Understanding My Jealousy

 Just cried a little bit.

After having some strong disproportionate emotional reactions to work email.

First of all, this week has been straught with anxiousness regarding this pending job offer. No offer letter yet after refreshing email like a mad woman for the last 2 days. I hate taking this anxious feeling into the weekend but here we are. 

So I googled overcoming jealousy and it led me to attachment issues.

Some kids develop secure or insecure attachment styles.

I think I have an insecure attachment style.

So I thought back to my childhood.

I was brought over here for my safety. There was always this understanding that it was temporary. 30 years later, I'm still here and my parents never came back for me. I don't know that I necessarily wanted them to because I didn't want to leave America. But it would have been nice for them to have tried. For it to have felt like a choice. I'm understanding more and more just how much a sense of control over outcomes can do for a person. Even if it doesn't change the outcome, just the feeling of having some sense of impact on our life outcomes is transformational. 

Life-altering I would say.

This became my Death House because I just a reached a breaking point of trying to control outcomes without getting anywhere. I just decided to accept outcomes and stop fighting back. I became and am living as a victim of consequence. 

So that's where I am. I left my birthplace never knowing it's the last time I'd see my parents again as a whole family unit. I just didn't know. As much as I think all that modern fluffy parenting of explaining everything to a child is fluffy, I can see the benefits in adulthood. 

One episode of the The Family Bunch or whatever had the oldest daughter acting out because she didn't want to change her name. The therapist said she's losing control of a lot of her life outcomes, so just give her this. The step-dad wanted to be the authoritarian and insist that the child just obey, but the therapist won in the end. The child got to choose what she wanted. In the end, she chose to change her name with the rest of the family and verbalized how much she loved, cared for, and appreciated the step-dad. The outcome was the same for the step-dad but the journey, to me, turned out way better. That sense of agency.

I think that's what I lack. At this point, I feel like life just happens to me and it's just been this constant struggle to continuously adapt and reset. And I ran out of steam (see The Final Countdown).

Anyway, so attachment issue number 1 was pretty much childhood.

Then My Darling Aunty. I was mean-spirited in her final years of life. And eventhough I had resigned that she was going to die, the last time I saw her, I had no idea it would be the last time. I just left with a casual wave. And I never saw her again. She was the person I believe that loved me the most, only I didn't know it while she was alive. 

Then a few months later I meet My Boss. And she is this ray of light and has so many qualities that remind me of my aunt. 

And I form this insecure attachment because I can't ask her to reassure me that she loves and cares for me. That's weird. 

So the thing with living with my aunt was I always felt that if I was good enough, smart enough, well-behaved enough she would keep me and I wouldn't be sent back. See that relationship was complicated. It's how I missed that she loved me. I thought it was all merit-based. 

I think I carried that dysfunction into the relationship with My Boss. I say I churn for the Bonus Money. But really, I still want her to think I'm the best. Maybe if I do everything she asks, and respond to her every need - she'll love me the best.. at least out of her direct reports. Or friends, or family. It sounds outlandish, but here we are. 

I knew choosing me out of her family or friends that have known her more than a year was out of the question, so I focused on work stuff. 

The article I was reading, said jealous feelings on occasion are common, but jealous actions like trying to figure out where your partner is every single minute of day is unhealthy. It is to replace that reliance on the assurance you should really get from your partner.

But I can't ask my boss for reassurance. She would never tell me I'm her best or favorite or top employee. So I search her calendar (to try to figure out how much time she's spending with them).  I try to outperform my colleagues. I even mentally track their mistakes because the few times I tried to point them out got me in trouble. So that didn't work. I slip up now and then and try to backdoor their mistakes into conversations, but that always backfires.

When she praises other people, the jealousy flares up and makes me either completely detach or work harder. 

So today it flared up and I was really getting sick of my behavior. It has to stop. I don't think the week long anxiety was helping my situation. 

Anyway Overachiever #2 sent her an email an hour or so ago and she responded within 3 minutes. That annoyed me because she is regularly slipping this woman's name into conversation and giving her all the accolades.  And I'm thinking, I'm working just as hard to have an impact as she is. And Overachiever #2 was in my inbox buzzing around on some minor crap. That was annoying. 

I have unanswered emails to my boss but she has time to respond to Overachiever #2?! The nerve! Overachiever also feels free to just persist. Because she'd sent a chat message to me and My Buddy, and I wasn't responding. So she proceeded to send an email.

Then she sent our team two emails because our agent transferred a call wrong twice. TWICE out of 100s of transfers we do a week. TWICE. That was freaking annoying. Mind you I track all the errors her side makes but we haven't been addressing those in the spirit of teamwork and bigger fish to fry.

That was actually my fault. I should only be focusing on my programs and leave the greater business to the My Buddy and her direct reports. 

Then My Buddy. She sends two emails today. One was annoying because it's like, you're not even doing this work. The other felt accusatory. Did we get rid of this article too?, she asks. Ugh, come again?! It immediately annoys me. This was that 5-month project that she was supposed to be transitioning to me but then decided to stay in the workstream and contribute nothing. I think for me, if you didn't help do the work, you don't get to comment. And for the record, the document she is trying to reference never existed. Why don't you do some leg work or get one of your minions to look for it!

So yes, I am jealous because these two are a threat to my insecure attachment to My Boss. For whatever reason, My Boss thinks My Buddy is the goose that lays the golden egg. And the overachiever - I'm like stop buzzing around here. It's annoying because she's got my boss's attention and my boss's boss' (Big Boss) attention. So it's like a double-threat. At this point, that's not even a race I'm entering. Everytime it's a conversation or meeting with Big Boss I just have to bite my tongue, I immediately get into competitive mode. I mostly try that with My Buddy and My Boss at least in the very beginning. 

Now it's a mixed bag because I'm annoyed that I perceive her contribution to not be that noteworthy but she still has curried favor with My Boss. It's just a dynamic I don't understand. 

My goal IF I do successfully transition, is to do a 3 month washout period where I at the very least don't communicate with this team unless ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. And soft goal of not talking about them - at least not outside of the blog. 

In fact, I'm trying so hard to go into this new role with a psychologically clean plate, I didn't even haggle over the offer. I'm just going to accept it. I want to not feel it necessary to churn. I don't want to prove myself. I want to work clinic hours and just float to FIRE.