By 
A popular show during the heyday of television called “I’ve Got a Secret” has a lot to do with adult children in the workplace who were forced to grow up with alcoholism, dysfunction and/or abuse and thus , they adopted a series of behaviors. characteristics intended to foster their survival later in life, since they also bring one with them, namely their supposed inferiority and incompetence.
Mine, deep and dark, was the hole my father dug in my soul when he tried to fill his, or the one his father created with his abusive, alcoholic shovels. I used numerous methods to mask mine, always fearful that one day my co-workers would find out and realize that I wasn’t all that I described myself to be.
As a human target in the home, whenever my father’s madness flared up and commanded me to chase and chase him down, I was unable to learn the trust that others apparently learned, as it was not demonstrated or modeled for me, unconsciously transferring my home from source. characteristics to that of the workplace and the adoption of hypervigilant physiological symptoms that put me chronically on guard and on high alert for potential danger.
Although I became a high achiever and people-pleaser to minimize damaging confrontations (which, in the case, never occurred) with authority figure bosses and co-workers alike, I never really believed my sometimes award-winning performances. academy awards (which, in hindsight, were skills themselves), continuously playing the parent tapes at speeds and frequencies that reached brainwashing proportions. “You will never work!” “You’re not good enough!” “Wait until you make a single mistake and blow your cover!” And so they ran.
The more I stared at the broken image my co-workers would surely have had of me if I did, the more my image of myself cracked, the shards of broken glass carrying labels like “fraud,” “imposter,” and “con man.” “
Unable, due to mistrust-repelling dynamics, to forge bonds with others and thus feel emotionally connected to the collective body of work I was supposed to be a part of, I always felt as if I was on the outside, looking in. Reluctant to ask for help, the mere act of doing so, I reasoned, would only have exposed my inadequacies and incapacities.
On the other hand, how do you ask for help from strangers who haven’t known you since Adam or owe you anything when the very people you were entrusted to provide it with, your parents, didn’t, and ironically and to the contrary, for the same reasons? ? Why did you need it?
Always hungry for the praise and validation that I rarely received from my father at home, I often sought it out at work, but could not always receive and accept it, even if it was offered to me.
For years I deceived myself on two levels. On the one hand, I employed an intense sense of humor that I never fully realized emanated from me, and on the other, this tactic, along with over-achieving and people-pleasing, was unconsciously used as a defense mechanism, or one more attempt to create the illusion of safety and security for myself.
“Literature on Adult Children of Alcoholics,” according to the textbook Adult Children of Alcoholics (World Service Organization, Torrance, California, 2006, p. 421) “includes a description of four roles that children may assume in an alcoholic environment or dysfunctional”. family: hero, scapegoat, lost boy, and pet/clown. These roles can easily transfer to the workplace.”
“We learned these roles as children to protect ourselves,” he continues (p. 422). “Most of our behaviors began as defense mechanisms that helped us survive an alcoholic, dysfunctional, or abusive experience. These roles carry over into adulthood with unknown precision.”
Managers, supervisors, and even other co-workers, of course, served as subconsciously displaced parental authority figures, intensifying my helplessness before them by regressing me back to childhood, immobilizing me, and suspending all my abilities to defend myself. What could be a greater threat in the workplace than uttering a single wrong word to a boss who has both the ability and the right to fire you?
Even if a “Do Not Enter” sign were not hanging on the door of my negative emotions, like anger, I could not even take a step towards them, because I would have presented myself in a poor and disrespectful light, and touching my problems without solving would surely have caused me to lose control and essentially become my father, the person, by the way, I least wanted to be when it came to these characteristics.
The mere mention of social situations after work feels a traumatic adrenaline rush through my body. Apart from my inability to trust and the boredom through the negative emotional layers necessary to reach the positive ones in order to relate to them on a happier, more stable keel, I believed that the structure of the work would fall, like a curtain, giving co-workers an opportunity, if not an excuse, to break their behavioral restraints and loosen up, exposing myself to danger by revealing, like my father, his other side or his alter-side and thus targeting me.
When you grow up with a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality and no one explains why you have two diametrically opposite sides, you naturally assume that everyone else in the world does too.
The workplace, in the end, becomes the place of the second chance for an adult-child, but subconsciously displaced from home or origin, which shows that the survival traits that facilitate their safety are not exclusive to the place, but of the person who takes them there. to recreate