In today's episode we're talking about 10 things that could be holding you back from breaking off or limiting unhealthy relationships, mostly with parents or other family members.
1.) A belief that parents always love their children
In our society there's this idea that when a child emerges from the womb and is placed into their mother's arms, that mother is going to have this rush of maternal love toward their child which is stronger than death.Many people believe this.
I can tell you from personal experience that absolutely I feel warmth and affection towards my own children, more so than I do towards other people's children. So I don't think this is entirely wrong. There are many good loving parents who do feel this way about their kids and remain feeling this way about their kids even into adulthood.
That's how it should be.
However, just like not everyone in the world is a good person or a nice person or a decent human being, those that aren't necessarily wonderful people aren't going to change overnight into decent, wonderful people as soon as their children are born.
They're not going to have a personality transplant.
Just as there are lazy coworkers and assholes who walk into retail stores and demand to get their way, well, those people are still going to be lazy and they're still going to be assholes when they are parents. Except they'll be that way toward their children also.
Certainly if all parents loved their kids, that would be the ideal. This is the way everyone wants things to be, but on some level we know that's not the reality. Otherwise there would not be social workers. Teachers and healthcare workers wouldn’t be mandated reporters. We know child abuse happens. We know children are beaten. We know children are neglected. We know a lot of kids are treated poorly by parents that don't love them.
You don't treat someone like that if you love them. So let’s put that baby to bed first thing.
Everyone knows there’s a reason for social services, that there are parents who neglect and abuse children. Yet we somehow believe that when a child grows into an adult that these same parents who are abusive toward their offspring as children are going to stop being abusive toward them as adults.
It's not true.
By and large, if your parents treated you like an object as a child, they're going to treat you like an object as an adult. If they verbally abused you as a child, they're going to be verbally abusive to you as an adult. If they were controlling to you as a child and overprotective, they're going to be controlling and overprotective when you're an adult.
These things don't change.
I mean, yeah, sure there's a limit to the amount and the kinds of abusive things they can do, because if you’re big, they probably can't beat you anymore like when you were a kid; but there are all kinds of ways to mess with a person's head without physically harming them.
Let me give you an example.
I was listening to a radio show just the other day where the topic was cheating.
This man called in, and the radio guy asked him how he found out his wife was cheating on him. The caller said he was going to his mother's house to return some hedge clippers when he saw his wife's car in the driveway. She wasn't usually there during the day, so that was unusual.
Well, when he walked into the house, he saw his wife making out with a strange man on the couch. His wife, caught red handed, then confessed that his mother had set her up with this man. The caller's mom had literally pimped the affair because she believed her daughter-in-law could do better.
Now if I were a gambling person, I would bet the man who called into the radio show knew there was something wrong with his mom before this happened. When he told the story on air, he didn't seem especially surprised. Instead he sort of shrugged it off like, “Yeah that's my mom.”
Chances are high she was already behaving in ways to give him the impression that nothing he did was good enough, that his wife was too good for him, and to make him feel inferior.
That's abuse.
The fact that his mother was still in his life when this happened, I would bet, was because he was unwilling to let go of that relationship even though it was unhealthy. Even if he personally doesn't believe that she loves him, probably she was going to have everyone on her side. They would be reminding him how much she loves him.
Additionally, he's going to have his own friends saying, “Oh, your mother loves you.” Everyone's going to be telling him that regardless of anything she does, “You can forgive that behavior, because deep down she loves you.”
We need to redefine love the way we use it between parents and children in our culture. Love is an action.
You cannot love someone and then set their wife up with another man.
You cannot love someone and then go out of your way to sabotage them in their life.
That's not love.
My son, who is 12, is a practicing Mormon against his will. He attends church with his father regularly, because he has a relationship with his dad. When my son is in my house he doesn't have to do anything in regards to belief. He's allowed to choose what he does or does not believe, but in his dad's house there's a lot of pressure for him to conform.
Our son doesn't particularly like that.
This past week, he had to write an essay about something he felt strongly about for one of his classes. So he wrote about how he doesn't think parents should force religion onto their children. It was less an indictment of religion or people who believe in religion and more an indictment of feeling like his father was forcing something onto him.
We need to redefine love the way we use it between parents and children in our culture. Love is an action.
You cannot love someone and then set their wife up with another man.
You cannot love someone and then go out of your way to sabotage them in their life.
That's not love.
2.) Feeling sorry for your parent(s) or other family members
This goes for any person who's treating you poorly, regardless of if they are a family member, friend, or significant other. Feeling sorry for a person that’s mistreating you can keep you stuck.My son, who is 12, is a practicing Mormon against his will. He attends church with his father regularly, because he has a relationship with his dad. When my son is in my house he doesn't have to do anything in regards to belief. He's allowed to choose what he does or does not believe, but in his dad's house there's a lot of pressure for him to conform.
Our son doesn't particularly like that.
This past week, he had to write an essay about something he felt strongly about for one of his classes. So he wrote about how he doesn't think parents should force religion onto their children. It was less an indictment of religion or people who believe in religion and more an indictment of feeling like his father was forcing something onto him.
His feelings were valid.
But what happened with this teacher was that instead of validating his feelings, she wrote back that “I can certainly understand your Dad's point-of-view, because his faith is important to him and he wants to share that with the children he loves.”
So putting aside the fact that she's automatically inserted “love” as a given, which is problematic of itself, she's also urging him to stand in his father's shoes and feel sorry for him, to try and see things from his dad's point-of-view because his faith is important to him.
Well, it’s true that his dad’s faith is important to him. She's not wrong there.
But it isn’t a child's job to stand in his parent's shoes and completely get rid of his own point-of-view, denying his own feelings and natural reactions to fill an emotional need his parent has. That is just not a child's job, and it's not reasonable.
Unfortunately, we hear it all the time as an expectation for children. And taking that to heart is something that holds us back from leaving unhealthy situations.
Unfortunately, we hear it all the time as an expectation for children. And taking that to heart is something that holds us back from leaving unhealthy situations.
3.) Thinking the abusive parent doesn't know any better, or blaming their behavior on a mental illness
We live in an age of technology.
You can find anything with a Google search and a click of a button these days. Granted, there's a lot of misinformation out there, but people who want to do better are not deprived of information to help them improve. I can speak from my own personal experience on this.
When I was a young mom, I was a crap mom.
I did not know better. I did things the way they had been done to me. I was not kind. I was not patient, and I worked to control my children above understanding them.
I was a crap mom, I admit it. But I wanted to do better.
When I was a young mom, I was a crap mom.
I did not know better. I did things the way they had been done to me. I was not kind. I was not patient, and I worked to control my children above understanding them.
I was a crap mom, I admit it. But I wanted to do better.
So I started reading books and websites along with seeking help. And guess what happened? I became a better mom.
It was my responsibility as a parent to be a better mom. It was not my child's responsibility to understand me being a crap mom. It wasn't.
So when we excuse someone’s poor behavior by saying, “My parent doesn't know any better... my brother doesn't know any better… my husband or my wife don't know any better... my friend doesn't know any better.” Well, why is that?
Is it because they haven't done the work to do any better? Why are you the one who has to do the work to make them better?
You don't.
And while mental illness is very real and very debilitating--depression, for instance, can keep a person from getting out of bed, and I have every sympathy for people who struggle with that--I can have sympathy for that struggle without feeling like I have to be that person's therapist. It’s a heavy burden to believe you have to make that person better. And it's not okay if they're treating you poorly because they're suffering.
It's not okay.
Just like they have to take responsibility for doing the work for themselves, we also need to take responsibility for protecting our health and for not putting ourselves in a place where we are repeatedly treated with disrespect or with disregard.
So that's number three, and it's hard, because we want to have empathy for people. We want to have sympathy for people. Yet at the end of the day, you have to think about yourself too and about whether or not you're in a healthy place.
The problem with using the word “should” all the time is that we feel bad to the point that we can't do better.
“Should” is a debilitating word. It makes us feel a crippling amount of shame, like there's something wrong with us. That's why we would be better off taking the word “should’ right out of our vocabulary.
The moment I started working on taking the word “should” out of my vocabulary was the moment I started doing better as a human being.
I started feeling better. I started becoming more productive, more thoughtful toward others, because I wasn't wallowing. We don't want to wallow. It's not healthy.
If you have a parent or sibling or anyone else that you have an unhealthy relationship with, chances are high that person is manipulative. One thing manipulative people do consistently is to use guilt to get their way. As an example, your dad might say, “Wow, I see you can't be bothered to take care of your parents. I see you can't be bothered to care how your parents feel.”
Or your mom might add, “I feel like you don't like us anymore,” when you don't come over a certain number of times per month, or when you don't call, or when you don't give them “this money that I need now.” It never matters what you can afford to give, or the amount of time can you truly afford to put aside to come over or to call. What would work for your schedule or your convenience is never considered. Your comfort is never considered.
It doesn't matter to them.
All that matters to them is their comfort and their convenience, which is why they're going to use guilt.
Healthy relationships are based on mutual respect and love. People talk or come over because they want to, not because they’re made to feel guilty.
If you want healthy relationships, you cannot buy into the guilt.
You just can't, because doing so means you'll never be able to have boundaries.
The fact that this person is your parent, or your brother or sister, or significant other doesn't mean you're not allowed to set boundaries. It doesn't make you a bad person to set boundaries. It just means you have needs like everybody else.
If you can't draw a fence around your needs without feeling guilty, you're going to have a really hard time limiting interactions with them or doing anything to put yourself in a better place.
Ditch the guilt. You just got to ditch it.
They're adults. It is not your job to soothe them. It is not your job to stroke their ego. It is not your job to make them feel less rejected or less sad. You are not the person who is responsible for making them feel good.
They're adults.
We're not talking about children. It's different if you're a parent and you are trying to help your child not feel a certain way, but we're talking about adults here. Adults are responsible for handling their own feelings. So ditch the guilt and take care of yourself.
I talked on an earlier podcast episode about how my father is enmeshed with my mother. I was also enmeshed with her for many years. Let me tell you what that's like: You don't know whether you're happy or sad until you determine how she feels.
In the morning, I would walk down the stairs and immediately look at her as she sat in her chair. I would examine her face and her body posture to try and decide whether I was allowed to be happy. If she was relaxed and calm, then I could be happy. But if she was fuming over there because she was angry at someone, I could not be happy.
When you're enmeshed, your feelings essentially belong to another person. There’s no boundary. You catch their feelings like you would catch a cold, and it does a real number on your ability to have a separate identity to them.
Think about it.
If you can't have a feeling unless it matches the feelings of this person you're with, how do you even have an identity of your own? It is profoundly damaging to your ability to develop as a person when you're enmeshed with a parent. When you’re enmeshed with your partner, you are unable to defend your children, which is what I see with my dad.
He knows that our mother is often unreasonable but he's unable to defend us or stand up to her, because he catches her feelings like he would catch a cold.
He doesn't know where she ends and where he begins.
Side note: I know I talk about therapy a lot on here, but that’s because it's important. If you can find a good therapist, find one. It can really help.
So anyway, a few years ago, I was talking to my therapist about how hard it was to spend time with my parents.
I was still seeing them every few months at this point. It was like a low contact situation where I wouldn't see them in my home. Instead I would see them in a restaurant or a public park, and I was careful that it was neutral ground.
Anyway, I set strict parameters for my own well-being at the time, but even with all of this I found myself dissociating when I was with them. I would be sitting there in the restaurant, they would be talking to me, and I would feel nothing but completely numb from my head down to my toes. I was hearing the words they were saying. I was technically in the conversation, but my feelings had turned off like a light switch. I was dissociating right in the middle of these meetings with my parents.
So I came back to my therapist and said, “It's not normal. How can I continue to see my parents if I feel like I'm having an out-of-body experience every time I do?”
And what he said was, “You don't have to see them if you don't want to.”
“But they're my parents. I can't just not see them. It will hurt their feelings and make them think I hate them.”
“We're not talking about their feelings,” he told me. “Their feelings aren't your responsibility. Your healing is your responsibility.”
“But they're going to be angry if I stop seeing them completely. They're going to be furious.”
“Yes, they will be, but you have to look out for your own healing. I want you to think about if it’s healthy for you to be around certain people when the experience is so triggering you dissociate.”
He called me out. My therapist called me out, because my go-to was to think about them and whether they were going to be angry or hurt, to ask “How is this going to make them feel.” I was willing to sit in the restaurant and feel absolutely nothing to keep them from being angry.
This kept me stuck.
It's important, so important, if we want to break away or limit these unhealthy relationships, to take responsibility for our own healing, even if our parents aren't going to be happy about it.
What else can a child rationally believe if all parents love their children and somehow you're not loved by your parents?
It intuitively follows that you must be unlovable, or that there must be something wrong with you. It’s very hurtful.
It was my responsibility as a parent to be a better mom. It was not my child's responsibility to understand me being a crap mom. It wasn't.
So when we excuse someone’s poor behavior by saying, “My parent doesn't know any better... my brother doesn't know any better… my husband or my wife don't know any better... my friend doesn't know any better.” Well, why is that?
Is it because they haven't done the work to do any better? Why are you the one who has to do the work to make them better?
You don't.
And while mental illness is very real and very debilitating--depression, for instance, can keep a person from getting out of bed, and I have every sympathy for people who struggle with that--I can have sympathy for that struggle without feeling like I have to be that person's therapist. It’s a heavy burden to believe you have to make that person better. And it's not okay if they're treating you poorly because they're suffering.
It's not okay.
Just like they have to take responsibility for doing the work for themselves, we also need to take responsibility for protecting our health and for not putting ourselves in a place where we are repeatedly treated with disrespect or with disregard.
So that's number three, and it's hard, because we want to have empathy for people. We want to have sympathy for people. Yet at the end of the day, you have to think about yourself too and about whether or not you're in a healthy place.
4.) Shoulding all over ourselves
“I should be a better daughter.. I should be a better friend... I should be a better mother.” While yes, yes, of course, ideally we would be the perfect daughter and the perfect friend and the perfect mother. Even though, ideally, we would never make mistakes and would always be warm towards people and kind and helpful, we make mistakes because we’re human.The problem with using the word “should” all the time is that we feel bad to the point that we can't do better.
“Should” is a debilitating word. It makes us feel a crippling amount of shame, like there's something wrong with us. That's why we would be better off taking the word “should’ right out of our vocabulary.
The moment I started working on taking the word “should” out of my vocabulary was the moment I started doing better as a human being.
I started feeling better. I started becoming more productive, more thoughtful toward others, because I wasn't wallowing. We don't want to wallow. It's not healthy.
5.) Guilt
When you “should” yourself, when you use the word “should” all the time, you can make yourself feel guilty and shameful for making mistakes. But when I list guilt it's a little bit different: I'm talking about the guilt put onto us by others.If you have a parent or sibling or anyone else that you have an unhealthy relationship with, chances are high that person is manipulative. One thing manipulative people do consistently is to use guilt to get their way. As an example, your dad might say, “Wow, I see you can't be bothered to take care of your parents. I see you can't be bothered to care how your parents feel.”
Or your mom might add, “I feel like you don't like us anymore,” when you don't come over a certain number of times per month, or when you don't call, or when you don't give them “this money that I need now.” It never matters what you can afford to give, or the amount of time can you truly afford to put aside to come over or to call. What would work for your schedule or your convenience is never considered. Your comfort is never considered.
It doesn't matter to them.
All that matters to them is their comfort and their convenience, which is why they're going to use guilt.
Healthy relationships are based on mutual respect and love. People talk or come over because they want to, not because they’re made to feel guilty.
If you want healthy relationships, you cannot buy into the guilt.
You just can't, because doing so means you'll never be able to have boundaries.
The fact that this person is your parent, or your brother or sister, or significant other doesn't mean you're not allowed to set boundaries. It doesn't make you a bad person to set boundaries. It just means you have needs like everybody else.
If you can't draw a fence around your needs without feeling guilty, you're going to have a really hard time limiting interactions with them or doing anything to put yourself in a better place.
Ditch the guilt. You just got to ditch it.
They're adults. It is not your job to soothe them. It is not your job to stroke their ego. It is not your job to make them feel less rejected or less sad. You are not the person who is responsible for making them feel good.
They're adults.
We're not talking about children. It's different if you're a parent and you are trying to help your child not feel a certain way, but we're talking about adults here. Adults are responsible for handling their own feelings. So ditch the guilt and take care of yourself.
6.) Enmeshment
This is something else that makes it hard for us to set boundaries.I talked on an earlier podcast episode about how my father is enmeshed with my mother. I was also enmeshed with her for many years. Let me tell you what that's like: You don't know whether you're happy or sad until you determine how she feels.
In the morning, I would walk down the stairs and immediately look at her as she sat in her chair. I would examine her face and her body posture to try and decide whether I was allowed to be happy. If she was relaxed and calm, then I could be happy. But if she was fuming over there because she was angry at someone, I could not be happy.
When you're enmeshed, your feelings essentially belong to another person. There’s no boundary. You catch their feelings like you would catch a cold, and it does a real number on your ability to have a separate identity to them.
Think about it.
If you can't have a feeling unless it matches the feelings of this person you're with, how do you even have an identity of your own? It is profoundly damaging to your ability to develop as a person when you're enmeshed with a parent. When you’re enmeshed with your partner, you are unable to defend your children, which is what I see with my dad.
He knows that our mother is often unreasonable but he's unable to defend us or stand up to her, because he catches her feelings like he would catch a cold.
He doesn't know where she ends and where he begins.
7.) Taking responsibility for another person’s healing while neglecting your own
A few years ago, I was in therapy.Side note: I know I talk about therapy a lot on here, but that’s because it's important. If you can find a good therapist, find one. It can really help.
So anyway, a few years ago, I was talking to my therapist about how hard it was to spend time with my parents.
I was still seeing them every few months at this point. It was like a low contact situation where I wouldn't see them in my home. Instead I would see them in a restaurant or a public park, and I was careful that it was neutral ground.
Anyway, I set strict parameters for my own well-being at the time, but even with all of this I found myself dissociating when I was with them. I would be sitting there in the restaurant, they would be talking to me, and I would feel nothing but completely numb from my head down to my toes. I was hearing the words they were saying. I was technically in the conversation, but my feelings had turned off like a light switch. I was dissociating right in the middle of these meetings with my parents.
So I came back to my therapist and said, “It's not normal. How can I continue to see my parents if I feel like I'm having an out-of-body experience every time I do?”
And what he said was, “You don't have to see them if you don't want to.”
“But they're my parents. I can't just not see them. It will hurt their feelings and make them think I hate them.”
“We're not talking about their feelings,” he told me. “Their feelings aren't your responsibility. Your healing is your responsibility.”
“But they're going to be angry if I stop seeing them completely. They're going to be furious.”
“Yes, they will be, but you have to look out for your own healing. I want you to think about if it’s healthy for you to be around certain people when the experience is so triggering you dissociate.”
He called me out. My therapist called me out, because my go-to was to think about them and whether they were going to be angry or hurt, to ask “How is this going to make them feel.” I was willing to sit in the restaurant and feel absolutely nothing to keep them from being angry.
This kept me stuck.
It's important, so important, if we want to break away or limit these unhealthy relationships, to take responsibility for our own healing, even if our parents aren't going to be happy about it.
8.) Self-blame, trying to save face, and the forgiveness trap
It's easy to blame yourself when you don't have a good relationship with your parents, because everyone tells you it's important, that it defines you, as a person, to have this wonderful loving relationship with your mom and dad. So when you don't have that, it's not uncommon to ask, “What's wrong with me? There must be something wrong with me, right?”What else can a child rationally believe if all parents love their children and somehow you're not loved by your parents?
It intuitively follows that you must be unlovable, or that there must be something wrong with you. It’s very hurtful.
It’s also wrong.
You need to ditch the self blame.
Not everyone's mom or dad is parent of the year. Not all parents are loving, they're not all nice. Recognizing that you didn't choose who your parents are and that you had no choice in how they’ve conducted their lives makes a big difference. It can be tempting to try and save face with friends and others by pretending everything with your family is great when it's not. Many people hold on longer to a painful relationship because they want to be respectable... then there’s the forgiveness trap.
Forgiveness is an especially hard burden for the religious. I was religious for over 35 years and was obsessive about forgiving people. I used to pray by the side of my bed for 20 minutes or more at a time, begging God to put forgiveness into my heart for the people who had hurt me. Meanwhile, the person I most needed to forgive was myself.
There are people who swear by forgiveness, but unfortunately, many abusive personalities also use it to inflict harm, which is why I call it the forgiveness trap.
I believe in acceptance at this point.
You need to accept how people are, and you need to accept reality. You're not going to change anybody, but you don't have to feel warm and fuzzy about what they did to you either.
Not feeling warm and fuzzy about a person who has been cruel to you doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you normal.
So in short, don't use forgiveness like a stick to beat yourself with. That's what I did, and it kept me stuck for a long time.
Don’t do what I did.
It's good to trust people initially.
You give them that trust and then they show you that it was a good decision. You get closer to them and you have a nice friendship, or... you give them that trust and they break it, then you take the trust away. This is how most people bestow and take away trust.
My problem is that I like to give people trust, and then when they don't live up to expectations or when they break that trust, I'll often give them another chance. And I'll do that over and over and over because I want to believe the best about people. I rationalize. I tell myself that maybe it was a misunderstanding; maybe they didn't mean that hurtful thing they said; maybe they didn't actually go behind my back and stab me; maybe that was just my imagination.
I'm always asking myself what a person's intentions are, and then assuming the best of people even when there’s overwhelming evidence of hostility or malice. On the surface this may seem like a really nice quality to have. I don’t want to see your bad traits, only your good ones. And so I tint the world to a nice rose-colored hue everywhere I go. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything.
Because what I’m really doing is setting myself up to be hurt repeatedly. Here's an example: When I first took my current job teaching music, I told the interviewer that I wanted to start a strings program for elementary school kids. My principal seemed happy about it at the time, but I waited a year to settle in before attempting it.
Just as I was about to launch this program, I got an email from a high school teacher in the same school district who I had never met. She said she wanted to start a strings program at my school with a local middle school teacher (also who I'd never met).
It was very strange.
The timing of it was very strange.
You need to ditch the self blame.
Not everyone's mom or dad is parent of the year. Not all parents are loving, they're not all nice. Recognizing that you didn't choose who your parents are and that you had no choice in how they’ve conducted their lives makes a big difference. It can be tempting to try and save face with friends and others by pretending everything with your family is great when it's not. Many people hold on longer to a painful relationship because they want to be respectable... then there’s the forgiveness trap.
Forgiveness is an especially hard burden for the religious. I was religious for over 35 years and was obsessive about forgiving people. I used to pray by the side of my bed for 20 minutes or more at a time, begging God to put forgiveness into my heart for the people who had hurt me. Meanwhile, the person I most needed to forgive was myself.
There are people who swear by forgiveness, but unfortunately, many abusive personalities also use it to inflict harm, which is why I call it the forgiveness trap.
I believe in acceptance at this point.
You need to accept how people are, and you need to accept reality. You're not going to change anybody, but you don't have to feel warm and fuzzy about what they did to you either.
Not feeling warm and fuzzy about a person who has been cruel to you doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you normal.
So in short, don't use forgiveness like a stick to beat yourself with. That's what I did, and it kept me stuck for a long time.
Don’t do what I did.
9.) Extreme optimism or naivety
I still suffer from this. I want to believe the best of people.It's good to trust people initially.
You give them that trust and then they show you that it was a good decision. You get closer to them and you have a nice friendship, or... you give them that trust and they break it, then you take the trust away. This is how most people bestow and take away trust.
My problem is that I like to give people trust, and then when they don't live up to expectations or when they break that trust, I'll often give them another chance. And I'll do that over and over and over because I want to believe the best about people. I rationalize. I tell myself that maybe it was a misunderstanding; maybe they didn't mean that hurtful thing they said; maybe they didn't actually go behind my back and stab me; maybe that was just my imagination.
I'm always asking myself what a person's intentions are, and then assuming the best of people even when there’s overwhelming evidence of hostility or malice. On the surface this may seem like a really nice quality to have. I don’t want to see your bad traits, only your good ones. And so I tint the world to a nice rose-colored hue everywhere I go. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything.
Because what I’m really doing is setting myself up to be hurt repeatedly. Here's an example: When I first took my current job teaching music, I told the interviewer that I wanted to start a strings program for elementary school kids. My principal seemed happy about it at the time, but I waited a year to settle in before attempting it.
Just as I was about to launch this program, I got an email from a high school teacher in the same school district who I had never met. She said she wanted to start a strings program at my school with a local middle school teacher (also who I'd never met).
It was very strange.
The timing of it was very strange.
I'd been talking about starting my own program for almost a year at this point, and I was getting ready to take the leap. In fact, I was mid-jump. And I hadn't told these other teachers anything about my plans, so they acted like they didn't know. In fact, they dressed it up as their "big idea" and asked me if they could come into my school. “You don't even need to be there, we will do everything,” they said in the email. It was kind of insulting, actually, the way they raised it. Why would I want to sit back and do nothing?
But I tried not to think that it was anything nefarious. Maybe the timing was just a weird coincidence.
So wearing my rose-tinted glasses, I wrote these teacher back while giving them the benefit of the doubt. “I was already starting a program like this,” I said. “But maybe we can start it together.” And she came back with ideas that would undermine what I had planned. So I was like, “Okay, maybe I can teach these instruments and you can teach these other instruments.”
I was trying to set boundaries.
If we each had our own areas, then we wouldn’t step on each other's toes.
But she didn't like that either and came back with, “Would you be open to co-teaching?” meaning we would do everything together, ie do everything her way.
My stomach sank and my focus went out the window. Another email came in at that moment. It was an email from our shared supervisor. She mentioned she had talked to these two teachers about my idea a few days earlier and that they had concerns... but in those first emails from the high school teacher, she acted all shocked that I was on the verge of starting a strings program. Like she didn’t know about it.
Evidently she did.
I was supposed to believe they just had this great idea that was exactly like mine, at coincidentally the same time. There were other feeder elementary schools they could have used too, but I digress.
It was all a manipulation.
They were trying to come in and sweep the program out from under me, and their method was not above board. When I got the email from our supervisor, I put the kibosh on that. I was like, “No. I'll handle this,” and they mostly left me alone after that.
But if I hadn't been an extreme optimist who took their words at face value, I probably would have noticed more quickly how suspect their correspondence was.
I mean, wasn’t the timing of that email enough to raise red flags?
In hindsight, I should have wondered if they were trying to sabotage my efforts, but my brain doesn't work that way.
But I tried not to think that it was anything nefarious. Maybe the timing was just a weird coincidence.
So wearing my rose-tinted glasses, I wrote these teacher back while giving them the benefit of the doubt. “I was already starting a program like this,” I said. “But maybe we can start it together.” And she came back with ideas that would undermine what I had planned. So I was like, “Okay, maybe I can teach these instruments and you can teach these other instruments.”
I was trying to set boundaries.
If we each had our own areas, then we wouldn’t step on each other's toes.
But she didn't like that either and came back with, “Would you be open to co-teaching?” meaning we would do everything together, ie do everything her way.
My stomach sank and my focus went out the window. Another email came in at that moment. It was an email from our shared supervisor. She mentioned she had talked to these two teachers about my idea a few days earlier and that they had concerns... but in those first emails from the high school teacher, she acted all shocked that I was on the verge of starting a strings program. Like she didn’t know about it.
Evidently she did.
I was supposed to believe they just had this great idea that was exactly like mine, at coincidentally the same time. There were other feeder elementary schools they could have used too, but I digress.
It was all a manipulation.
They were trying to come in and sweep the program out from under me, and their method was not above board. When I got the email from our supervisor, I put the kibosh on that. I was like, “No. I'll handle this,” and they mostly left me alone after that.
But if I hadn't been an extreme optimist who took their words at face value, I probably would have noticed more quickly how suspect their correspondence was.
I mean, wasn’t the timing of that email enough to raise red flags?
In hindsight, I should have wondered if they were trying to sabotage my efforts, but my brain doesn't work that way.
I don't want to assume the worst of people.
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