All about Lina Lifestyle

I was reading through “The Karpman Drama Triangle” on a recent LinkedIn Top Voice post and realized how it shed light my usual workplace drama making it less stressful to deal with inevitable conflicts in the workplace.

“This is ridiculous!”, an administrative staff hijacked a staff meeting and decided to deal a blow to my boss I sat shell shocked at the karpman drama triangle playing out before my very eyes.

“Oh no!” I gasped as everyone could not believe her audacity and responded with a shocked silence in the meeting meant to discuss the main business agenda. The whole room fell eerily silent as they could not believe how one could take the role of the “victim” so far.

The administrator started declaring that she is victimized by all these “professional tone” that she needed to use. Seeing herself as fundamentally powerless, she pitted herself against the “professionals” and showed us how a really unprofessional tone looked like as she ranted on about how “poor me” she is.

Everyone felt fundamentally helpless and loserish when in the presence of the boss she had the audacity to speak in such a manner. We could not do anything but feel loserish and wish we had the superpower to understand how to prevent the drama called workplace conflict which may be inevitably ubiquitous.

Here are the roles introduced by the Karpman Drama Triangle

The Bully/Persecutor: The bully is someone who is highly critical and quick to find fault with their colleagues, all while also exerting dominance and control over the situation.

The Victim: The victim sees themselves as fundamentally powerless and hopeless. They are likely to complain about their situation and adopt a ‘poor me’ mindset. They may see themselves as being bullied, and seek help from the rescuer.

The Rescuer: The rescuer over-functions and enables the victim by stepping in to ‘save’ the victim regularly. They appear self-sacrificing and over-responsible, but they do not resolve the problem in the long term.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bully-victim-rescuer-drama-triangle-juliana-chan-phd/?trackingId=TRcigvrOSjqRW5KVx%2BLnAg%3D%3D

Being an introvert, I find that I am more natural with books and the library. I was very self-conscious as a junior college student and kept to myself. I could spend hours at the school library as I love books on psychology and philosophy and did not dare to venture into public speaking. I was glad that my natural major was in Philosophy as I could spend hours at the university’s library on my research on writing. I chose the major because there was no group work for most of the modules.

Ironically, I took on jobs in social service and teaching which requires standing in front of groups of people or talking to people. The nature of such jobs require me to make a lot of pitching to people. I have to talk and talk and talk.

In my current job, I had to work more with human beings than books and computers. In fact, I could only retreat to story books and text books in their earlier part of the day. From the afternoon timing, I had to counsel, teach, advise and speak to people. It was such an abrupt change from my youth days.

Indeed, it was such a miracle that I am no longer stuttering like a Moses character when it comes to addressing potential problems faced at work. Speaking convincingly and intelligently does not come easy. It can take a decade to be a fish in water and not out of water when it comes to speaking.

During the heights of the pandemic, I was wondering what kind of governmental support there is in the tough employment market. I attended one of Workforce Singapore’ career counselling class. It was a psychologically enriching experience as there were career counsellors out there who were interested to give their opinion on using social media to find the hidden job market. The hidden job market is a gem because that is where there are many unadvertised jobs out there. That was when I was introduced to LinkedIn as a possible avenue to make new connections which can unlock the potential of work. I started exploring LinkedIn by setting up an account at the last quarter of 2020.

It was a novel experience for me as the buzzword was VUCA. Volatile period where there was a lot of uncertainty. I was not courageous enough to write anything on LinkedIn yet. I had no inspiration back then. I started reading the posts by many successful LinkedIn top voice as they have given their opinion on everything from gender to science. Gradually, I managed to find friends on the platform that is willing to make small talk and then grow the conversation to deeper ones. That was when I decided to blog about my all my experiences to a wider network of audience. My growth to more than 3000 followers is organic as I felt that people started affirming my interest in writing. I grew more courageous and wrote more postings without fear of judgment. In the midst of writing, I also kept this wordpress blog to keep track of all the postings that I had made. Glad to have enriched my life after life has changed in its trajectory and I am now kept extremely busy with full time job commitment. Indeed, I have progressed from my lost and confused VUCA days.

It is a Saturday and it is time to unwind and relax. This is the season where I didn’t expect the cold and rainy weather to continue for a prolonged period. It is a season where there is a cold spell in Singapore when winds get chilly and there was a grey fog over the city area. It does get dull and a little depressing. Ironically, things in my career had been the opposite of this prolonged season of cold. Instead, it is one filled with adventures due to the risk I have to take. Life is now colourful where things can be warm and bright.

The cold weather mirrors the season when I was quite lost and confused over what I wanted to do in terms of work. Around the same period last year, I felt that there was a fog over my life where I could not see quite clearly ahead due to this prolonged rainy season. I remembered that there were cold seasons where I went through life with no guarantee of a meaningful stint. In the waiting period, the silence felt like long chills.

Things got better when I tried venturing into Virtual Events and Production. After that period of study, I moved into the current position where life feels like a constant battle of adventures and life feels more meaningful. The lesson learnt is not to take good weather for granted when things could possibly get worse. I do yearn for the weather to not be so cold and hope that the chilly weather will clear up.

It is the season of life where I felt the holiday spirit is going to be over and reality kicks in. When reality kicks in, I can often be in a firefighting mode when things take an unexpected twist despite careful planning. Well, I do think that emotional wellness is really of importance. Often times, I do think that my personality is one where I would get so caught up in meeting the needs of people that I forget to take time off to think about the highly stressful build up of emotions in my work life. On a Sunday, I do think I could recollect and calm down by scrolling through news feed on how to prioritize mental wellness. It is not easy to say that I am not a superhero who can work miracles.

I do find that it is easier that I get a good boss to confide in with my greatest fears and struggles about firefighting at work and how to get out of this vicious cycle. And remaining calm and steadfast and professional is something I get used to after a decade of working. Still, there is a part of me that I find that I am human being and there is a limit to what I can do. This limit or personal weakness is something I am trying very hard to embrace. So, chilling out and lounging around writing about wanting more rest is actually something I realized I have been doing.

Wish all have a good boss to talk to when things get tough! True enough, that is a blessing enough as I shared previously that I did not have such a privilege in my previous work life. And it is a wondrous feeling to know that I have gained something wonderful even through all the trials and difficulties.

Being a helping profession, I often time get caught up in meeting the emotional needs of students and parents that I have no time to prioritize self-care. I remembered that I used to go the self-employed route during the pandemic and had ample time for resting. Ample time for the occasional trekking through the lush Singapore nature reserves. Sighting natural animals and flowers were the delight of the day. It was a blessing to be able to tap on some interim welfare resources the government policy had during the heights of the pandemic.

However, with the hum of life returning to what it was before pandemic level where I had to work with groups of students and their parents. Life is no longer filled with ample rest and stay at home mandates to get sufficient self-care. Somehow, I made a decision to go full time as I knew that there is no more governmental policy to support the unemployed or self-employed as it used to be.

The onus falls on me now to decide where self-care comes in as I prioritize my own mental health over my work. It is not easy to hang in there when I actually recovered from a flu after taking that Sabbatical rest on a Sunday. I realized that I could climb out of bed after much sleep and had no valid reason to pay the doctor a visit. Well, before fatigue sets in, I was glad that when I decided to go full time teaching, I had taken two full days of leave next week to daydream and continue my wandering days of being alone in silence and solitude.

I developed a runny nose yesterday morning and all that is on my mind is to tell my boss to make advanced planning for the likelihood that I will be absent. I anticipated that working full time, my body will eventually need a good rest after a rainy season. My nose started showing signs that it is a broken faucet on Friday needing paracetamols to fix it first.

Throughout the ordeal, all I want is to climb under the blanket and wrap myself like a teddy bear. My mind wandered all the time as I felt really fatigued if I should tell the boss that I am reporting sick for work on Monday. Feelings like wrapping myself up like a teddy bear and staying home feels like the right thing to do as I should not feel bad about falling sick and taking medical leave if need be.

I struggled with my mind wandering if my class would go haywire if I am absent for some time. And I stopped this wandering mind its tracks and just faced up to the inevitable need to disappear from work and sleep.

My message to the boss goes like this, “As I am having a flu now, may trouble you to find a relief on Monday if I am still unwell. I might need to see a doctor tomorrow. If (conditional) I am well on Monday, I will still go to work. Thank you for making any arrangements for relief in advanced.”