Getting Rid of This Feeling

I guess I just really need to vent a bit.

I think I still must be a bit traumatized from my last job. With this client I work for, the owners are a husband and wife team. I mainly deal with the wife, but sometimes with the husband. They have been nothing but great to me. Of course, I am still learning, so sometimes I will be asked to make edits/corrections, but their feedback is always constructive and they are always nice when asking.

Still, when I see I have received an e-mail or text from either of them, I still get this bad feeling in my gut for a moment. For example, yesterday, the husband e-mailed me. He doesn’t do that much, so I instantly thought it was about something wrong I had done. It turns out he wants to have a call with me and someone else next week to see how they can help me as far as getting information that will be useful for me from clients.

I know it’s because of the way my last boss was. She had no concept of constructive criticism. Her only goal was to keep me and the others she didn’t like down and find any possible thing she could give us hard time about. When I was actually right, which was pretty frequent, I had to argue with her for a half hour to prove my point before she would finally accept that I knew what I was talking about. So, just seeing a message from her caused me a lot of stress.

I guess it’s a matter of time. I was at that job for a while, and it hasn’t been all that long since I was let go. Still, some days I really hate feeling like this.

Hi Rechu,

My English is not very good but I want to tell you that I think your reactions are very, very understandable give your experience with your last boss.

The human brain is so mysterious in its workings. Sometimes its reactions are surprising or even troubling to us. I have been in many situations where my brain caused me to react in a certain way because of certain unfortunate experiences in my past.

I wish I knew what else to say. I hope that the passing of time will have some healing effect on you. You deserve some peace.

Best to you. -- Yaowen

I totally understand this and grapple with it myself. I try to be mindful about reading email such that I prepare myself mentally before even opening my email program. Remind myself not to read into tone or emotions and figure out the request. It's not really my job to deal with someone's emotions or figure out how they feel, just to deal with the request. This has served me mostly well.

I also figured out that I have to read email later in the day. I take my first two hours in the morning to get work done because that's when I'm fresh and actually really productive. So I let people know that I tend to not respond until 10am because that 8-10 is my best writing time. No one seems to mind.

If I do get an email that seems somewhat angry in tone, I try to just call the person to deal with the issue. Things get lost in translation (pun), and just getting on the phone often clears it up quickly. And most often when I do call, there really isn't a problem, they just were in a hurry and not really thinking too much about how they phrased something.

It takes time to recover from what you've been through. I'd say this reaction is somewhat to be expected.

You're doing great. Just keep healing and working.

Yaowen, thanks for understanding. I think your English is good, you shouldn't feel like you have to apologize!

That is some really good advice, seesaw. Thanks! I will definitely use it.

Hugs to you rechu. I have the same feeling. We had a toxic boss a few years ago, known as the Red Queen. She reveled in making people miserable and putting people on the spot. People shook in fear of the dreaded call or email saying, "(The Red Queen) will see you at 4pm," whereupon you would wait until 6 or 7 before being raked over the coals. To this day I get a cold prickly in my stomach whenever I have to see the higher ups or get a call/email from one.