Working with Bitches

by Meredith Fuller

  The other main influence on how well women work together is communication. Perhaps the difficult situation you’re in is about communication rather than bitchiness. Generational differences can cause communication problems so it’s important to appreciate what benefits the different age groups bring to the workplace. Too often, older women don’t appreciate younger ways, and younger women don’t acknowledge the older women’s experience. Misperceptions abound. The other main cause of communication problems centers around how decisions are made.

  Women use both heads and hearts when weighing up which course of action to take, but are likely to have a preference for using head (thinking) or heart (feeling) terminology and methods for decision making. If you are feeling-preferred and your boss is thinking-preferred, you could have difficulty communicating with each other. Perhaps it isn’t so much that she is being offhand or clipped and terse, but is that you might have misinterpreted her efficient style. If you understand each other, having both head and heart perspectives in a decision-making situation can be very beneficial.

  I have a preference for heart, while my mother and grandmother had preferences for head. As a highly sensitive heart female, I found that the way they used their heads was extremely helpful in navigating my way through life. I appreciated that we sought similar outcomes, so I was happy to acknowledge their perspectives, despite preferring my orientation and finding theirs mysterious! My thinking-preferred female friends and colleagues provide me with balance; they more easily pick up on things I struggle with to achieve desired outcomes. Similarly, I can provide heart observations that they might miss.

  By considering the different ways that women communicate, you will be able to more easily accommodate the mean girl’s needs and appreciate her differences. While this sounds as if you have to make all the effort, if it improves your situation and enables you to work effectively with women who have different styles and experiences, then it’s a good result. The initial effort required to understand how someone else behaves is worth it if you can improve a difficult situation and therefore happily stay in a job you like.

  Be careful not to pathologize behavior as being bitchy simply because it isn’t the same way that you would behave. There can be layers of complexity behind a woman’s behavior at work, and the better you understand why she might act in a certain way, the better equipped you’ll be to improve the situation.

  CHAPTER 9

  Mother, Companion, Amazon, or Psychic?

  When a woman does behave like a bitch, I naturally feel betrayed and hurt. But I try to understand why she is like that. It may be that she’s unhappy, or no one likes her, so she’s cruel to compensate for not having anything to say. I work at forgiving her.

  —Morna Sturrock, 87, still working

  There are conscious (known to self) and unconscious (unknown to self) reasons behind the ways in which women relate to each other, whether it’s in friendships, family relationships, or the workplace. Women who suffer at the hands of a mean girl at work inevitably wonder why they unconsciously attract certain bitches. Others wonder why they feel unable to deal with a particular type of bitch, while having no difficulty with other types. The theory of universal female roles provides some additional layers to help women to understand what might have triggered a mean girl’s nastiness. The theory is simplified here and discussed in the context of working with mean girls. If you would like to know more about the positive and negative universal roles in women’s psyche, see the references listed in the bibliography.

  In addition, men and women hold an inner feminine or masculine element in their unconscious—men’s female element is called the anima, and women’s male element is called the animus. A woman’s unconscious animus feeds her argumentative, stubborn, brutal, or opinionated aspects. We can see this in the Screamer, who externalizes her anger.

  Our unconscious will demand to be listened to; otherwise, it bobs up unexpectedly like a beach ball in the sea. Hold a beach ball underwater for as long as you can. When it bobs up, you have no control over where it will appear and with what ferocity of force. If you develop a better understanding of your unconscious self, you’ll have more control over where it’s likely to bob up.

  Sometimes, logic doesn’t help us to understand why something is happening. Turning within ourselves to see what is going wrong is instructive; we find repressed, archetypal role material that illustrates what ails us. Archetypes are original patterns of human experience—primordial images that transcend space and time. Archetypes manifest the unconscious in our dreams and in fairytales.

  Here’s an example of how this works. If you find that you often end up working with Screamers, or Screamers are the bitches who affect you the most, it is possible that you internalize your anger and that your “tyrant within” is projected onto another person—in other words, you might unconsciously attract tyrants. To alter this pattern, you need to own your animus. By integrating this split-off part of yourself, you can take back your projections onto other people, using your awareness to create clearer boundaries. You will then be able to say no in a reasonable manner. You’ll no longer feel obliged to say yes to all demands in case your boss thinks you are selfish and withdraws his or her approval. You will become more able to mobilize your own self-interest in maintaining limits on punishing workloads instead of entering into martyrdom. You’ll no longer feel so affected by the bitch in the office who refuses to be pushed around.

  Maintaining clearer boundaries means we can self-care regarding, for example, the amount of work we are prepared to take on, and it’s likely that the bitch at work who overloads you will no longer feel compelled to taunt you for your acquiescence—she won’t be able to take advantage of your softness, which irritates her hardness. Realistically, though, you can only take responsibility for how you behave.

  By integrating your opposites, you will be more able to regulate your workload and not feel provoked by the bitch who refuses to be used up—you are less likely to be triggered by your indignation at the bitch’s under-helpfulness and your own over-helpfulness. You are less likely to be fueled by your resentment that she so easily did what you didn’t dare to do: say no to additional work.

  When we remain unaware of all our parts, and therefore out of balance, we tend to overdo or underdo certain behaviors. In this state, we may find that our life runs us; we don’t run it. An example of this is the workaholic who cannot relax.

  When we deny our opposites, we can’t even allow ourselves to feel incensed by the other who so easily does what we are too constrained to do. For example, the Screamer lets everyone know what her immediate needs are. The opposite—let’s call her “the swallower”—does not state her needs. She swallows them down; therefore, no one knows her needs, which are unlikely to be met. Paralyzed in this state, she is more vulnerable to attack and more sensitive to slights, particularly the way she is slighted by the Screamer. The Screamer fails to consider that anyone else has needs, let alone respect them.

  Because the tension of opposites helps explain our unconscious drives, we can’t really look at one type in isolation from its opposite. The interplay of opposites can show us which behaviors correspond. People may overdo one behavior to avoid something else that is going on underneath. This helps explain, for example, why an Insecure or Incompetent bitch who lives for success will avoid failure at any cost. She will undermine her colleagues even though that might harm the organization.

  If an Insecure can be made to feel like a successful person, her fear of failure could be contained enough to prevent her sabotaging others’ ethical behavior. For this reason, it is not useful to punish an Incompetent or to advertise an Insecure’s mistakes. The Toxic is motivated by belonging, so she unconsciously fears abandonment. Ironically, she might make her deepest fear come true by the very way she goes about avoiding it. Unconsciously, she pushes people away from her with her behavior, even though abandonment is her biggest fear.

  As a manager, if you build trust and
safety (which takes time) and understand what people’s basic triggers are (by observing what they strive for in an overdoing way), you get a more comprehensive picture of what motivates, influences, changes, and inspires them. This is why the best leaders know the members of their team and treat them accordingly. It is a lot more work to get to know your team, and it’s often a juggling act to balance people’s needs, but the leaders who do accomplish this will consistently get the best results.

  As a colleague, if you understand the triggers for yourself and others, you can make more sense of what is going on in the workplace; this enables you to access more-appropriate responses.

  What Are You Afraid Of?

  Fear is one of several basic drivers, and it’s useful to appreciate which aspect a person unconsciously avoids:

  •Fear of failure

  •Fear of abandonment

  •Fear of humiliation or shame

  •Fear of pain

  •Fear of being ordinary

  •Fear of deviance

  •Fear of conflict

  Is there a fear that you unconsciously have? Just as a bitch might fear failure, another woman might overdo peace and restraint. She won’t speak up or disagree, because she fears conflict. She won’t do anything that might create disharmony in the group. Often bitches have the uncanny ability to identify people’s fears; this is often how they are able to target the recipients of their bitchiness so well. For example, many bitches have a radar for selecting women who are unlikely to fight back.

  The Four Archetypes at Work

  Let’s see how the universal roles provide clues to our unconscious fears. Four main female archetypes are enacted in the workplace just as they are in our personal lives.

  At different times in our lives, we embody different archetypes relevant to our current life stage or role. But when a woman is stuck in a negative archetype, as we often see with a bitch at work, she is unable to move away from the inappropriate one toward a more appropriate archetype.

  When you read about the eight types of bitches, you might have felt that one sounded a little familiar but didn’t quite describe your mean girl. By incorporating the negative archetype, you might see a closer fit and gain a better understanding of how to deal with her. Any of the following archetypes may apply to any of the eight bitches.

  Residing in the collective unconscious (a universal historical storehouse for human archetypes), four female archetypes can be easily identified—Mother, Companion, Amazon, and Psychic, all with both positive and negative elements.

  Mother

  She gives life, nurtures, protects, guides, and supports. Mothering has the negative side of smothering when the woman is no longer needed. As the recipient of her nauseating smothering, you can feel trapped in her spider’s web. You may have been her trainee, subordinate, protégé or mentoree, but now you’re ready to renegotiate the relationship because you have moved from apprenticeship to mastery or have outgrown or no longer require a parent-to-child relationship. You are shocked to find that Mother bitch refuses to relinquish her mother-knows-best status. She has over-identified herself as your career mama and will not let it into her consciousness that she isn’t needed in this way anymore—to do so would invite potentially shattering questions about the meaning of her career life and how important she now is at work. She cannot wish you well, because she does not want you to cope without her. She needs to believe that she has created you, that without her control you will die of malnutrition.

  For example, the Narcissist trapped in a negative Mother archetype won’t have an empty nest; she’d rather starve you than let you go. She wants you to remain her adoring baby, helpless and in awe of her.

  Companion

  She is your dear colleague who can ruin by seduction. Competent accompanier, edgy colleague, she has been a good muse, foil, and collaborator. Attentive and unconventional, she has been a great best friend at work. But now you have other colleagues, other places to go, other people to see. You may have decided to tell a therapist about your secret crushes at work so you no longer confide in her, or you may have found a boyfriend after years of spending Saturdays with Companion, or maybe you are getting tired of her philosophical discussions or her urging you to pursue your master’s degree. You are too busy for her. Companion feels spurned and does not wish to relinquish all the intellectual discourse you share—without your needing her to finish your project, write your position paper, or brainstorm your conference presentation, she feels like an old shoe. So, if you don’t want her intellectually, perhaps she can pay you back by seducing that cute manager you like, or turning the other staff against you, or refusing to speak to you. She’ll tell stories so that she can pit you against others in the office—you are distant with the new employee until you find out Companion has said incorrect and different things to both of you to set you up against each other. You are stunned when Companion does such an about-turn, because you really thought she liked you.

  For example, the Excluder bitch trapped in a negative Companion archetype will punish you for leaving her. She’ll try exclusion if you get a promotion, find a new shiny colleague, enroll in further study, get married, or change jobs.

  Amazon

  She is today’s independent and self-contained woman, primarily concerned with her own achievement. Like a sister, she can be a challenger and mediator, or your competitor who drives you to excel. She’s so organized and knows all the men on the board. Amazon has to win at all costs, and she is so self-interested she doesn’t care to collaborate. She’ll play dirty to win and laugh if you cry. Strong and aggressive, she despises weaklings.

  For example, an Insecure bitch caught in a negative Amazon archetype will win by killing you off with overwork or a layoff.

  Psychic

  She is a mediator who understands the unconscious, unknown worlds. She can pick up ideas in the ether. She just knows who is going to get the chop, break up with her boyfriend, or win a contract. Since her gifts of innovative ideas must be allowed to gestate, she sleeps in, coming in to work late, and you’re not quite sure where she is when you need her. She picks up on the unconscious, using her intuition to see far and deeply—this may be uncomfortable for those around her. She is special, and woe betide anyone who fails to honor her. She’ll cast a spell, trick you, scare you with her little insights into a bleak future where you’re going to lose that client account, or she’ll mess up your training presentation or lose your month’s research to a power surge that fries your motherboard. Psychic bitch confuses you because one minute she seems interested in you, and the next, she hurts you. You are never quite sure what mood she’ll be in, and she can be exhausting to look after. She is high maintenance and a little bit scary. She knows where all the bodies are buried (she knows everyone’s secrets, including yours). She’s politically astute and reads the future. Not a good person to cross.

  For example, a Toxic bitch may be stuck in a Psychic archetype. She’s slippery and tries to latch on to you using her perceptive intrusiveness. She needs to feed off your energy like a black widow spider; then, she’ll eat you.

  Finding Who You Are

  A career life flows more easily when the appropriate positive archetype is demonstrated. For example, you might have been a Companion, but now it is time for Amazon or Psychic as you venture out in the world as a self-employed consultant.

  Your goal should be to become who you really are and to therefore follow your vocation, the voice within that whispers your purpose. If you can accept your uniqueness—which incorporates your possibilities and your difficulties—then you can accept that you are likely to make mistakes along the way. Sometimes you’ll need to be told to pull your head in; you might be stressed and not realize the extent of your bad behavior. You might need to be reminded what is looming behind your back or what you have forgotten to consider. And you probably need supportive colleagues and mentors to guide you and care.

  Negative Archetypes

  People unconsc
iously live a myth (or a myth lives inside them), and this means that they behave in a particular way. It is helpful to explore what that myth is. For example, you might be living the myth that “if I am good and put up with this, someone will save me.” This is likely to be enacted in an archetype, such as a positive Companion. You continue to be a supportive worker to your manager and colleagues, despite shoddy treatment.

  Let’s look at the fairy-tale example of Cinderella. Remember how gruesome fairy tales are; perhaps women need that initiation into the complexities of good and evil in order to cope with difficult times ahead. As fairy tales and myths transcend time and space, the core themes remain relevant today. While you’re channeling Cinderella, the bitch at work may be enacting the role of the wicked queen in Snow White, and her archetype may be the negative Mother.

  It might be possible to smooth a bitch’s ruffled feathers if you know what her negative archetypal need is. You may need to review the myths you live by or reality-test whether they are functional or dysfunctional.

  Negative Mother

  The negative Mother is most likely to be a Narcissist bitch because she sees herself as the center of the universe and her staff only as she chooses to create them. She can destroy them just as easily. Her slaves must worship her and express their gratitude for being allowed to hover near her spotlit brilliance.

  If you wish to alter the dynamics of this relationship, remember what happens when a daughter leaves home and her mother is enraged at becoming redundant—the mother feels old, out of the limelight, and as if she is no longer the puppeteer. She’s compelled to punish or destroy the daughter for no longer needing the mother to grow. How dare the daughter try to leave!