A popular show during television’s heyday, called “I’ve Got a Secret,” very much pertains to adult-children in the workplace, who were forced to grow up with alcoholism, dysfunction, and/or abuse and hence adopted a series of behavioral characteristics intended to foster their later-in-life survival, since they, too, bring one with them-namely, their believed inferiority and incompetence.
My own, deep and dark, was the hole my father dug in my soul when he attempted to fill his own-or the one his father created with his abusive and alcoholic shovels. I used numerous methods to mask mine, always fearful that coworkers would someday discover and realize that I was not all that I portrayed myself to be.
As a human target at home-whenever my father’s insanity flared up and commanded that he pursue and chase-I failed to learn the trust others apparently did, since it was neither demonstrated to nor modeled for me, subconsciously transferring my home-of-origin characteristics to that of the workplace and adopting hyper-vigilant physiological symptoms that chronically placed me on-guard and on high alert for potential danger.
Although I became a high achiever and people-pleaser to minimize detrimental confrontations (which, in the event, never occurred) with authority figure bosses and fellow employees alike, I never truly believed my sometimes academy award winning performances (which, upon retrospect, were abilities in and of themselves), continually replaying parental tapes with speeds and frequencies that reached brainwashing proportions. “You’ll never work! ” “You’re not good enough!” “Wait until you make a single mistake and you blow your cover!” And so they ran.
The more I contemplated the cracked image my fellow employees assuredly would have had of me if I did, the more my image of myself cracked, the pieces of shattering glass carrying such labels as “fraud,” “impostor,” and “con artist.”
Unable, because of mistrust-repelling dynamics, to forge bonds with others and therefore feel emotionally connected to the collective work body I was allegedly a part of, I always felt as if I were on the outside, looking in. Reticent to ask for help, the sheer act of doing so, I reasoned, would only have unearthed my inadequacies and inabilities.
Then again, how do you ask for help from strangers who neither know you from Adam nor owe you anything when the very people to whom you were entrusted to provide it, your parents, did not-and, ironically and conversely, were the very reasons why you needed it?
Always hungry for the praise and validation I seldom received from my father at home, I often sought it at work, but was not always able to receive and accept it, even if it were offered.
For years I deluded myself on two levels. On one, I employed an intense sense of humor I never fully realized even emanated from me and on the other, this tactic, along with excessive achievement and people-pleasing, was subconsciously used as a defense mechanism-or one more attempt to create the delusion of safety and protection for myself.
“Literature about adult-children of alcoholics,” according to the Adult Children of Alcoholics textbook (World Service Organization, Torrance, California, 2006, p. 421) “includes a description of four roles that children can take on in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family: hero, scapegoat, lost child, and mascot/clown. These roles can be easily transferred to the workplace.”
‘We learned these roles as children to protect ourselves,” it continues (p. 422). “Most of our behaviors started as defense mechanisms that helped us survive an alcoholic, dysfunctional, or abusive experience. These roles transfer into adulthood with an uncanny accuracy.”
Managers, supervisors, and even other coworkers, of course, served as subconsciously displaced parental authority figures, intensifying my powerlessness with them by regressing me to childhood, immobilizing me, and suspending all my abilities to defend myself. What could be a greater threat in the workplace than uttering a single wrong word to the boss who has both the ability and the right to fire you?
Even if a “Do not enter” sign did not hang on the door to my negative emotions, such as anger, I could not even take a step toward them, because I would have presented myself in a poor, unrespectable light, and touching my unresolved issues would assuredly have caused me to lose control and essentially become my father-the person, incidentally, I least wanted to be like when it came to these characteristics.
Sheer mention of after-work social situations sent a shot of trauma-sparking adrenaline through my body. Aside from my inability to trust and the boring through the negative emotional layers needed to reach the positive ones so that I could relate to them on a happier, more even keel, I believed that the structure of the job would fall, like a curtain, giving coworkers an opportunity, if not an excuse, to break from their behavioral restraints and let loose, exposing me to danger by revealing, like that of my father, their other- or alter-sides and thus targeting me.
When you grow up with a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality and no one ever explains why he has two diametrically opposed sides, you naturally assume that everyone else in the world does, too.
The workplace, in the end, becomes the location for an adult-child’s second-chance, but subconsciously displaced home-or-origin, demonstrating that the survival traits facilitating his safety are not exclusive to location, but to the person who brings them there to reenact.