Hi Brook!
The work this month on relationships is so important to me as a default people pleaser. I have been doing the work in the workbook and I love it and I desperately want to feel and have a shift in both my feelings and actions and I’m finding that I’m not quite getting there. I know how I want to feel about and show up with a fellow Co-worker who I find to be opinionated, loud, aggressive and judgmental but as I am writing about her I feel all these feelings of anxiety and anger boiling up. Intellectually I know that this person, underneath her tough and abrasive facade, feels a lot of pain and disappointment in her own life and only behaves externally the way she does because she is a product of her environment and upbringing which perhaps have not let her experience the world and people the way I have. I have compassion for her, but I still get angry when she takes advantage of people and belittles them. I don’t want to be confrontational with her, but I also don’t want her to let her walk all over me. I want to be firm, loving and fair with her, but I shutter at the thought of her attacking back. I understand that this is really my work to be strong and unaffected by her reaction and behavior, and I just don’t know how to get there best.
Here is what I have come up with in the framework of the model. Please let me know your thoughts and also the work to do if the shift in feelings aren’t quiet coming so easily.

DEFAULT MODEL

C: Anna intentionally takes the lightest patient load and feels that she has a right to given her “seniority” ( I put seniority in qotes, bc although she has worked at this hospital longer than I have, I am 11 years her senior in terms of experience).
T: She is entitled and feels superior
F: Angry and disrespected
A: I act like I don’t care, laugh it off
R: Anna thinks she has won and I act distant and fake

INTENTIONAL MODEL

C: Anna intentionally takes the lightest patient load and feels that she has a right to given her “seniority”
T: Anna needs to feel validate and superior which is ok and I don’t mind the more challenging work, i like working hard and being challenged.
F: Compassion for Anna and grateful to have the knowledge and compassion to care for my patients
A: Go about my day and work with gratitude
R: Happy, fulfilled and unaffected by Anna’s actions.

While typing this I feel pings of happiness, but still some traces of anger. It’s not that I mind working hard, It is the feeling that I think it is unnecessary to act superior and sneaky towards a colleague.

Thank you!