Want Power To Cover Up Feelings Of Being Inferior

[Rani G2]

The range of emotions surfacing here are probably very familiar to people who have experienced trauma.

Finding strategies to not get to that place where feelings of disempowerment overwhelm me, where I feel oppressed.


People tell me that I come off confident and tough, which I am NOT. There are two parts in me that have these qualities to protect myself, but its always a roalercoaster ride of emotions from being aggressive to feeling extremely weak.

How do you deal when people come off arrogant/ dominant? It depends where and when you deal with such qualities.

P.

 

[Iamsensative]

People think i am confident and have it under control but they have no clue how small i feel inside. When confronted with arrogant and dominate people. I pull the nice card kill them with kindness. Even as my stomach is turning and my smile is forced upon my face. If that doesnt work and its say someone i have to work with it slowly drags me down to the point of panic. I begin to obsess about this person, i begin to develop irrational fear. If pushed or cornered i will explode into a hysterical mess. I have left jobs multiple times because of this. I cant handle this, i cant stand up for myself. I break mentally. I hate it, but i haven't figured out how to control this reaction.

 

[Rani G2]

Iamsensative,

i can understand your emotional experience, I have similar aspects in my psyche which makes me isolate and fear being in relationships with other people

have left jobs multiple times because of this. I cant handle this, i cant stand up for myself. I break mentally. I hate it, but i haven't figured out how to control this reaction.

I think the "control" could be replaced with "selfawareness"??? Controlling means I am holding those emotions, controlling them, but they aernt being transformed. I am still learning this, in the very beginning.

I find the conflict thing hard as well, because everytime I blow up, I feel the weakness, childlike emotional pattern. If I met someone who is commanding or ruling, I went to do malicious things to harm that person. Because I needed power and a part of me said " Make that person feel shame". Today I wouldnt go that far, and I would like to find a healthier way to interact.

For the sake of my own self.

Its really hard Iamsensative, still learning, peeling on the surface.


Thank you.


P.

 

[Rani G2]

Its nice to get so much advice.

 

[LadyZane]

This is interesting to think about. I currently have a job that is a pretty good fit for me, but I'm one of the few people who actually reports directly to the CEO (it's a small company of about 20 people). He's also the only other writer at the agency besides me. He almost never gets involved in my work--which is nice, because I've been irritatingly micromanaged in the past, and also because it means he trusts me to work with zero oversight 98% of the time. It's when he does get involved that I start feeling like you describe! He does come off arrogant pretty frequently, and it's obvious to everyone that it comes from a place of insecurity. Most other people at the agency handle it by approaching him a certain way to sort of butter him up and get him to agree to their ideas, or present their ideas to him in a way that makes him think they are HIS ideas. I can't do that! I just don't know how. So I get to this point where I dread having to work with him directly. He rarely knows as much as I do about a given project, because I've usually been deeply involved in it for a while before it ever crosses his desk, and even if you send him background info he doesn't read it--but he has this kind of pushy-know-it-all approach that really shakes me up.

Between my husband and a couple work friends who now work at other agencies, I feel like I spent at least an hour a day on gchat trying to figure out how to deal with it when he pushes his uninformed, generally incorrect or outdated ideas onto my projects. It feels like it upsets me disproportionately. I have to work so hard to calm down before I can respond to any of his ideas or requests, and when I do I try to be as direct and emotionless as possible. But I wish it were as easy for me as it is for other people to just dance around the issue and be sneaky and persuasive. And I wish it didn't throw me for such a big loop nearly every day.