Have you ever experienced pua in the workplace? Tell me what happened to you.

1. My experience of being bullied by PUA/ in the workplace.

That was when I graduated from graduate school and just found a psychological counseling job. According to American immigration policy, international students need to apply for a work visa at their institutions. Once I lose my job, I will immediately lose my status in the United States and have to leave the country within 60 days.

Introduced by a friend, I successfully entered a community psychological counseling institution as a trainee psychological counselor. At that time, my boss K, who was also an international student, recruited me.

In the same background, I naturally began to trust and appreciate my boss K, and my boss K also took care of me and often shared many of her private stories with me.

Now I understand that my boss K's avalanche of "private sharing and caring" is a common love bombing method for bullies-using "love bombing" to woo, confuse and kidnap potential victims, let the victims take the bait, relax their vigilance against bullies, and finally can't escape from the bully's world. At the same time, my boss K is constantly crossing the working boundary between us and testing my bottom line by "love bombing".

Sure enough, a few days after she became my "best friend boss", I found something was wrong.

"Down-to-earth" push your luck

Usually adult bullies don't hurt us severely as soon as they come up, because it will directly cause our disgust and resistance.

What they usually do is to do something that crosses the line bit by bit to test our reaction, which is called "foot in the door" in English. If we have never explicitly opposed these small cross-border behaviors, they will continue to make greater demands until they completely control us. As the British say, you have stepped into the door with one foot, and it is easy for the other foot to step into it.

For example, my boss K will often ask me some personal questions and give me some personal advice. Of course, I was uncomfortable when I was asked. However, on the one hand, out of respect for my predecessors, on the other hand, out of lack of confidence, I didn't raise any objection. Now that I think about it, my "acquiescence" just makes this boss think that I have a chance.

gaslighting

Gas lamp effect is a common psychological manipulation method, which means that adult bullies use negative, misleading, contradictory and false information transmission to make us gradually begin to doubt ourselves, question our feelings, needs and judgments, and lead us to believe in ourselves, even believe that we are bullied.

One day, I came to the consulting room to meet the visitors, and found that there were not only my visitors, but also my boss K, who called it "supervising the effectiveness of my consultation". -I later learned that this is actually a serious violation of consulting ethics without my own consent and the consent of the visitors. However, at that time, she told me: you are my subordinate, and it is normal for me to supervise your work. This is also responsible for visiting.

After the consultation, before I could discuss it with her, she suddenly beat me to it and loudly reprimanded me for not "thanking the visitors for their trust and sharing" at the end of the consultation.

I'm completely at a loss. I explained to her: I am an interview-centered consultant, and I sincerely thank and respect the trust that the visit has given me.

She interrupted me fiercely and said, what are you thankful for coming to visit? They came here to share. They have no choice! You China people are always grovelling, which is a bad habit of your culture! You are too humble to be a counselor!

Of course, now that I think about what she said, I almost laugh.

But at that time, I had just served as a trainee psychological counselor for less than a month, and I was really shocked by her: should I really not thank the visitors for sharing and trusting? Am I really unfit to be a counselor? Will I really grovel before visiting? ……

Tears are rolling in my eyes, but I am still whispering in my heart: but why is what she said completely different from what I learned at school?

Seeing that I was wronged and confused, the boss K suddenly changed his face and said, "I know you are an international student. I'll give you another chance. You have been fired from other organizations for a long time. You are too lacking in psychological counseling skills. If you don't take my advice and work hard, you may really lose your job!

I was all at a loss, trying to refute, but I didn't know where to refute, so I had to nod blankly.