Are you forced to work overtime? Use psychodrama techniques

Why do different people behave differently in the same situation? For example, the head of the department requires you to work overtime. One employee agrees, although she is seething with indignation, and the other tells about her sick mother, who cannot be left without care, and asks to go home. What is the difference between them?

To answer this question, we need to look to the earliest age when the foundations of future ways of responding are being laid.

All babies experience discomfort sooner or later and cry out indignantly. Then there are three main options for the development of events.

1. The parent approaches and tries to calm him down.

2. The parent ignores the cry, does not pay attention.

3. The parent is angry: “What are you shouting! You have already been given that, and this…”

We can imagine how the baby feels in these three cases. Three behavioral strategies will grow out of his sense of self in the future.

behavior strategies

The parent comes and reassures — in this case, the child is returned to comfort, he experiences intimacy with an adult, and this situation is imprinted in his psyche as predictable and safe. He knows that if he feels bad, then they will come to him, feed him, take care of him. In the future, this will grow strategy B: he can show his vulnerability, hoping that a loved one will try to adequately respond to this, and remains stable.

He learns that his condition and experiences do not matter for others and for the world, so you need to take care of yourself. He turns off his emotions or blames himself for something wrong with him.

In the second option, when the child is already older, he will understand that he needs to enter the position of his mother: she is tired or sick and cannot pay attention to him. Produced strategy A, and in the future he will “understand” others: the boss humiliated me not because he is bad, but just because he has a bad day or a headache.

There is also an alternative: strategy C, which is developed during childhood experience in the third variant. He will decide: “In order to be noticed, I must show myself more clearly, show my emotions more.” In this case, he will grow up with the habit of blaming others and playing the role of a victim.

What is the best strategy?

In different situations, we can use all three strategies, so none of them is «bad» in itself. All of them served for safe survival in the conditions in which the child grew up. The question is that as an adult you have the opportunity to choose and that none of them is automatic and the only one.

For example, if your boss has piled too much work on you, sometimes saying, “I have a sick mother at home, I need to take care of her, I can’t stay…” is better than just: “I won’t work overtime.”

And if your teenager comes home drunk, then it is better to talk to him about it on a cognitive level, turning off all your emotions for this time. Show understanding, enter into his position.

Someone who is not able to show it may develop auto-aggression over time, he will begin to attack himself, for example, cut himself or expose himself to danger. 

It is not difficult to imagine situations when an adult needs the ability to say what does not suit him, to throw out what is sore, and sometimes to shout. 

If we don’t have some strategy in our arsenal, then we can learn it. For example, if we habitually please and constantly care for others, then we have an overdeveloped strategy of “understanding others”, and we should pay more attention to ourselves and our own needs, feelings. If we do not know how to do this, then our concern may become or look obsessive to someone, then it is abandoned, evaded, and we feel rejected — although in reality only certain behavior is rejected. 

Note to Parents

Of course, no parent can be perfect: sometimes we can’t hear the baby crying, and sometimes we’re too tired and we don’t have the energy to go to him right away. We get angry and sick. The child’s behavioral strategies do not develop on the basis of a single case — it depends on the parent’s prevailing reactions to the child’s requests.

Attachment has different levels, here they are…

1. Sensations (how the parent touches the child, physical contact with him)

2. Similarity (we have eyes of the same color, we tie a scarf with the same gesture)

3. Belonging (we are from the same family, we are relatives, we are attached to each other)

4. Significance (the child wants to feel important, needed by his parents, wants to receive their approval)

5. Love (emotional attachment)

6. Cognitiveness (this is the deepest level: how much the parent is interested in what is happening with his child; whether the child can safely share his innermost feelings and thoughts)

A lack of affection on one level may be partially compensated on another. For example, a tired mother scolded her daughter for wrongdoing, but they both like to sing songs together, the mother is always ready to listen to her daughter when she needs participation or just wants to tell something.

An example of sustainable attachment: Margaret Thatcher was always very significant for her father, he believed in his daughter, and his approval helped her achieve a lot and subsequently become a significant person in the UK. 

An example of non-attachment with a significant adult: Napoleon Bonaparte’s mother never believed in her children and did not even come to her son’s coronation, remarking: «I still have to feed these kings when they become poorer.» Obviously, Napoleon spent his whole life trying to achieve victories and achieve significance in the eyes of his mother.

If at some level of affection your child lacked closeness, comfort and security, try to compensate for it — at the same level or at another level.

If it is not enough for you, determine what exactly is your deficit, and try to make up for it. It will also help you to be more flexible and spontaneous in your use of different behavioral strategies, to respond in new ways to old conditions and adequately to new ones.