Superior, Subordinate, Equal Pt 2: DOING it!

Remember in the last entry I noted that you needed to learn how an Equal/Equal transaction feels? “You start by finding out what an Equal/Equal transaction feels like. This is a situation in which two people treat each other as equals, with respect for the other person’s position and feelings, even if they don’t agree. If there is an issue under discussion, some persuasion may be encountered, but it will be put forth respectfully as an appeal to reason and will not include any implications that you are somehow defective if you persist in your disagreement. The transaction will close as the result of a compromise or an agreement by both parties to agree to disagree. Respect by and for both people involved will be the hallmark of the transaction. When you walk away from a transaction like this, even if you didn’t get all that you wanted out of it (compromise involves giving up something of what you want in order to get some of what you want), you do not walk away feeling beaten down or disrespected, nor do you walk away angry. If you truly had an Equal/Equal transaction, you feel respected by the other party—and respect for the other party—even if you didn’t get what you wanted…Suppose you walk away from the transaction feeling angry and taken advantage of? Or beaten down and crying? Or guilty? Or victorious, like you got one over on the other guy? Then you did not participate as an Equal. If you felt victorious—or angry that you didn’t get what you wanted—then you participated as a Superior. If you felt defensive or guilty, you participated as a Subordinate.” How you feel, both during the transaction and after, is a key to learning how to tell when a transaction is diverging from an Equal/Equal path.

One of our barriers to this knowledge is our own hypervigilance: we hear or see challenges that aren’t really there…and then we react to them as if they really were. Sometimes we are even proud of ourselves for putting that nosy neighbour or snotty clerk “in their places,” but when that happens, you aren’t transacting as an Equal, you are transacting as a Superior. Before we can hold the feet of others to the fire, we first have to get a handle on our own tendencies to conduct transactions from a Superior or Subordinate place.

I am not going to kid you—this can be hard. What you will be doing is trying to break a very bad habit that has been ingrained in you since childhood. Not only that, but you will be trying to do this while others are trying to sabotage you…and while most of that sabotage will not be intentional, some of it very well may be—there are people out there who will feel very threatened if they can’t push your buttons any more and they will do what they can to keep those buttons active! When you succeed (not “if,” when) you will be in a position where you choose to act as a Superior or Subordinate, not because you automatically default to it when faced with someone else taking one or the other. (Yes, there are times when choosing a Superior or Subordinate position is appropriate or wise…what matters is that it is a choice, not a reaction.) When you succeed, you will have taken back your power.

What you will be doing is eliminating a longstanding habit, and you will be doing it against opposition. Mother Nature abhors a vacuum, which is why habits can be so hard to break so, instead of breaking the habit, you will substitute a new, healthier habit for the old, unhealthy one. The first step in doing this is awareness. You can’t stop a habituated behaviour unless you can recognize when you are doing it—after the fact is too late. Catching yourself in the middle is good—catching yourself before you begin is even better: both can be tough. When I quit smoking I had to create new behaviours to help me catch myself. Instead of putting my cigarettes and lighter close to me for convenience, I would purposely put the cigarettes in one room and the lighter in another and me in a third. By forcing myself to get up and walk from room to room to get and light a cigarette, I forced myself to be aware of what I was doing…which gave me the option to stop before I unconsciously grabbed a cig and lit it.

In the beginning, I would only realize I was smoking about half way through the cigarette…at that point I could make a decision: finish the smoke or put it out. I would put it out, but that wasn’t helping me to awareness, breaking the automatic, unconscious act of getting a cigarette and lighting it. So I moved them to another room, making me have to actually get up and make an effort to get them and a further effort to light one up. This broke the automatic part of the habit—it made me aware of what I was doing and that awareness gave me choice: light one up or put them down. I have now been a non-smoker for more than 25 years…

Breaking the REactive habit works much the same way: first you must become aware and that, in itself, can be tricky. You see, I once had a very strong REactive habit and not only was I aware of it, I was proud of it! It was perhaps my worst flea. I had the first step down pat, but that second step—acknowledging it was an unhealthy behaviour—was a tough one because I was getting something out of it. You see, we learn a lot of things from our NMs, some of it stuff we don’t realize. What I had absorbed from my NM was that taking responsibility (“blame”) was foolish if you could find a way to make it someone else’s fault. Like NM, I had a volatile temper and I could rationalize it, excuse it, by making it someone else’s fault. I was merely reacting to something someone else did or said, therefore I wasn’t responsible. Without that provocation, I was the nicest person you would want to know, but don’t piss me off (and back then, it didn’t take much to piss me off)! This REactive behaviour wasn’t limited to my temper, either. It pervaded all parts of my life (I told you it was a big flea!)…I literally lived my life in reaction to others.

Some people may get “helplessness” out of their REactive response: NM snarls and you immediately react by becoming subordinate and helpless…you can’t help yourself, you are afraid, you need rescuing, poor you! It becomes OK to be helpless in all facets of your life because the REactive habit with NM bleeds over into the workplace, into relationships with coworkers, lovers, even kids…it is how you become a doormat. You—and only you—can change that by stepping out of REactive behaviour into PROactive behaviour and you do that by taking back your power—by changing how you respond to them.

It took therapy to fix me. When I changed therapists (mine was going overseas), I chose an older woman who was experienced in dealing with abuse survivors, particularly emotional abuse. In our first session she evoked a startling reaction out of me: she said in our work together, I would learn to become strong…and I recoiled in a panic! I did not want to be strong! My mother was strong and I didn’t want to be anything like her! She was so strong she crushed people beneath her heel and I would never, ever want to be like that!

It took some work and it took some time, but eventually I came to realize that not only was my mother not “strong,” she was a bully, but that I was choosing my life in reaction to her…a kind of rebellion, as it were…and in doing so, she was still controlling my life! This was a pivotal discovery: no matter how independent you think you are, if you live your life in reaction to others, you are not in control of your life, they are.

So, the first step is one of awareness, and the second is one of internalizing that living in a reactionary state is not healthy and you must therefore want to change that. What comes next?

Monitoring yourself. Try to have Equal/Equal transactions with people—sales clerks, co-workers, your neighbour. Monitor your emotional response to what they are saying: did you feel defensive or guilty or like you wanted to fix or help the person? Analyze that feeling: did the person actually try to persuade (or even order) you to do something or did you perceive some well-meant advice or suggestion as a command? Did the person really seem to be trying to get you to volunteer to dog sit or mow her lawn or pull her weeds, or did you perceive some friendly neighbour revelations as a manipulative bid to get you to do it for her?

You see, we are hypersensitized to manipulation and may see it were it does not exist. To protect ourselves, many of us have learned to perceive innocuous communication from others as having a manipulative subtext and while this may well be very true of our NMs, it is not true of everybody. And while you have the right to suspect subtext and refuse to fall for it, you do not have the right to be rude or challenging about your refusal. How about an example?

Equal/Equal transaction:
Mrs. Elderly Neighbour: Hello, dear, I haven’t seen you around for a while.
Donna: Hello, Mrs. Neighbour! How have you been?
Mrs. EN: oh, not so good, my dear. Getting old has its price…my poor garden is going to ruin because I can’t pull up those tough weeds any more and the big garden shears…well my shoulders just won’t take it. And then there is Mr. Kitty—I have to go to my sister’s next month and she is allergic to cats and I have no one to care for Mr. Kitty now that my daughter has moved to Timbuktu…
Donna: I’m sorry to hear that. You know, I think my vet has a boarding service where you could leave Mr. Kitty—and I am sure I have seen cards for pet sitters there. Would you like his number? Have you thought about Mr. Next Door’s son? He might enjoy earning a little money by pulling those weeds for you…he mowed my lawn last weekend and did a good job, considering he’s only 12…

Equal/Superior transaction:
Mrs. Elderly Neighbour: Hello, dear, I haven’t seen you around for a while.
Donna: Hello, Mrs. Neighbour! How have you been?
Mrs. EN: oh, not so good, my dear. Getting old has its price…my poor garden is going to ruin because I can’t pull up those tough weeds any more and the big garden shears…well my shoulders just won’t take it. And then there is Mr. Kitty—I have to go to my sister’s next month and she is allergic to cats and I have no one to care for Mr. Kitty now that my daughter has moved to Timbuktu…
Donna: Well, I certainly hope you aren’t hinting that I take that hairy beast into my house and get hair all over everything. And if you can’t keep your yard up, you should be hiring a garden service. Letting your garden go to wrack and ruin just lowers the property values of the neighbourhood. Your garden is not only a mess, but your house needs a good paint job too. You should be ashamed, in an economy like this, lowering the value of everybody’s house on the street because you are too lazy or too cheap to hire it done!

Equal/Subordinate transaction:
Mrs. Elderly Neighbour: Hello, dear, I haven’t seen you around for a while.
Donna: Hello, Mrs. Neighbour! How have you been?
Mrs. EN: oh, not so good, my dear. Getting old has its price…my poor garden is going to ruin because I can’t pull up those tough weeds any more and the big garden shears…well my shoulders just won’t take it. And then there is Mr. Kitty—I have to go to my sister’s next month and she is allergic to cats and I have no one to care for Mr. Kitty now that my daughter has moved to Timbuktu…
Donna: I’m so sorry to hear that. Maybe I could keep Mr. Kitty for you? I’m allergic to cats, too, but I can get some allergy meds from my doctor. I can make some time Saturday and take care of those weeds for you…I think I have a little time between my lunch date and my dental appointment…or I could just cancel the lunch date…no, I’ll cancel the dentist because I’ll be useless after I see him…

In the last two transactions, Donna perceives that Mrs. Elderly Neighbour is trying to manipulate her into providing free pet-sitting and free gardening services when, in fact, Mrs. EN is innocuously answering Donna’s question. In the Equal/Superior transaction, Donna takes umbrage at the perceived demand and takes a Superior position, chastising Mrs. EN for her presumptuousness and then throwing in some criticism for good measure. In the Equal/Subordinate transaction, Donna immediately shifts from Equal to Subordinate as soon as she perceives a demand in Mrs. EN’s innocuous response to her question.

You do this—so do I. We read things into what others say to us. Sometimes we are right, sometimes we are wrong, but if we are operative REactively, we are going to be wrong more often that right because we will be reacting to our NMs, seeing them in the innocuous communications of others, and our reaction will be all out of proportion to the situation. This is why you need to monitor your responses to what people say and do around you and try to figure out if you are hearing them—or if the NM in your head has over-ridden what they were really communicating to you.

This can be tough but there is a pretty simple way to handle it—assume that everybody is addressing you in an Equal/Equal way and respond that way. You will soon find out by their reaction to you, if their part of the transaction is Equal or not! If the person takes a Superior position and you reply from an Equal position, neither caving in as a Subordinate nor barking back as a Superior, she’s not going to like your response because she’s not going to be prepared for it. She will be prepared to order your Subordinate self around or the fight your Superior self until she can subordinate you, but she is not going to be prepared for you to take neither position. She can’t win if you do, so she’s not going to like that.

Years ago I worked as the secretary to three Directors of Engineering. Between them, they had a staff of about 70 people. I provided full support to the directors, extremely limited support to their subordinate managers, and none at all to the 60+ engineers. Shortly after I took the position, one of the engineers came up to my desk and dropped a thick stack of papers on my desk, perhaps 30 to 40 pages.

“I need 20 copies of this, collated and stapled, by noon for a meeting,” he said and started to walk away.

“Wait a minute,” I called after him. “I don’t know who you are.”

He came back to my desk and introduced himself as I picked up his stack of papers.

“The copy room is that way,” I said, pointing down the hall with my right hand while I handed the papers back to him with my left. “If you have difficulty with the machines, please let me know and I’ll give you the number for maintenance.”

He looked at me, a bit nonplussed, then annoyed. “Aren’t you the Engineering secretary?” he asked, his voice sharp and stern.

I shook my head. “No,” I said, “I am Mike’s, Mark’s, and Scott’s secretary.” Then I smiled. He thought about that for a few seconds and then took his papers and headed down to the copy room.

Now, I could have lectured him from a Superior position, telling him that I was an executive assistant, thank you very much, or that I couldn’t possibly serve the needs of all of those engineers because I was only one person; I could have accused him of trying to take advantage of my newness in the office to slag off some unpleasant work on me; I could have chewed him up and spit him out, from a Superior position. Or—I could have taken the low-esteem Subordinate position, reasoning that he outranked me because he was an engineer and I was just a lowly secretary, and scurried off to the copy room to do work that he should have been doing for himself. But I took an Equal position and because he had no real response to my calmly stated, information-filled response (No, I am Mike’s, Mark’s, and Scott’s secretary), he not only went to do the work himself, he did not try to treat me as a subordinate again. Not everybody is going to come around so easily, especially people who are used to treating you like a servant or who are accustomed to you rescuing them all of the time. They will continue to use Subordinate or Superior communication in an effort to force you back into the role they are most comfortable with. So you have to be vigilant because with some people, you will fight this battle every single time you talk with them.

The bottom line here is, it doesn’t matter what position another person takes in the transaction, all that matters is the one you take. If you take the Equal position in every transaction, remind yourself throughout the transaction to stay in the Equal position, and refuse to allow yourself to be guilted or bullied back into the Superior or Subordinate position for eight weeks, you will find the Equal position pretty much habituated. Oh, there will be people who continue to disrespect you, who will regularly challenge you and try to push you back into old habits, there will even be a few who never, ever adapt to your new position and who will forever make the effort to control the position you take—remember, you cannot change anyone but yourself—so you’ll have to be a bit more vigilant when dealing with them, but you will have taken back your power and will no longer living your life in reaction to the positions of others.

Welcome to your own life!

Next: You don't have to earn anybody's respect!