Ever had a day when you feel like there are pieces of yourself you cannot find? This usually happens to me, when people are critical about something I have done or not done. I wake up each morning and bounce out of bed, with my whole ego intact. Usually by the end of the day, my ego has been shredded. This is the exact moment when I need someone who loves me to help me restore my feelings of being a capable, intelligent and rational human being.
Each of us feels the pain of being ego battered for lack of a better terminology. In an blog entitled Kreative Living Koncepts, in an article entitled, “How to Bypass the Pain of a Battered Ego,” written by Kat King, the author states,”…let’s face it in our society we need to develop strong egos and those egos get battered in the line of duty.”
Oh, how true this rings for me! No matter how strong your ego may be, when a situations presents itself and you find you have the feeling someone just hit you in the face with a dead fish, your ego feels battered. When this happens, it is always a bit of a surprise. By the time I get home, I usually have soothed the raging beast and restored my battered ego…but sometimes, I need help.
I think we all have an intimate other we speak with. When I reach out to someone I know has the time to listen to my rant or maybe just listen to my concerns, the problem suddenly seems much smaller and my ego perks up and repairs itself. Kat writes that we can easily resort to negative thinking at these times. For example, we may feel an accusations has been made and it batters the ego, when we think we are doing a good job and everything we can to the best of our ability. In today’s workplace, one is a bit more sensitive to this ego battering; because finding a job is not easy task in this economy.
This reminds me of the situation that occurred where my husband was working. He was being bullied in the workplace. He did not report the situation, because the man was going to retire in a few months. He was treated like he was in high school where he was called names and pushed physically by the person involved. He has a history of being picked on in high school where instead of fighting he just withdrew to the attic of his parents home and listened to music. My husband is not a man that will not defend himself. If he were to get angry enough, he would do some big time damage. Luckily the military taught him self-control. But he does have ethics and felt the situation would correct itself given time. I may not have agreed with him; but I understood he felt he was doing the right thing in this situation.
Workplace bullying is something that is far more prevalent then we realize. In the case of my husband, since he was a temporary worker, he did not think complaining to the company was the right thing to do. He believed he would not have been hired if he complained about the abuse he was experiencing. I think I can totally understand the fear. A company may say it is a ” no tolerance” company, but when push comes to shove this may not be the case. The result was, he has been hired.
Working as a temporary quite a bit in the past, I have often wanted to speak out against an abuse. I realized this is not the thing you want to do; because there are negative consequences. I am convinced that older workers see this more often then younger employees. If I could do a sociological study, I think I could prove a correlation between being over a certain age and how they are treated in comparison to younger workers. Unfortunately, that study will have to wait.
As the boomers become a real force in the workplace maybe someone will do a study on how older workers are treated today, as part of the American workforce. Until then, one may feel the flight or fight instinct; but acting on it may be the last thing you should do. This dilemma is a growing concern for many people coping with these situations. I do not agree with everything Kat wrote on the blog. Being aware of mistreatment and knowing how to handle it takes a lot of moxie. When we get hurt, our instinct is to revert to anger and this can motivate people to do the right thing under the circumstances. On the job it is difficult to remember it is their needs not yours that matters and even more difficult to do the right thing under the circumstances.
JOYSTECHTOOL 