I had a really neat experience today I wanted to write about, because it's showing me just how much I've learnt from therapy and I want to bask in it a bit - and reinforce it!
A little tricky to write about without too much identifying info (call me paranoid...) but I'll try.
I had an email last night that alerted me there was going to be a 'situation' at work today. A predictable, normal situation, which in our workplace involves talking with someone with an opposing viewpoint until we reached a compromise.
But in this case the 'someone' I was going to have to negotiate with is male, kinda aggressive, and has crossed a boundary with me before in a very uncomfortable way that I never dealt with. Same physical type as my stepdad. Bad reputation for getting angry when he doesn't get his way.
When I found out last night I freaked and felt sick, and stayed up extra late preparing. But GUESS WHAT?!
I stood my ground!!! I felt anxious at first, but not even actually scared, and instead of my brain freezing I was able to think about and remember why this was important to me (because I care about the reputation of our organisation, and the future of the people we work with), and to articulate it!!!
The discussion took forever, because he was trying to insist that I do all the compromise instead of us meeting in the middle. He threw everything he could think of at me - how it was going to upset everything, how I wasn't really informed on the issue, how I was inconveniencing everybody, how I was being unfair. And I stayed calm and comfortable and talked out all the issues and articulated my own opposite point of view and stuck to it.
Eventually he just kept saying he WOULDN'T compromise. I reminded him how far I'd already been willing to compromise AND - get this - told him I wasn't willing to compromise any further!
So he went away, got a second opinion, then came back and met me in the middle, like I'd originally offered!
I can hardly believe this. Another female colleague came in and told me she could never have done it, that she just can't have that kind of argument. But I looked her in the eye and said it was a learned skill, and that I had only just learned it myself, and that it was something we both needed.
Actually I'm not sure how I learned it, except that not that long ago I was too scared to tell my T that I disagreed with her or was upset with her. And now I find all those little ruptures and repairs were about so much more than her and me. And all the work on boundaries around my relationship - well, my relationship is still not 'sorted', but I now have proof that I GET the boundary thing, so much better than before! (And it is toooootally not about fending the other person off - it is about knowing and staying grounded with what you believe in).
I know I haven't learned all this at once, that some of it is from processing I've done over a longer time, but I'm still amazed that I was able to do this. And proud, too, because I seriously believe that I stood up for the right thing today.
Hip hip hooray for progress! Thanks to all of you for how MUCH you've taught me. A lot has come from the learning I do here.
Okay, stepping off the podium (wait - let me thank my agent
) - but I'm totally keen to hear other people patting themselves on the back now - big achievements, tiny achievements - bring it on!hugs for all, Jones
