This is amazing, thank you for laying this all out so concisely! I’d love if you had any more tips for gradually breaking the cycle over time when in guilt trip situations.
Thank you! I’m glad it was helpful. The best tip (besides building your own awareness) that I have is to do small experiments outside your comfort zone. For example, try different “shrug off” comments and see how they land. Each time you do this, you’re teaching the guilt tripper that their strategy isn’t as effective or gratifying as before. Usually, they begin to back off but occasionally double down. I’m working on anther essay about my tiered escalation strategy for shutting this stuff down. Some people won’t respond to the more subtle attempts and it’s blueprint for keeping boundaries.
This little experiments teach you that some push back isn’t catastrophic and that you can take up more space without a blow up. This is important too because a lot of why guilt trips work is because of what you believe.
I hope this helps and everyone deserves respect for their boundaries!
The one common feature I noted of the women at the last office I worked in before it closed was their pervasive passive-aggressive behavior toward each other when they were all supposed to be friends and co-workers. Would you say, according to your discussion here, they were guilt-tripping each other?
That sounds like girl fighting to me. It’s fighting in code while still appearing pleasant and sociable on the surface. Along with female socialization, we’re biologically programmed for a high degree of connection. Direct fighting threatens connection.
This is amazing, thank you for laying this all out so concisely! I’d love if you had any more tips for gradually breaking the cycle over time when in guilt trip situations.
Thank you! I’m glad it was helpful. The best tip (besides building your own awareness) that I have is to do small experiments outside your comfort zone. For example, try different “shrug off” comments and see how they land. Each time you do this, you’re teaching the guilt tripper that their strategy isn’t as effective or gratifying as before. Usually, they begin to back off but occasionally double down. I’m working on anther essay about my tiered escalation strategy for shutting this stuff down. Some people won’t respond to the more subtle attempts and it’s blueprint for keeping boundaries.
This little experiments teach you that some push back isn’t catastrophic and that you can take up more space without a blow up. This is important too because a lot of why guilt trips work is because of what you believe.
I hope this helps and everyone deserves respect for their boundaries!
The one common feature I noted of the women at the last office I worked in before it closed was their pervasive passive-aggressive behavior toward each other when they were all supposed to be friends and co-workers. Would you say, according to your discussion here, they were guilt-tripping each other?
That sounds like girl fighting to me. It’s fighting in code while still appearing pleasant and sociable on the surface. Along with female socialization, we’re biologically programmed for a high degree of connection. Direct fighting threatens connection.