Maintaining Morale on The Dispatch Floor

The workplace and how you live in it takes more then just showing up everyday. Sometimes it means being brave enough to make the first change: Yourself.

o, exactly whose responsibility is it to see to it that the level of morale within any workplace environment is at a livable level for the individuals who work there? Yours, mine or the bosses? The boss is an easy target but does the buck really stop there? Rarely.

Everyone has a responsibility towards making the workplace environment one in which people, by and large, feel comfortable, safe, valued and appreciated. This doesn’t mean being touchy feely or doing group hugs to the sounds of Kumbaya. In fact, these days if you’re not careful doing something like that could set you up for personnel complaint or an order-in visit to the company shrink.

What it does mean is having some level of awareness and, concurrently,  some degree of commitment and felt responsibility towards not only yourself but also towards the work group as a whole. 

What You Can’t See, Can’t Hurt You: WRONG 

Dispatcher centers both large and small are microcosms of the larger community. Whether we are referring to the larger community such as the city the center is located in or the organizational community such as the agency that the dispatch center is a part of and works for, the dispatcher who works there is impacted by the community organization. Although separate entities, they are also, in fact, part of a greater whole. One cannot help but be affected by the other and most times what is happening “out there” ultimately influences the mood, temperament and attitude in here and on the floor.

When the larger organization is under fire from the community for whatever the reason, an increase in crime, a sudden surge in community violence resulting in an increase in mortality, a corruption investigation, a use of force investigation, the death of an officer, etc., the smaller organizations within it’s umbrella are affected as well. 

This may first play out at the command level: as the intensity of the stress organizationally increases (more personnel complaints initiated, uneven promotions, greater accountability on issues that are perceived as unwarranted, reduced perception of  “fair and equitable” treatment, etc.), the severity of the stress for the individual intensifies.  

It never ever stops where it started.  

No one remains untouched:  as the command staff feels the pinch the subordinate supervisors are tapped by command to produce. As the pressure heats up on the supervisors, they’ll put their subordinates on notice and so forth and so on until it reaches the floor of the dispatch center. In vernacular terms this is a proverbial tale: the man beats the woman who yells at the kid who kicks the dog who chases the cat who pounces on the mouse. Do you get my drift?  In the end the mouse has no idea why he was actually pounced on; he just figures it’s his due, he's a mouse nor does the cat step back and process why he suddenly decided to pounce on the mouse. He probably thinks it’s just because he wanted to and he’s a cat, it’s his right. In the land of psychological jargon, we call this a parallel process and this occurs every day whether anyone notices and articulates it or not.

What we mean by this is that if we are not careful or aware we can often times inadvertently emulate many of the same behaviors that our client population exhibits, both good and bad.

Reaching New Thresholds

Even though I am a psychologist I may not actually notice this progressive distortion of my reality, “Can’t see the forest for the trees.” But realistically and also depending on my individual personality characteristics after time my basic threshold for tolerating bizarre distorted behavior will shift and a new baseline will become established. In part, if I intend on staying in the job it has to shift in order for me to tolerate staying in the job. If it doesn't shift either I will leave the job for other gainful employment (because I am unable to tolerate the feelings associated with doing the job) or something else will happen, such as illness, depression, or some other behavioral emotional manifestation.

Someone outside the job, like a family member who is close to me, might see this change in me and say, “Whoa! What’s going on here?” but someone on the inside, such as another colleague doing the same kind of work, may not even notice, and in fact, may inadvertently reinforce this transformation within because it is also happening within themselves.  The most innocent and familiar version of this is when we hear staff voicing "gallows humor," the darkly foreboding sense of humor some professionals have in the face of the grimmest circumstances.

Translating this into law enforcement: As individuals starting our careers in law enforcement we may have been easy going, tolerant, innocent, friendly, and open minded.  But as the sands of times shift down, after a number of years on the job we may find that we have become critical, judgmental, opinionated, “paranoid,” concrete and aggressive.

Sometimes we are the ones who notice this change in ourselves but frequently it is a family member or friend who points this out to us.  On the job most will simply say “that’s just the way it is here.”

Is this just an expected by-product of the job? Maybe, but it doesn’t necessarily always have to be this way unless you decide you want it to be this way. For example, one would not be expected to suspend judgment when rolling out to a” hot prowl” or responding to an “officer needs help” call. But if you’re not handling a call and yet you’re treating your co-workers the same way you treat a suspect or a PR, then Houston, we have a problem.

But, you say, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone’s not out to get you.” True, but there’s a limit to what is appropriate and manageable behavior.

I worked for a large organization that these days seems to be hip deep in problems, complaints and litigation. It’s hard to pick up the newspaper without reading something about the department. Does this have an impact on the people who work hard everyday doing the best job they know how to even when they have little or nothing to do with the events they hear about on the news?

Absolutely, because ultimately the stress of the organization filters through to the people on the floor. When, where and how it affects you may simply depend on where you are on the “food chain,” but ultimately you will be affected.

This can be experienced as helplessness, hopelessness, depression, anger, demoralization or apathy. It can mean different things to different people, but like the elephant in the room, just cause you don’t talk about it doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.

The bottom line is we all bear some responsibility towards maintaining the morale level of the organization, both individually for ourselves as human beings, but also as colleagues, supervisors, peers, team members, instructors, friends and subordinates.  

At times, within any organization, people aren’t always fair or sensitive, but that’s just part of life.  

Unfortunately, it seems that the more successful or content you may feel in your life the more likely people may try to cut you down. Either way you slice it, no matter what the story is, fair or unfair, you have to help you, and in doing so, ultimately you help the organization.

When Personal and Professional Lives Collide 

or years I was angry. The life I’d been dealt wasn’t the one I asked for or expected. True, I had nothing to do with how it began; I was a child, I couldn't have changed the course of events even if I’d wanted to, but as an adult I was forced to live with the outcome.  This wasn’t the plan. Didn’t anyone know that yet? What did I have to do to get somebody’s attention?

With one single event my entire life changed. Everything I thought I knew was certain was replaced by people and places I’d never known before, and didn’t particularly want to know now. No one asked me if this is what I wanted, but then when you're a kid, who does? I didn’t understand what was happening and no one seemed to want to be the one to tell me.

          Before my mother died I believe she did everything she knew how to do to try and create some sort of life for her children after she was gone. Startling naïve, and sadly alone in her endeavors, she tried to set everything up as best she could with her own limited resources, hoping that it would be enough for us to survive, but in the end things happened so quickly. In one short year she was gone, and once she passed it was all out of her hands.

          30 years later I’ve learned that in life much of what happens is out of our control. I only wish that it hadn’t taken me so long to learn it. Had my mother lived instead of dying at the age of 46, my age now, I can’t imagine she would have intended on the troubled times her children endured. I think she probably expected that people would do the right thing, and seeing the situation we were in, would rise to the occasion and pitch in, come to our rescue, and help us but few people ever did.

This doesn’t mean that people weren’t kind to us, if the “right” situation presented itself, but it takes more then simple moments of kindness to put food on the table or clothing on children’s backs.

 Same As It Ever Was 

’ spent many years as a young adult trying to unlearn what was so indelibly imprinted on my brain and in my heart as a young woman growing up in an unpredictable world without parents: that the world is an unsafe place, that people can’t be trusted, that the only person you can really trust is yourself, and that if given half a chance most people will take advantage of you, and use and abuse you, especially if you’re a child. I had a lot to be angry about.

When people told me things like, “You have to learn to love yourself before you can love other people,” I looked at them like they had two heads and no brain between them. My face may have been smiling, but my heart was saying ‘You’re nuts!’ I knew what people were capable of. I’d been there and done that and I believed these words like I believed I really could buy the Brooklyn Bridge. “You don’t know what it’s really like to be here, to be me.”

          If you’d asked me back then I couldn’t have told you what I was so angry about. I didn’t know. I didn’t even know I was angry. This was just my life as I had come to know it. It never occurred to me that it could be any other way.

 No matter how hurt I felt by something or someone I never said anything. How could I? I couldn’t risk even the smallest infraction or deviation from the norm. No chance to be rejected. I needed food. I needed shelter. I needed someone to care. Every part of me screamed, “love me!” but every gesture, nuance and outward behavior insisted that I wanted distance and detachment. I was independent and no one would ever hurt me like I’d been hurt before. Years had to pass, along with several bad relationships, and a series of wildly different careers, before I finally stopped long enough to see the impact my life had on me.

          At first I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to know. I just wanted things to be better. But I didn’t really want to change anything, or do anything myself to make it better.

I told myself that anyone who knew me should know what I wanted, simply by being around me. “I shouldn’t have to tell them” I said, but secretly I was too afraid to ask. What if they said, “No”? Every time someone stepped all over me, because he or she didn’t have a clue what I wanted, since I’d never told anyone to begin with, I was devastated but I still didn’t change anything. I didn’t know how. Life seemed to be one big mystery to me, except for the pain, that was familiar.

          In my early twenties I told a friend, “I want there to be a book, a Dell paperback, that I can buy for 99 cents at the supermarket and in this book I want it to tell me everything I should do in my life, and I would do it and it would be right.”

No big surprise but I never found that book and I kept living. I was prey in a world of predators, and like any young woman growing up unprotected by normal constraints can tell you, life was hard.    But I didn’t understand what all this meant, or how my life had changed as a consequence of these experiences until I reached graduate school.

Once More, With Feeling

raduate school for psychologists is a lot like being in therapy all of the time, 24/7/365 days a year. Students live, breathe and eat psychology and everything you feel, think and experience is examined, reexamined and then discussed in minute detail, and then just when you think you’ve discussed it enough, you look at it again.

          The goal is the development of awareness. The process isn’t the same for everyone nor does life suddenly become easier or necessarily “instantly better” because you have insight into your own behavior but it’s a step in the right direction, or so they say. 

          Blindness is bliss. If the only feelings you paid attention to were your own, and only in service to your own ego gratification, then how great is that? No responsibilities for anyone else’s feelings. No worries. No need to care about anyone else other then yourself. Cool, but unless you really are the true definition of a narcissist, life isn’t any happier. Most people want to care for someone in their lives, and in turn want to be cared for. The challenge is that a relationship is always easier until we add another person to it.

          Awareness is a double-edged sword. Choosing awareness is choosing to see; it’s choosing to be honest with your self deep in your heart of hearts; it’s choosing to operate with integrity. You are your word. As much as it means the potential for happiness, it also means that sometimes you are in the position of making the hard decision.

          You may be the only one in the room, or the relationship, who really sees what’s going on. The burden of responsibility falls to you and that’s the biggest challenge. Do you rise to the occasion, or do you keep your mouth shut, not say anything and hope that it works out?

          It’s a tough call to make. It’s especially tough in the beginning, when you are still learning. Decisions don’t become easier as we become more practiced but we spend less time in pain over the outcome. We learn to take responsibility for what we can and let the rest go.

          Clients often complain that they had more fun before they were aware of what they were doing.   

“Before I started therapy I could go out with someone, have sex and it was no big deal. Didn’t matter that she wanted a relationship with me. I was honest. I told her I wasn’t interested. If she wanted to fool around, great, if she didn’t, that was ok too, there were plenty more where she came from. She always said yes, but then after we went out a few times we’d always end up arguing. I never said I’d date only her and then when I did exactly what I said I was going to do, she’d get mad! She never believed me.  Now, I understand what I was doing, and I can’t do it anymore! This is no fun!” 

          Like my client, once he saw that his actions were hurting his girlfriend, he couldn’t not take responsibility for the pain he was inflicting. He was accountable for his actions. He had a choice to make.

Once you cross that invisible line into awareness, its harder and harder not to see how everything we do, and don’t do, has an impact in the world. 

 In my office I’ve often found that the person with the greater awareness is usually the one who identifies herself as the problem. Many times I hear:

“ I’m the only one who seems to have a problem with this. My boyfriend tells me I’m too sensitive. So what if he looks at pornography all the time, leaves it out for the kids to see and goes to strip joints every chance he can get. He’s just having fun. It doesn’t mean anything. My friends tell me to get over it, and stop having so many feelings about it. It’s no big deal, but I don’t like it. It doesn’t make me feel good, so I thought I’d come into therapy so that I can learn how not to have feelings anymore. OK?” 

           But living a happier life isn’t about getting better at not feeling, or caring, anymore. It’s about getting better and better about knowing how you really feel. No lies, no pretenses, no omissions of truth or subtleties of misinformation, and then doing something about it. Acting on your feelings. 

          After death many people respond to loss with denial. The first few years after my mother died I kept waiting for her home to come home. Of course I knew she had died and that wasn’t possible, but emotionally I was still in denial. It was as though she’d gone to the store and any minute now she’d come home and everything would be back to normal and we would be ok again. When that didn’t happen, and time began to stretch out behind me like an empty highway that no one traveled on anymore, a feeling of longing for her, or someone like her, began pervading every part of my life, everything I did and everyone I came into contact with.

Automatic Pilot 

Looking back I’m reminded of when I install a new program on my computers hard drive. After the systems program is installed a little icon pops up on the bottom of the screen to let me know that while I’m doing other kinds of work, the program I’ve installed is silently running in the background. I don’t need to select the icon for the program to work. It’s always running in the background, waiting for the right data to present itself to begin the process. I don’t even have to think about it because it is programmed into the system. It functions whether I am aware of it or not.

          Early experiences in life are a lot like this computer program. They hardwire us to respond in a certain way to life experiences, and like the computer program, they’re always running in the background. Day after day, from one minute to the next, at work and at home, the program is running but our immediate level of awareness varies. We may be reminded by specific events that occurred that are obvious to us, a birthday, a death or an anniversary, but mostly we don’t even notice the program’s running.

          Unless we delete it from the hard drive or learn how to modify the programs contents, which takes more sophisticated knowledge or technical expertise, the program merrily runs in the background, regardless of what we are doing, silently gathering information from our experiences, and waiting for that opportunity to open.

          At times within any system people aren’t always fair or sensitive, but that’s part of life. I didn’t ask for the life I had as a child, or for my mother to die, but that’s what happened. I can either spend the rest of my life mired in my own despair, depression, disappointment or anger and resentment, or move on.  I can either pick people who will continue to reinforce the belief that the world is an unsafe place and no one can be trusted, or I can move on and learn to pick differently.  

This is always my choice.          

           I may not want to hear this. I may not want to see this. I may not want to admit this, but the bottom line is: It is always my choice. It has always been my choice. It will always be my choice. I may not be able to choose the circumstances, but I can always choose my response to it.

Unfortunately, it seems that the happier and more successful you are, the more other people look at this as an opportunity to cut you down, but so be it. No matter what the story is, good or bad, fair or unfair, you have to be willing to help you. In doing so, ultimately everyone benefits.

You Create Your Own Experience 

rganizations, corporations, family systems, relationships, friendships all contain within themselves their own “life” force or energy. Given enough momentum by the people operating within the system and any situation can take on a “life of its own.”

We’ve all been the targets of that force at one time or another in our lives. At the best of times we feel embraced and supported. Warm in the arms of our “family” we are content to remain in the safety of its “love.” It feels too good to leave.

At the worst of times we feel attacked, undermined and misunderstood. Bereft with loss, when the family rejects or abandons us, we feel humiliated and betrayed.

Despite your beliefs about the system or your role in it, you have everything to do with what your life experiences are when you are there.

You are accountable for your life. Whether you are on the job or at home, at a crime scene or in the car, in uniform or plain clothes, retired or getting ready to do so, good, bad or indifferent, happy or sad, fair or unfair, no matter where you are, you own your own life. Acknowledge and accept responsibility for this. Understand your role in creating the results that are your life, both on the job and at home. You may think that relationships just happen, or that people are doing something to you, but they don’t. You have something to do with how you experience what you see and feel. Learn to choose better so you have better.

You have always been accountable. You will always be accountable. That’s how it is. You may not like it. You may want to resist it. This may not be how you would like it to be, but that’s how it is. If you don’t like your job, you are accountable. If you’re having trouble with your marriage, you are accountable. If you’re having conflicts with coworkers on the job, you are accountable. If you are depressed, angry, sad, glad, you are accountable.

Whatever circumstances we are talking about, the reality is you have something to do with how you experience it. This means, if you’re willing to accept this belief, that you can no longer “not see.” You can’t dodge the responsibility for what is your life.

This doesn’t mean just saying the words, or acting politically correct, or saying one thing and doing another. This means living your life being responsible for the outcome of your experiences, and how you contribute this experience to whatever system you are a part of.

If we’re talking about work and your relationship with your supervisor is bad, you had something to do with creating that “bad” relationship. If you choose not to see this, then every decision you make from this point on is influenced by this distortion in perception. Even if you think that there can’t possibly be a link between the chaos at work and yourself, think again.

You have something, everything and nothing to do with what is going on in your life. You may really believe that its out of your hands but the fact is, if you’re miserable at work, you have everything to do with maintaining that misery, but you have to chose to see it before you can change it. If you truly want to change, if you truly want things to be better at work with your boss, or at home in your relationship, then you need to get abundantly clear with yourself about who is accountable for what you see.

You must carefully look at what you’ve done or haven’t done to create the undesirable results. “Well, I haven’t done anything. It just happened!” Nothing just happens. Look again.

 This isn’t about attributing blame or getting better at pointing the finger at someone else. This is simply about seeing what part you have in perpetuating and stopping an undesirable or unwanted behavior or experience.

You Can Not Change What You Can Not See

or so much of what we do in life we’re on automatic pilot. Life becomes routine. Even the tasks we enjoy we lose our sense of pleasure from as they are seamlessly interwoven with the rest of our lives. In service to our needs to get the job done, we forget to feel anything while we’re doing it.

Arriving at home after a long day on the job, we have no memory of the drive or what we thought about. Having Friday night sex with our partner, we review the shopping list in our minds or tally up the bills we need to pay. Taking a report from a tearful victim, we think about tee off time at the course and whether we brought the extra pair of socks. Waking up with a knot in your stomach and a sour taste in your mouth, you get ready for work like an automaton, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, just putting the clothes on, one foot in front of the other.  

A means to an end, the day is only worth waking up to because you know at 1530, you’re one day closer to retirement.  

          What you are doing or not doing is a choice. It may not feel like a choice to you at this moment but it is. This is your life. If you project responsibility for everything that happens to you onto everyone else, “bad instructors,” “bad supervisors,” “unfair rules,” “hostile work environment,” “crazy people,” then you abdicate responsibility and control over what happens next in your life.

If morale on the job is at it lowest point in a decade and you turn away because you believe it’s not your responsibility to change things for someone else then why should it surprise you when nothing changes and the bad situation continues?

If you haven’t spent more then two minutes with your kids except for when you were yelling at them for what they haven’t done right then why should it surprise you when their grades start slipping or they act like they can’t hear you?

If you haven’t told your wife you loved her or held her close simply for the sake holding her, because she means something of value to you, since the last time you wanted sex, then why should you be surprised when she loses interest in being sexually intimate with you?

          Get real with yourself about your life and everybody in it. Be truthful about what isn’t working in your life both on the job and at home. Stop making excuses and start making results. You can do this. 

          Being honest with yourself means taking responsibility for what you see, and taking responsibility for what you see means doing something to change it. You could wait for someone else to come along to do it for you but chances are you could wait for a very long time, or you could wait until something occurs that forces some kind of change for you, but you may not be very happy with the results. It could be worse then what you started with. You could wait until someone else “gets it” and understands how unhappy or angry you are with them, but even if they get it they’re under no obligation to do anything to change your life. It’s just not their responsibility. It’s yours.

 When the retaliation started I was heart broken. For months I had agonized over the situation at work, talking to everyone under the sun in my personal life about the problems I was having on the job with a co-worker and with the work group I was part of. No matter how much his behavior bothered me, I was more afraid of what could happen if I said anything to anyone in the office then I was of tolerating the discomfort.

Despite working in a high profile highly specialized career field, the dominant culture within the office was no different then others I heard about from my clients.

On more then one occasion I’d witnessed the public humiliation and devaluing of female professional staff who dared to disagree with group consensus and make their opinion public. Speak up too many times and you risked being shunned and ostracized by your peers.

 The “boss” did nothing to stem the tide. If I said anything I would be out there on my own and from that point on anything could happen. Based on what I listened to in my office from people on the job, it usually did. I needed my job. Whereas others on the department could transfer to another section, there were few, if any places, we could go, except resignation. I wasn’t ready to resign, but I wasn’t ready to say anything yet. 

      Years of living at below the poverty level after my mother died left me with an indelible impression. I never wanted to be hungry and homeless again. As irrational as I knew this fear was it still preyed on me. What if I couldn’t find another job? “I will never be without a job again,” I would tell myself. “There’s always McDonalds. Worse case scenario I’ll flip hamburgers for a living until I find something.” But even that didn’t convince me I’d be OK.

          Of equal, if not greater concern, was my fear of retaliation by my colleagues. What would they do? Assuming they would do nothing because we were a group of highly educated professionals was unrealistic at best given what I’d been witness to, but would they really turn against me as I feared?

Talking to anyone outside of the section is breaking the cardinal rule, and keeping “the secret” is the first priority in abusive dysfunctional families. Only the abusers are allowed to make up the rules, everyone else is expected to go along with the program or risk their own destruction. Our group was no different.

          I’d spent years learning how to “pass.” Kids without parents or adult guardians grow up learning how to find their way in an increasingly hostile world, one that is always looking to take advantage of your vulnerabilities. While our culture has more systems in place now to take care of children, and protect their rights, and their bodies, child abuse still occurs with painful regularity.

In my time, there was little protection afforded by social services and most “good” adults were afraid to “get involved.” No one wanted to take responsibility for helping out because what if something went wrong? They might get blamed and then where they would be? Up a creek without a paddle so most times “good” adults just watched on the sidelines.

The “bad” people, the abusers, the molesters, and other people you most wanted to keep your children away from, were always first in line to help out whenever they could. They looked great on the outside, but once you walked through the door they opened, it slammed behind you, and hit you on the butt going in. If you were lucky you could get it back open again and get out. But if you weren’t, then that’s where you stayed until whoever was keeping you there got tired of you. Who knew how long that would be?

I was bright kid. It didn’t take me long to realize that if I planned on living through my childhood I’d need to get street smart in a heart beat, or I’d end up dead, in jail or living out my life in a minimum wage job on the island with a brood of kids of my own.

My number one survival tactic was learning how to “pass,” or fit in with whatever group I was surrounded by. Blending in with the scenery I tried not to take up too much space or bring too much attention to myself personally. Other people generally felt free to do and be and say whatever they wanted to around me, but I never really said much about myself. It was the safest bet towards survival, my own.

Humpty Dumpty Sat On A Wall… 

          My fears kept me silent, but in the end my silence nearly destroyed me. When my worst fears were realized after I spoke out, and my colleagues acted out against me in exactly the way I predicted. At first I wanted to blame them for hurting me. I wanted to blame the department for not acting on my concerns when I first reported them. I wanted to blame my boss for lacking the skills needed to create a safe work environment, free of sexual innuendo, overt hostility and discriminatory practices. I wanted to blame those who encouraged me to report for not protecting me or supporting me through the process like they promised.

But, if I am really honest with myself none of that excused me from looking at the part I played in creating the situation, and I did have something to do with what occurred. I was upset and I was angry, but I hadn’t really wanted to do anything. On the basis of who I was alone, I believed I’d already endured enough. I thought people knew me and certainly knew me well enough to know I could never fabricate anything like what happened. In addition, in my heart I wanted someone else to stand up. Wasn't it someone else’s turn to come in, and take responsibility for making the wrongs right? I'd been through enough already.  Why was it my responsibility to “bell the cat?” 

          So, after I made the initial reports I said nothing, and after the retaliation began, first in small childish ways and then building into directed hostility, slanderous statements and outright misconduct, I endured. I did my work. I smiled. I would not allow myself to act in the same ways towards others that they did towards me.

I waited for “justice” to be done, for those in positions of power to “get it,” to finally understand the importance of what I was talking about: that people who are tasked with the responsibility of providing mental health services should be the first to live their lives above reproach, and that as psychologists it was not only our moral and ethical obligation to do so as clinicians, but also as human beings who were part of the greater universe. We of all people should be willing to walk what we talked.

We should be more willing to police our own behavior and own what belonged to us than the “average Joe.” We should be first to eliminate “bad” behavior, or behavior that is intentionally misguided, cruel, devaluing and destructive, and if we engaged in inappropriate behavior even if unintentionally, then we should be committed to looking at what point we failed. We shouldn’t have to be told this, or so I thought.

“We should be the safest place in the department,” I would say to anyone who listened, “but we’re not. Why doesn’t anyone get that?”  Nothing changed.

          I kept telling myself that it would get better, but everyday it seemed to get worse. When clients sat in my office talking about their own experiences on the job, I sat there silent about my own. Certainly it wasn’t my place to talk about myself with my clients, but inside, as I listened to their pain, I felt my own throb with intensity.

At what point would I change? When would I decide that enough was enough? My health had already started deteriorating when the stress intensified to extraordinary levels. Would I wait until a life-threatening crisis occurred and that would signal, “Enough”?

The Point of Reckoning 

          Had I valued myself, and my own self worth for more then just as a vehicle for helping others with their pain and unhappiness, then the very second the red flag was on the horizon, at the first sighting of inappropriate behavior or misconduct of any kind it was my responsibility to say something, or do something, to set things right, even if it meant walking out of there.

Had I taken responsibility and held myself accountable for my own life, I would never have found myself in a situation that nearly destroyed everything about myself that I valued. But from the very first moment I stepped into the office, while sitting in the front room waiting for my first interview to the actual interview itself, I knew something was wrong. The intuitive voices were blasting inside my head but I didn’t want to hear what they were saying because to hear them meant change.

I didn’t want to change. I wanted a job. I wanted to come back to California. I wanted to be near things that I remembered and people who were familiar to me. This was my vehicle for returning, for answering my dreams, and wasn’t it my turn to dream? To believe that it was my turn at the brass ring?

If I chose to see what was really in front of me, that there was something deeply wrong and dysfunctional within the system I would become a part of, then I would have had to say no to my dream of the future. So, I chose not to see, and like that computer program silently running in the background, I knew that accepting this job carried with it the potential for placing myself in harms way. But, I didn’t want to see this.

Whatever I was feeling and seeing on that first day was silently running in the background, collecting data and waiting for the opportunity to open and take over. In that moment I said to the universe, “Do with me what you will. My life is yours for the asking,” and I set a ball into motion that would take years before it stopped rolling.

Despite all my years of education and training, all my experiences as an independent successful professional, all the challenges I endured and overcame in childhood, there are some moments in time that happen that could be summed up into three words, “She forgot everything.”  I may be the person that people paid money to talk to, who was supposed to know things, an “expert”, but in some situations I am a vulnerable human being in an enormous universe just trying to find my way home.

 The lessons I learned in childhood were some of the most powerful lessons I had learned in my life. Although I knew I would never go hungry again, or be forced to do something I would later feel ashamed of, because I needed to survive, somewhere deep in my heart there remained a memory that I wasn’t worth fighting for. I was embarrassed, and ashamed, that someone of my age, training, and experience was in a situation that I found to be profoundly humiliating. What would my clients and my colleagues outside of the department think if they knew? By judging myself, and then by not accepting accountability for my part in what was happening, I allowed myself to, once again, become prey in a world of predators.  

          Get real with yourself about your life and everybody in it. Be truthful about what isn’t working in your life, both at home and on the job. Stop making excuses and start making results. Being honest with yourself means taking responsibility for what you see, and taking responsibility for what you see means doing something to change it.

You could wait for someone else to come along to do it for you but chances are you could wait a very long time. If you’re unwilling to acknowledge a thought, circumstance, problem, condition, feeling or behavior, if you won’t take ownership of your role in the situation then you cannot and will not change it.

If you refuse to acknowledge your own self destructive tendencies, on the job or off, then not only will they continue they will actually gain power and momentum, become more deeply entrenched in the habitual patterns of your life, more deeply engrained in the operating systems of your department, and grow more and more resistant to change.             

One of my colleagues on the job confided,  

“Until you said something I’d stop noticing how bad it really was. I used to eat my lunch in my car because it was so bad in the office. I couldn’t be there unless I absolutely had to, but I just got used to it. Nothing ever seemed to change, so I just stopped trying.”  

Walking a tightrope between what you can endure on the job in exchange for what you can get out of the job, (special off duty jobs, “self-respect” off the job, good pay, more attention from women) is a precarious venture. You may be able to keep the job, but lose yourself in the process. 

Denial is a functional defense, and it is also the number one obstacle to change. You cannot change what you cannot, or will not, see. No matter how bad it is it’s never too late to do something. But be honest about what needs to be done.

There are many meaningful aspects of who you are and what you create in your life. You may have chosen to accommodate or incorporate these aspects and characteristics into your life. If you ignore or deny the fact that these characteristics in you have influenced how you interact with others, then you are denying an important aspect of your life.

hen it came to my clients I was always willing to go down to the mat for them. Fighting for the rights of someone else and their livelihood was a battle I would take on without a moment’s hesitation.

Defending a theoretical concept, challenging an entrenched systemic organizational belief, protesting an endangered species or way of life, were the bread and butter of my job, and my life, and I relished the opportunities to prove my mettle. Advocating for a downtrodden group or protecting the rights of other women and children, family members, animals were right up my alley and I advocated tirelessly without any hesitation or felt anxiety.

But, when it came to me and the moment I was attacked personally and on a very primitive level, behavior that was sexually motivated and driven by a male colleague, I folded.

Had there been just one person within my own department who demonstrated the kind of fearless support I needed, who wasn’t also motivated by protecting their own needs in a dangerous environment, maybe the path I would have traveled on would have been less painful, less circuitous then the one I took. But only parents, if you’re lucky, and people like Mother Teresa and Gandhi, are that selfless, so to expect that from anyone was unrealistic.

It was always my responsibility to take care of me, and so in denying my own feelings about what I saw, and the people in my life, I became part of the problem.   

In my silence I became complicit to the persistent distortions of the truth that existed within my section. The more I chose to endure, the more power I gave away. Articulating their own anger, frustration and fears, my clients served as a daily reminder of my shame. When it came to my own needs I was a person and not a professional. My silence gave them power. 

If you do not acknowledge the presence of the distorting characteristic or event, whatever that is, and you do not acknowledge that you really own it or have a part in it, then you cannot or will not ever escape that experience.  

You might change jobs, or change relationships, but you will not change the eventuality of that experience.

Owning your own experience doesn’t mean projecting blame, or becoming a professional victim, “Everything’s my fault because I’m not smart enough.” You’re just letting yourself off the hook if you buy into that, and if change is what you want then you need to stay on that hook. The discomfort you are feeling is a red flag you need to see.

Acknowledge for real that you can make choices for change. Effecting meaningful and lasting change in your life is difficult enough even under the best of circumstances. Don’t make it worse by making assumptions or by being naïve about what’s really happening around you. Don’t be fooled by your own self-talk, anymore then you would allow yourself to be fooled by a suspect, or one of your kids.

If you’re going to make a difference in your life, whether on the job or at home, then you have to be honest with yourself. Time to start opening your eyes.

I told myself that those tasked with the responsibility of helping me were doing so because they were motivated by their own integrity and the need to do what is right. Even when their behavior at times seemed suspect, and their motivations seemed more driven by political aspirations then their concern for me, I convinced myself I was wrong. I believed that in the end, everyone, including the department, would do the “right thing.” It wasn’t until the final straw that broke the camels back, that I opened my eyes and realized that individuals may care about me, but the organization only “cared” about the organization. I was expendable. It wasn’t personal.

 As long as the department took enough steps to demonstrate “something” was done in response to the problem, then in the eyes of all those who looked that was enough. If that wasn’t enough for me, then I’d better open my eyes and start being more honest with myself about what I wanted, and on what I was willing to do to get it. 

You get back what you put into it.  

Sometimes it seems that the one activity people have more time for then any other activity is talking about other people, downing a person, or a place, or a situation. “Negative Thoughts-R-Us,” predominates the work environment as though it’s the only language some people know. To say something nice about someone else would kill them.

The work or home environment only has to remain a negative one if you agree to keep it that way, either by your denial of its existence, your resistance to doing something about it, or your own active participation in creating and perpetuating it.

But if you what you want is to be treated well and with respect, fairly and with integrity then start by treating others with respect, fairly and with integrity. “Treat others as you would wish to be treated” isn’t just an old saying. Live what you believe. If you believe in good things happening to good people, that generating positive energy is a worthwhile expression of energy and that it’s important to treat all people with a measure of kindness and respect, then live your life that way no matter where you are. Not just at home and not in the field or in the division.

You're guilty until proven innocent. Even a colleague who stands accused in a disciplinary action or a suspect you’ve just arrested deserves to be treated with kindness, respect and integrity. Every opportunity in life is a chance to make a choice, to practice kindness in every interaction no matter where you are or who you are with. 

People only do what works. Regardless of what somebody may tell you, or what you may be telling yourself, if someone is knowingly engaged in negative and destructive behavior, and he or she does it anyway, they are getting something out of it. In some way it works for them.

I ask clients all the time, “What are you getting out of staying in that destructive relationship? You’re miserable. He’s abusive to you. What do you get out it?” 9 out of 10 times they tell me, “Nothing.” Wrong.

If you’re staying you’re getting something from the process. It’s not a good thing, or a life affirming life-enhancing thing, but you are getting something.

When we’re talking about an abusive relationship, it might be that you believe in your heart this is the only kind of relationship you can have, or that you deserve. If people really knew you then they would know how unlovable you really are and in the end they would leave you anyway. So, you stay because you don’t believe it could be any other way. You’ll never be treated any better or differently.

People also stay hooked into a negative experience if they’re getting some kind of payoff, or if they are expecting some kind of payoff, in the end. Until they’re willing to risk giving that something up, I mean really give it up, they will resist change. In fact, they will hold onto it for dear life even if the effects are killing them, ruining their relationship, wreaking havoc on their health or destroying their credibility on the job. They’re not letting go.

In the workplace this translates into perceived power. “What power,” you may ask. “We’re all in the same boat here.” Well, it may be power over who counts the paperclips but its perceived as power nonetheless, and some people will fight tooth and nail to keep it or have some part in deciding who has a right to count the paperclips.

Working in an environment that consisted of “all chiefs and no Indians,” as I did, power and who had it was an enormous concern and focus of energy for those I worked with. Although those on the outside would expect an office of mental health professionals to be at a minimum warm, supportive, respectful and open, our office rarely met those expectations. Superficially we gave the appearance of doing the right thing, we were bright enough not to risk poisoning the cow we got the milk from, but behind the scenes the battle roared. Lines were drawn around gender, money, intellectual prowess, age, sexual attractiveness, and almost any situation that provided someone an opportunity to take a step up on the back of someone else.

In Southern California, the land of the beautiful, there were many opportunities and this particular type of social currency counted for a lot. 

Sometimes what people are getting from the experience is not always obvious to you, or me, or even the person who is doing the battling. He or she may persist in being negative at work, towards anyone who will listen, because deep in their heart and minds is a belief that they don’t deserve any better. So, even if they complain about the job, they won’t do anything to change it. It may not make sense to you, but it doesn’t have to make sense to you to change it.

Identify the payoffs that are driving the behavior and you have a chance at changing the behavior. If you want it all, then you have to be willing to risk it all, and that means giving up negative concepts about yourself and others.

I needed to acknowledge that pursuing the course I was on would ultimately lead to my own destruction. It had already come at great cost to me. If I remained it could be my life. If I wanted to get the life I deserved then I had to be willing to risk everything.

I had to acknowledge that regardless of what I wanted for my work group, or for the people I treated or did consultations with, as long as nothing else changed in my work environment, as long as the key players remained the same and the department remained entrenched in their own familiar organizational practices, undisputed, my life in the department would not change. Things would never be made right. It would be better for those who came after me, but it would never be for me in the way that was important to me.

No one could put the genie back in the bottle again. I may have wanted to move on, but others were not about to let me. They wanted me to pay.

Become one of the people who get it. The world is filled with people who don’t get it. This seems like such a simple fundamental concept that its funny to say it but having been there and done that, it’s a critically important one and needs to be identified.

Look around you. In almost every situation there are people who get it, and people who don’t get it, and it is really easy to tell them apart. You know it. You see it every day. There are the people who work hard every day and have a good time doing it, no matter what they do or where they are, and they’re not afraid to show it. Then, there are the people who don’t get it. Who spend more time then not, beating their head against the walls a few hundred times, complaining about everyone, how unfair life is and how they can never seem to get a break.

Those who get it seem to go with the flow. They’re not arrogant, or pretentious, or obnoxiously self centered. They just don’t spend a whole lot of time in counterproductive behavior. If it doesn’t work, they move on and let it go. They’re successful at home and at work because they’ve acquired the knowledge they need to create the results they want.  

Knowing how to be an effective manager of others is helpful, it is exponentially more important to be an effective manager of your self.  

No matter where you are or what the circumstances are where you encounter people, the one common denominator is you. You are the one person you spend the most time with. You are only person you know with absolute certainty you will spend the rest of your life with. More then anyone else on the job, at home, or at the Laundromat, the one person you most need the power to influence and control is you.

 The person whose negative characteristics and behavior patterns you most need to manage or eliminate, and whose positive life affirming life supporting behavior you most need to maximize is you. Whether the characteristic is anger, depression, sadness, aggression, apathy, insecurity, despair, or any other of a number of possible characteristics, you are the one who will have to minimize or eliminate it. Doing so requires time, knowledge and patience. It takes knowledge about how you developed that negative characteristic, why you persist in having it, and more importantly how to replace it with more positive constructive characteristics.

So as much as knowledge and information are power, the lack of knowledge or the reliance on distorted information is misleading, destructive and harmful. Decide now that you will gather knowledge about how and why you and those you encounter in life do what you, and they, do. Let this inform you as to what becomes the bedrock of the knowledge you will learn to draw from. Listen to the voices within you. They are trying to be heard.

There is Power in Forgiveness 

Many times on the job I’ve heard that people have long memories. “It may have been 10 years ago that I made that mistake, but around here people act like it was yesterday.”

Open your eyes to what anger and resentment are doing to you. Take your power back from those who have hurt you.

Of all the emotions in our vast range of human experiences, anger, hate and resentment are amongst the most powerful and the most destructive. They come alive within you by the actions of those who you perceive to have hurt you or those you love.

You may think that you are justified in how you feel or what you do. You may truly believe that your anger or rage is what you want and need to handle a situation because someone has hurt you deeply enough to create these emotions. You may believe that they deserve it and are made to suffer by your hatred of them. You may sometimes treat your anger and hatred as though it has its’ own life force, and is something outside of yourself that you have no control over. But to do so, to carry this hatred around with you, and to feel this hatred within you is to pay an unbelievable high price, for the everyday reality of these feelings change the very core of who you are. They change your heart, they change your mind and if you have a spiritual belief, they change your soul.  

These feelings can become so pervasive that they can crowd out every other kind of feeling that exists for you, consuming you with behavior that is vicious, manipulative, aggressive, antagonistic, bitter, internally and externally, at home and at work.

Think about it. When you encounter someone like that at work who’s in the grip of these emotions, it rolls off them in giant waves of emotion. You can feel the negative energy that emanates from them and it takes little imagination to guess what must be going on inside. Hatred, anger, and resentment eat away at the very fabric of ones heart and soul.

Are you really going to be the caretaker of that hatred, anger and resentment for the rest of your life? Do you really believe that you can keep these feelings only at work, that they don’t permeate and become a part of every part of your existence no matter where you are?

Don’t do it another day. You have the power to forgive these people—not as a gift to them, but as a gift to yourself. You are worth whatever it takes to rise above the hurt, the pain, and the grief. But remember you create your own experience. You have the resolve to create what you want, and rid yourself of what you don’t want. If that person benefits from your forgiveness, then so be it. The person you are out to save is you. The one who’s being held an emotional hostage is you.

The power of forgiveness is the power to set yourself free from the bonds of anger, hatred, and resentment. Seize the moment and rise above. You are worth it, and everyone you know and love deserves it.