Dealing with the Negative Mother Type. Reassure the Narcissist that the only reason you can take this next step is because of all her fabulous work in shaping you, and make sure you tell everyone how amazing she is—look how she fostered you to the next stage. You are, in effect, allowing her to see your progress as the logical next step in her success—another accolade or win for her.
She can only let you progress if she thinks you see it as being due to her influence and if you are keen to stay close to mama. Then she doesn’t have to face an empty nest and have her “ungrateful” button pushed. She won’t need to starve you out or boot you down onto the ground if she continues to be the leading light. She has to be the big one; you remain the small one, her child to whom she gave life—and don’t you ever forget it. Like a rapacious mother, she will believe that whatever you do will never be enough for her. But you must keep showering her with gratitude and know your (smaller) place. You must never dare to contradict her (mother knows best) or imply that she is past it, no longer the font of all wisdom, no longer needed for you to survive, or, to quote a fairy tale, no longer the fairest of them all. Warning—obviously you wouldn’t try these tactics if they go against your ethics or sensibilities.
While this archetype is more likely to be found in the Narcissist, you may find it in the other types, and it requires a similar approach. For example, the Excluder or Toxic may be feeling furious because you found a new mother (she feels replaced by a mentor, therapist, or colleague) or because you have decided to fly without paying your dues (subservience, regular public proclamations of gratitude, or whatever it is she’s wanting). The Incompetent may suspect that the only leverage she has is her kind, ample bosom—if you make a face that implies her milk is sour, she’ll happily poison you.
Negative Companion
The negative Companion is like your first husband, former best friend, or discarded mentor. Toxics and Incompetents often gravitate to this archetype. If she can’t be special in relation to you, then she’ll punish you by ruining your other relationships or spoiling your former marriage of ideas. Reassure her that she’s the one you share that special magic with—no one else inspires you or brings out your finest qualities. She is the most erudite, fascinating, exhilarating professional you will ever meet, and you hold her uppermost in your mind whenever engaged in intellectual pursuits. You need her magic ingredient to progress your career, continue your inventions, or spark your creativity.
Never, ever forget to add her name to your social events, your research paper, your list of thank-yous, or your “Top Five Most Intelligent Women in Business” speech. She is the alchemist who is responsible for anything innovative or groundbreaking that emerges from your organization, and she must be credited.
Dealing with the Negative Companion Type. You need to show everyone the evidence of her catalytic importance and how much her personal qualities trigger the best in you. The Incompetent won’t need to get rid of you if she believes that she is your muse; for example, she needs to tell people that she leads a team of brilliant prima donnas, but without her to manage or direct their genius, they couldn’t open a paper bag, let alone contribute to the organization. Remember how your ex was benign until you re-partnered? Or how delighted your former best friend was when you entered the portrait you painted of her in a prestigious art competition because she alone inspired your greatest work? After spreading vicious rumors about you for the past five years, she turned into your publicity agent and secured three exhibitions for you. Warning—obviously you wouldn’t try these tactics if they go against your ethics or sensibilities.
Another negative Companion archetype could be possessive of her manager. She was close to the manager before you came along, and she wants to freeze you out. When the three of you have breakfast or otherwise meet, she turns her back on you and plays “remember when” with your boss, discussing events before your time. You’re told thirdhand that her lunches are spoiled by your joining them because she feels intimidated by you and can’t talk with her boss when you are always there. She is playing the Excluder bitch role with a negative Companion archetype—but the last thing you want to do is to stop meeting with your manager because you feel mean preventing your co-worker from feeling comfortable! This is a sophisticated Excluder ploy and is designed to sever your connection to your manager.
Another variation on the Excluder with a negative Companion archetype is the co-worker who wants to keep a consultant all to herself despite the requirement that you both meet independently for different projects. She never passes messages on from the consultant and won’t leave you two alone together, but when she has a meeting with the consultant, you are not allowed to crash their get-together.
External consultants are aware of organizational dynamics and have professional protocols that are designed to circumvent such behavior from any stakeholder. In this case, it would be the consultant’s responsibility to speak up, showing concern that messages are not being passed on. The consultant must say that he or she needs to speak with you alone—just as the consultant needed time to discuss a part of the project last week with your co-worker—if the co-worker tries to join a meeting with you two.
In these two cases, the Excluder’s need to be a special companion cuts across your professional needs, and while it may be easier to relent in the short run, your career will be derailed in the long run. The manager and the consultant should avoid collusion; they have to speak up and ensure that your rights are upheld. In these examples, we can see the need for the more senior third party to make the rules clear.
Negative Amazon
Negative Amazon is like that girl in your elementary school class who competed against you for valedictorian or sports captain. She became enraged when you got your breasts and period before her and would no longer compete in the running trials. She no longer had a worthy opponent; you cheated her out of that—victories over mediocre contenders didn’t appease her. She despised weaklings. She wanted to beat you because that would have been a real win. Or remember that other girl, who was so determined to come first on the test that she cheated? She had to win at all costs, and you had better get out of her way. The negative Amazon at work has her eye firmly on the prize, and she refuses to share it with anyone. She is not a team player, so don’t expect any acknowledgment, loyalty, or consideration. She may be the Excluder, the Insecure, the Incompetent, the Narcissist, or the Liar who happily purloins all your work without acknowledgment and who will do whatever it takes to win.
Dealing with the Negative Amazon Type. Given her desire to win the prize, you can recognize her competitive urge. You have two options.
First, you can try to emulate another Amazon and literally play with her. A tiger just kills a deer, but she might have some respect for another tiger and enjoy a good fight. If you were able to stand toe to toe without getting scratched, you could try it. A bit risky, though.
Your second option is to out-strategize her by shifting what the first prize will be. Change her perception of what she must win, and she will alter her goal. More senior and influential people will have to dangle a bigger carrot. If she is convinced that there is a more glittering prize (than your department or your promotion), she’ll go after that instead. To the victor go the spoils. This technique is used by organizations that manage an Amazon up and out by providing glowing references. She might end up in a more public, highly paid, influential, and powerful job, but they figure that it’s worth it because she’s out of their hair and they will shrink off her radar.
Negative Psychic
The negative Psychic needs to know everything before anyone else, and she enjoys being the power behind the throne, the oracle the stars consult, and the mischief maker who can alter the course of history. Think of a cantankerous great-grandmother who exudes such a black aura that the adults keep well away—but who melts into a smug matriarch when she’s fussed over with a blanket to keep her warm and fed delicacies, so that little children flock to sit at h
er feet or in her lap. They hang on her every word.
Wafting around the corridors and snacking on people’s fears, she does have an impressive capacity to read what is likely to happen next. Or is she feeding you her fantasies to manipulate you? In either case, she’s usually on the money. Of course, she has a huge need to be on top of the rumors, to be in on the secrets, to be asked for advice by the powerbrokers, and to be feted for her extraordinary insight. Think of her as an ancient witch, or grandmother—the only family member who could outsmart a slimy mother. The Toxic bitch is likely to carry this archetype, but various types may be caught up in this desire to be the expert adviser who is given special consideration.
Dealing with the Negative Psychic Type. She does like to be consulted by important people as well as by you, taken very seriously when she predicts the future, and rewarded with special little gifts. Don’t take her for granted or denigrate her hunches, and remember to leave gifts and sacrifices to appease her or she’ll make trouble. Make sure she is looked after and treated as special.
When an Archetype Is Not a Bitch
Not-a-Bitch may actually be demonstrating the positive Mother, Companion, Amazon, or Psychic but you may be perceiving her differently. For example, the positive Mother may be supporting and protecting you from awful office politics so that you can do your job without feeling unduly anxious. But you may feel that she is blocking information and keeping you out of the loop. The positive Companion may encourage you to be the best you can be and wants to position you for future promotions—she recommends that you undertake further study or insists that you expand on your conclusions in your report. You may feel that she is finding fault with your completed work. Or you may believe that as a punishment or because she doesn’t believe you know your job, she is making you do study that you don’t wish to do.
The positive Amazon may wish to strengthen your skills and address any skills deficits by pushing you to stretch your own boundaries. She may encourage you to present at a conference when you are terrified, may refuse to help you carry out a project, or may challenge you to increase your sales figures because she wants you to soar and sees your leadership potential. But you may feel that she is cruel, unreasonable, and throwing you to the wolves.
The positive Psychic may wish to help you develop your emotional intelligence, to understand the complexities of group dynamics in the organization, or to steer you toward a more successful career path. But you may feel that she is an interfering, manipulative, political user.
Is She Stuck in a Negative Archetype?
Observe the mean girl you work with, and try to work out if she is stuck in a negative archetype. Becoming stuck in a negative archetype can help explain a sudden and inexplicable change toward you.
By understanding where she could be stuck, you can tease out whether there are any archetypal issues that contribute to the difficulty or whether you can use an appreciation of her triggers to deal with her more creatively.
If you respond to her underlying need, she is less likely to attack you with her presenting need. Deal with the negative archetype, and her overt bitchiness is more likely to melt down.
Opposites Attract—or Do They?
Another phenomenon that occurs in the workplace is projection— when we attribute our shadow, or unacceptable, unconscious parts of ourselves, to a “bitch” at work. At some stage in our work lives, we may come across the other—a woman who holds up a confronting mirror to us. Because she reveals our unlived parts (our unacceptable shadow), this can cause offense, disgust, or outrage.
Initially you might despise a bitch because she is your opposite; for example, you see her as demanding or rude, whereas you feel you are extremely accommodating and understanding. Eventually—when you feel used up or taken for granted—you might come to admire her. She is so not you, but she is so much better off because she’s the squeaky wheel who gets what she wants, whether it’s a promotion, solicitous treatment, or the best assignment. You might wish that you could be more like her instead of always being overlooked or fobbed off.
Conversely, a driven high achiever whose blunt barking alienates her from the congenial team with a work-life balance might wish she could be a slower-paced, popular small-talker. Frightened, lonely, and incapacitated on sick leave, she notices that no one offers to bring her cooked meals or help with chores.
But it’s unlikely that you really want a personality transplant. You really need to find more balance, for example, allowing yourself to say no sometimes or to bite your brutal tongue with someone who does not need to hear vicious feedback. Fear of the consequences as much as lack of requisite skills can keep us overdoing our niceness or nastiness.
A woman might fear that if she ever stood up for herself she would be rejected or might unleash her buried fury. Another woman might be terrified that any act of empathy would result in her being taken advantage of. Someone else might be terrified that if she allowed another person to be supportive of her, she’d fall apart crying and humiliate herself.
You know those stories about nice, kind women who turn into trampling marauders or ruthless women who decide they’ll retrain from corporate downsizing consultants to beach spray tanners in Malibu? Such a massive personality shift is rarely sustained. Their pendulum swing eventually finds its equilibrium point somewhere around a healthy middle ground.
As the kind woman realizes that her former passivity drove her current exaggerated aggression, she will learn to exercise assertiveness rather than biting everyone’s head off. The ruthless corporate downsizer will eventually find that a genial, relaxed pace is too boring or confronting, and she will learn to take on a schedule of work that is neither soporific nor punishing.
Other women’s nasty behavior that might have bothered you at school and in your twenties might not matter a jot to you when you’re forty. Perhaps your reactions are not about your chronological age as much as they are about your life stage or congruence with your true self. For example, you might be more concerned about a bitch’s behavior toward you in a job that you love, but not be perturbed in a job that is meaningless and where you just want the convenient hours. Or you might be devastated by a bitch you encounter early in your career, but immune by the time you retire from paid work.
You might have had a wonderful childhood with positive females and terrific past jobs because all your female co-workers were fantastic. So you might be stunned or surprised when you come across a bitch in your penultimate job; you didn’t believe there really were bitches. You thought bitchy women were like elves—mythical creatures.
The Right Archetype at the Right Time
It takes time to tease out what is going on between women, but it is worthwhile reflecting on what might be going on underneath unfathomable behavior, using the lens of archetype or myths or fairy tales. Appreciating the unconscious archetypal themes between you and the bitch might help you to untangle what is misinterpreted, decide what you might do or not do in recognition of her needs—or yours—and place her behavior into better perspective.
Another way of looking at the situation is to consider seasons in a woman’s life. When she is younger, she is usually considered a maiden. She is not responsible for raising others, but she might be engaged in her own achievements, love affairs, friendships, and collaborations. This might correlate with the Companion or Amazon archetypes. Later, she could become a nurturer of others—for example, she could raise animals or children or give birth to new ventures, correlating with the Mother archetype. As she ages, she will probably gain the status of crone or wise woman, correlating to the Psychic archetype.
The ages and stages of women are not linear, but spiral into circles. Women may bear children over a longer time span than ever before, because of technology. Some Amazons have children later in life, and Companions may skip straight to Psychics. The point is that life stages flow much better when the archetype that informs unconscious behavior is appropriate for the life stage.
The woma
n described in the following excerpt has learned a lot from years of working with women. She warns that we shouldn’t be too hasty judging people. She believes that we might all get along better if we took the time to remember a few age-old clichés: “Walk a mile in another’s shoes” and “Treat people as you would wish to be treated yourself.”
Sandy, 60, Internet Book Sales
I believe we teach people how to treat us. I spent over twenty years working in TV and advertising—industries that thrive on bitchiness—but I don’t remember letting anyone get away with being bitchy to me twice. (Once is okay—their dog might have died that morning; everyone’s entitled to a bad-hair day.) But one of my greatest lessons in life was the day the poles shifted.
The woman who ran the equipment department was believed by all to have a power complex. Fearful of her, staff would shudder at the prospect of handing in a request for supplies; you had to be good at begging, smiling, cajoling, even apologizing for losing or breaking something. Staff disliked her intensely. I was aware that she had an extremely difficult home life. As a young girl she had dreams and aspirations, as we all do. But hers had not included policing the equipment. She taught people to dislike her. I understood her despair, always asked how she was doing, and often enquired about her son and mother. We got on just fine.
Meanwhile, one of the admin assistants was a meek, middle-aged, and rather dowdy lady who was married to an overbearing brute who delivered her to work every morning and collected her at the end of every day, yelling at her publicly if she was more than a few minutes late. She was the one who got the boring jobs, the tasks no one else wanted to do, because she never dared to say no. She successfully taught people to treat her like a drudge.
Working with Bitches Page 16