Take care of yourself at work

“You don’t know how to write at all,” I heard these words addressed to me in my tenth year of active work in the media. And not from a critical reader or fellow competitor, but from the editor-in-chief, the master of Russian journalism. I should give up and let my bossy pride indulge myself, especially since the insulting words did not shake my confidence in my own professionalism.

But confidence is confidence, and the feeling was as if a steam locomotive ran over me, and then braked at the level of the diaphragm. It hurted me. And now, several years later, I am just as painfully experiencing criticism from my superiors or colleagues, and at the same time (as before) I try to show with my whole appearance: “I’m smart and beautiful, but you don’t understand anything, since you don’t appreciate such happiness as working with me!”

In general, I don’t feel good about the situation. I went to a meeting with transactional analyst Vadim Petrovsky with the hope of understanding myself, my relationships with other people and learning to calmly and objectively perceive criticism addressed to me.

Critic inside me

What is it – inflated self-esteem or inability to defend one’s position, views? Or maybe I just need to learn to accept it as a fact: the authorities must keep their subordinates in good shape, and they do it as best they can, belittling, for example, their achievements and efforts.

“And yet, when the boss is dissatisfied with the work in which I have invested a lot of work, and besides, he talks about it, not at all caring about the correctness of the statements, it hurts me. To recover, I need a lot of mental strength, ”I complain to Vadim Petrovsky.

But he unexpectedly says: “You criticize yourself much more than your superiors.” And he offers to move to another chair: “Imagine yourself now in the shoes of your inner critic. How do you feel it?

There is a round table and three chairs in the room, on each of which (explains the analyst) I have to sit today and feel in myself different hypostases of my own personality. And, if necessary, unfamiliar characters who fit into my life in the most ingenious way.

“Yes, it’s not at all the critic who speaks in me, but the editor, the proofreader, who helps not to make mistakes,” I deny. – Much more acutely I feel Tolstoy’s Natasha Rostova in me, who almost kissed her reflection in the mirror: “What a charm this Natasha is!”

Appreciate yourself, treat yourself well – only one part of your personality is inclined to this, Vadim Petrovsky insists. The other edits, censors, and constantly criticizes you. And when this inner critic is joined by an outer one, a chorus of voices arises that you cannot ignore. “I want to understand your inner censor. What does he say to you? – requires a psychotherapist.

Between Child and Parent: Finding Your Adult

And here the most unpleasant thing begins for me, what I have already gone through in psychological trainings – I should feel as if I am my inner censor, and I have to speak on his behalf now. Probably, there is little artistry in me, and everything that I say not for myself, but for the hero, will seem to me unnatural, false.

But still, I begin: “Nastya, in every editorial office where you come, at first you behave like an insecure schoolgirl who moonlights as a courier and is even afraid of the walls of this office, not just the employees. And when you get used to it, you fall into the other extreme – you lose your eye, caution, you become too open with everyone, as if you have worked here for many years. The distance between you and other people is shrinking too much.”

“Lack-overshoot, deficit-redundancy: there are too few of you – and in the next moment there are too many,” comments Vadim Petrovsky. And that brings me to the classic transactional analysis triad: Child-Parent-Adult.

He explains: “It is the obedient, offended Child who speaks in you, and then, immediately, the demanding and self-confident Parent. Between these states there is no position of an Adult who can perceive the situation as it is, analyze, compare and, most importantly, not be afraid to make mistakes and not count on the fact that all his work will be successful. By building relationships at work precisely from this position, we are objective and can realize how, for example, we correspond to the position we occupy, look for compromises, and act independently.”

I feel painfully sorry for this Nastya, who does not seem to live the life of an adult, and I begin to prove the opposite to the psychotherapist: “I perfectly understand that you cannot exist between work and family alone. Recently I said to myself: I need to actively relax from both, I bought myself a subscription to a fitness club and now I go to the pool and the gym, and I like it.

“Even when you talk about pleasure, you use the word “necessary,” Petrovsky instantly notices. “It’s like you (or rather, the Child in you) weren’t allowed too much before.”

Of course, I think to myself, they didn’t! In our family, it was impossible not to read, not to look, not to know something … For example, I was about five years old when my grandfather discovered that I was completely unfamiliar with Lermontov’s work, and began to read “The Song about the Merchant Kalashnikov.”

I tried to sneak away, because the song is quite scary, but he tied me to a chair with a towel and forced me to listen to the end.

“There was a little girl Nastya and a family, adults with their rigid attitudes, what is right and wrong,” Vadim Petrovsky analyzes the situation. – You grew up, and the controlling, demanding parental voice began to sound inside you. How do you feel it?

“I have to take a parental position in relation to all members of my family,” I admit. – In addition, I also acted as a Parent – the editor-in-chief of one of the Internet projects. True, it was a positive experience: I was a creative boss, encouraging subordinates to be creative, and also defending them in front of the company’s management.

“This is a really positive experience, because both a strong Parent and a small Child, spontaneous, creative, cheerful, came together in it,” explains Vadim Petrovsky. – And against the background of this merger, the Adult “turned on”, who will always listen and try to understand, will stimulate the creativity and mobility of employees, and protect them. I think it was a pleasure to work with you.”

“I want to be myself!”

I’m switching again. Vadim Petrovsky says: “Nastya is sitting there, and here I am, as an employer or in general some more status person. She patiently waits for me to finish speaking. She has a missing look. And I want Nastya to actively listen to me. That is, she listened without judgment, without arguing or advising anything, but giving me the opportunity to express my idea and be heard.

Well, it looks like it’s time for me to really change my attitude towards life and towards others. “What would you really like?” the analyst asks.

The wording turns out to be forced, but sincere. “I want to take better care of myself. Spud your ego … ”I say something that I would not allow myself in the presence of relatives or friends.

– Who inside of you would like to “spud” your ego?

“The impulse comes from the Child who had too many obligations. The understanding that I need to return to myself is from the Parent, who constantly controls and insists on his own. And the clarity, probably, from the Adult, who objectively evaluates what is happening to me now, and is ready to make a balanced, adequate decision.

Vadim Petrovsky again asks me to change seats. Now I am an imaginary Nastya-Child, and the psychoanalyst asks her about her cherished desires. My voice involuntarily changes, becomes sonorous and a little capricious. But this is a more honest reincarnation, I can easily talk about what I clearly remember from childhood:

“I want to have my own dog or another animal, only mine, so that I am responsible for it. And I also want to not be required to be cooler than my cousin, because he is three years older than me, smarter and stronger. I want to be myself. I want to relax and study for fours and fives. Maybe with two triples – as it will come out. And not to sit in the summer in the country, reading the filings of the “New World”, but to wander around dusty Moscow with friends, chat.

Vadim Petrovsky picks up: “I want to go where I want and communicate with those with whom I want, do what I want. And live every day to the fullest. And no “necessary”, only the word “I want”, more precisely, “we want” together – Nastya-big and Nastya-small.

But at this moment, these two persons suddenly cease to interest me.

Their duties, grievances and claims are known to me. We discuss with the analyst for some time the specific actions that I should take in order to live in harmony with myself. But it somehow passes on a tangent, past my consciousness, because it involuntarily returns me to the “you must do” position, from which I am so eager to get rid of.

I am a little embarrassed that I did not manage to overcome the problem with which I came to Vadim Petrovsky during one session. But he reassures me: “Therapy with transactional analysis should not be too long, the task of the analyst is to free the client from problems as soon as possible. Yet counseling cannot be limited to one meeting. The usual course is 4-6 two-hour sessions.

I leave from Vadim Petrovsky, and all my thoughts switch to this mysterious Adult, which I thought about just today at a meeting with a psychotherapist. And this Adult is extremely sympathetic to me.

The former oppressive feeling that I am living someone else’s life, in which everything is only according to the Hamburg account, which means that there can be no criticism of the authorities, failures and oversights, let me go. I think that “turning on the Adult” is a very exciting thing to do.