To understand why there are so many authoritarian personalities among those around you, you need to deal with despots from childhood and realize how this childhood experience affects today’s adult life.
Why do I attract authoritarian people? I grew up with powerful people. But even now, despotic, peremptory people often find themselves next to me – in the school, in the conservatory, in the orchestra where I now work.
Maria, 24 years old
Ekaterina Mikhailova, psychotherapist:
You are sensitive and painfully react to injustice, absurd nit-picking and shouting. In your letter, you carefully note that you find a lot of internal aggression in yourself. And you can neither show nor ignore it. To manifest means to become like “despots” and possibly hurt someone. Keeping to yourself, as you accurately noted, is “hard and not very useful.” Maria, you want to improve in your profession – and if so, you will have to deal with what is happening to you. You react so seriously to manifestations of despotism precisely because you experienced it all at home. And now, when someone at work is noisily scolded, you instantly feel like a “liver” what it is like. And you are very worried. Your attitude towards tyrants is ambivalent: you do not approve of them, but at the same time, it seems that you love them. Like your family, that’s the point. This leads to errors in judgment, to excessive emotional involvement. You have to realize the impact of your childhood experience on today’s life. You started this work on your own and have already done a lot. Perhaps someday you will even teach a master class on “How to get along with an authoritarian boss in creative professions.”