I was at the bar in a restaurant the other day, waiting to be brought to the table, when a local resident started a conversation. He asked what I was doing for a living. I explained that I was a coach and a holistic therapist, and he seemed quite intrigued (“nonconformist” would describe it better). And then he asked, “But what do you reallywant to do with your life?” To which I replied, “I am already doing what I want in life, I thought I just explained it. It is a privilege for me to be able to help people in their development, to do what they can to reach their potential.” And then a man at the back table said, in a humorous tone, “John, she can help you reach your potential! Imagine that! Why don´t you hire her?”
That same week, I had had a dream. I am not one for having dreams where the lesson is clear, but in this one a speaker would tell me: “You have to ask ‘why?’ three times, only then will you find the answer. Sometimes the third question itself is the answer.”
When I got home, I decided to do the exercise:
“Why do I keep attracting people who laugh at my job?”
“Because I do not take myself seriously.”
“Why I do not take myself seriously?”
“Because, despite all the feedback I get about my job, deep inside me there is a place where I think I am a farce.”
“Why do I think I am a farce?”
“Because no matter how much I do, I never think it is enough: I do not meditate enough, I do not study enough, I do not purify my channel enough.”
That is, that man was only mirroring what I felt inside. The thoughts of doubt I have about myself, as if it wasn´t enough that they were occupying my mind all the time, were now materialized in the voices of those two men.
Although I made myself aware of the situation and engaged in an inner questioning, one thing still bothered me: it was clear they showed me my shadow, but how much were these two men exempt from responsibility?
I threw this question into a social network and received a number of pieces of advice, one very valuable: that I should consider these people uniquely and exclusively as a manifestation of my subconscious to show me something that I need to work on myself.
This task is not easy. One of the reasons is that I do not see my shadow personalized on a woman, for example. Except for a single time when a woman questioned how I could practice coaching without having a psychologist’s degree, I receive such comments only from men.
I think we still have a long way to go in re-educating men in the way they communicate with us. So the way I dealt with this kind of situation was to do both things: take responsibility for my inner work instead of just blaming the other, but also not retreat from showing that person that the way she communicates is disrespectful (or at least it is how I feel about the way she communicates, as they say in Nonviolent Communication).
And a tool that has been very important in this work is being educated about four ways that men use to communicate, often without realizing it:
– Mansplaining– union of the words man + explaining: when a man explains an obvious thing to a woman, as if she were unable to understand, or ignoring the fact that she already knows (how to drive, by example);
– Manterrupting: When a man interrupts a woman because he thinks what he has to say is much more relevant than what she is talking about (or maybe just because he thinks he can);
– Bropriating– union of the words bro + appopriating: when a man appropriates the idea of a woman;
– Gaslighting– expression taken from a film with the same name: when a man manipulates a woman psychologically in such a way that she begins to doubt his or her sanity. No, this does not happen only in movies – when a man says something and then denies what he said, when he calls you crazy, etc.; everything is there inside this package.
What I do now when I think I am going through some of these things, I ask the person: “Do you know what is manterrupting?” and if he does not know, I explain. Usually what happens is the person develops an awareness and is forced to see that; how much he uses that. And it gets more impersonal than saying, “You interrupt me all the time.” And then I leave him dealing with his shadow, and I go home to deal with mine.