These behaviours are warning signs that a relationship you're in is heading into territory/ indicators of ๐๐ฆ๐จ๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง๐๐ฅ & ๐ฉ๐ฌ๐ฒ๐๐ก๐จ๐ฅ๐จ๐ ๐ข๐๐๐ฅ ๐๐๐ฎ๐ฌ๐.
It's likely you have at least one person in your life who does this.
These behaviours can be present in:
โด๏ธintimate relationships
โด๏ธfriendships
โด๏ธprofessional relationships
โด๏ธpersonal, cultural & professional communities
โด๏ธfamily relationships.
In other words, anyone in your life can be controlling and abuse their power.
People who express these behaviours (not one - all) are incapable of change while you're with them as you are their narcissistic supply. It's why you feel drained after being around them.
If you're aware that this is happening to you, the options of what to do next become clear.
๐ฑ support team strategies
๐ฑ communication strategies
๐ฑ withdrawal recovery strategies
Please don't tell someone they need to end it ASAP.
The approach to ending a relationship with someone who has been controlling you needs to be gentle, methodical and executed in a way that doesn't alert the other person of your plans.
Doing anything abruptly can be a shock to the nervous system that can be debilitating.
Abrupt endings are disruptive to the other person. This makes them feel threatened so they lash out and escalate the controlling behaviours OR work harder to win you over, only to keep you trapped in the dynamic.
People who are controlling & deny it CANNOT change.
There's not motivation for them to change because you've been supplying them with what they need. Your energy, time, attention, resources, love etc. But mostly your energy.
You've changed and now you have options.
DMs are open for those who need to talk this through.
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I've spent the last month writing/editing a guide for #medical students to respond to casual #sexism and #misogyny as an addendum to my Little Book of Assertiveness.
I want to say a few things about GASLIGHTING
๐งต
1/
The person, often male, doing the gaslighting occurs when a woman or other gendered person responds to a sexist/misogynistic comment to:
๐ชshut it down
๐ชchallenge it
๐ชexpose it
๐ชcall it out
in a culture or relationship dynamic where that hasn't happened before.
2/
A gaslighting tactic is called ๐๐๐ฅ๐ฉ๐ข.
I coach physicians to gain shared understanding about their suffering and facilitate shifts in perception that reveal opportunities for behavioral change and transformation. It means I'm frequently exposed to stories of deep suffering & pain.
I know what territory I can cover and when to refer onward. I'm clear about my limits and communicate that at the beginning of the relationship and as we co-create our working together agreement.
I break from work when I'm in the thick of my own process.
2. Know my triggers
We all have sensitivities to specific topic or themes. Knowing about my own wounds makes it easier for me to self-soothe & maintain focus on them when my client is dealing with an issue that has been a wound for me ie bullying, exclusion, oppression, death
I urge all frontline workers to please refer to the people who have been intubated as 'the person with/who is...'
rather than 'the Covid' 'the Intubated' 'the patient who's not going to make it'.
I understand why this happens... 1/
Depersonalisation is a necessary coping skill while managing internal dilemmas, fear, external pressures, inadequate health system, discomfort wearing PPE for long periods and constant exposure to patients with deteriorating health due to COVID19.
It's a nightmare.
2/
When this is over and you finally have space to reflect and process all that happened, please honour the lives of every person you were privileged to care for during their most vulnerable and end stages of life.
Please honour yourself & what was asked of you as healers.
3/
Reduced empathy is an unintended biproduct of the educational process. What happens in first year? The first exposure to a patient is a dead body. No info about their lives, families, stories of triumph. Only cause of death. No way of creating empathic connection w/ the dead. 1/
This & other bodies become tools to create emotional distance between the future Dr and patients. Students canโt get feedback from this lifeless body about the level of pain, discomfort, care or love that can be felt from the interaction.
Students are instructed to identify systems, tissues, organs, structures through dissection, reducing the body to a tool for exploring anatomy but not human experience before ever encountering a live patient. Sometimes thereโs a sign of the life the body once had.
I mentor & coach physicians on their wellbeing & how to use their energy wisely.
Just as there are people called to work in healthcare, it's my calling to serve those who help people in their most vulnerable times & phases of life to continually have the capacity to do it.
Somewhere along the journey to becoming a physician, students started believing that they should be able to handle everything they're exposed to & developed messy coping habits that impact on their ability to connect with others & self in healthy ways.
Healers need healers otherwise they will fail to recognise how their own suffering can become a source of wisdom to apply in their work with patients & in supporting their peers/colleagues. Instead, personal suffering or denial of it, can take one's mind into dark places.