Today let’s talk about double messages.
Have you ever been confused by a double message?
By that I mean the sort of things I learned as a child. You’re incompetent – take care of the house! You can’t do anything right – I’m counting on you! I learned to be very responsible as a child, while at the same time being told I wasn’t responsible or very good at whatever I was doing. I discovered I carried that mindset into adulthood, and would always finish the thought – if someone told me I was doing great, the other part would kick in and tell me I was a failure. So anything I accomplished got ruined, even though there was no one there actually saying anything negative to me. It was very confusing, and I had to learn to separate the messages of childhood from the realities of today.
Have you ever experienced the confusion of a double message?
Photo Credit
“Two-face” by Kain Kalju @ flickr.com. Creative Commons – Some rights reserved
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The message I got was more “you’re doing great, we’re counting on you, but don’t expect to get any benefit from your accomplishments.” I have found this to be fairly good training for the realities of the workplace, where a low level employee, especially a woman, will be thrust into a position of responsibility in a pinch, but then loses out on the raise or promotion when the crisis is past, and is lucky if she doesn’t get elbowed out entirely by someone with more power who sees the competence as a threat.