the kid who really couldn't stand up to his father anymore.
That he is now an adult and he does have all these choices and he feels very empowered by them.
And what we should all remember is that it is always scarier before you have the conversation than it is when you have the conversation, so you should have it. Nonetheless, next week, a woman comes to us for help connecting with her husband, her children, and her own emotions.
It's funny because he's way more expressive in terms of saying he loves me, like I have a hard time saying I love you back.
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