Too close for comfort!

In your professional and personal life do you keep a respectful distance from your colleagues and your family? Transparency is the key but ask yourself if you keep people feeling guilty by your actions.

Let me give you an example. Your family member is asking for some space but you are not willing to listen to their needs. Instead you make them feel guilty that they want the space and hover over their decisions. The manner which is most prevalent is by manipulating them. This is often done through their vulnerabilities or their wish to satisfy your needs instead of their own. Their is a huge divide here and again you have people who continuously live their lives in the role of dominator and call this caring. I call it selfish.

In the workplace, the same is true. Employees have supervisors who advise them. Is this advice honest and without subjectivity? Is their workload realistic or is it a dumping ground for the supervisor's idea of workload? If the supervisor has ulterior motives in service of himself or herself, this is subjective.

The issue is how you conduct yourself as a role model and it is pertinent to the behavior of your family and your co-workers.  If you scoff at this message, think seriously about how you appear to those you choose to associate with daily. Meaningful relationships take years to build, but it is not like building a house of cards.

Using offensive language and judging others reminds me of an egocentric, irreverent person who gets attention by claiming to be what he or she is not. Eventually, these individuals will be discovered and discredited for being unreal. All this may take a long time because the influence is often believed over time. It's called manipulation and it is learned behavior that tends to capture the meek, children, and some adults.

What appears to be "close" is often just the opposite. Some clues of this great phenomenon are, gift giving for the sake of being the good guy or girl without true empathy but expecting an applause, being in touch daily just to be in the other person's life without giving a single breathe of fresh air. It's about encroaching in a life that should have some freedom.

Granted some families are close naturally but being so close that one person dominates in service of himself or herself can be most destructive. So the same exists in the working world. It's destructive because it gives only one person the ultimate voice which is verbalized as the only way to think and the only way to believe.
Supporting this behavior is appalling and my suggestion is to BE your own person.

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Gloria M. Reiske is an MSW, LCSW with more than thirty years experience in education, administration, social work, and coaching. She has authored many articles and is published in local media, having written a men and grief manual for training purposes throughout Virginia and an article for children and grief. Email me at gloriareiske@blogspot.com and watch for this article on my business Facebook page.