{"id":60555,"date":"2024-07-17T15:41:50","date_gmt":"2024-07-17T19:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ccpa-accp.ca\/?p=60555"},"modified":"2024-07-17T15:42:44","modified_gmt":"2024-07-17T19:42:44","slug":"empowerment-is-to-face-your-goliath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ccpa-accp.ca\/fr\/empowerment-is-to-face-your-goliath\/","title":{"rendered":"Empowerment Is to Face Your Goliath"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cWe\u2019ve all had experience of dreading interactions with certain people.  Your cell phone rings and you release a deep sigh when you see the name pop up on the caller display.  You\u2019re walking into the office and you see that coworker with the uncanny ability to get under your skin, so you feel like dashing into the nearest room or turning around on the spot and heading back home.  You need to tell your partner news you know won\u2019t be well received and your head spins from explanations to potential outcomes, dread rapidly filling the pit of your stomach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPerhaps your experience is more dramatic than that.  Perhaps you deal with real-life bullies who undermine your self-confidence, isolate, or gaslight you.  Their very presence in the room is making you feel claustrophobic.  You feel tense and uneasy around them but you can\u2019t quite put your finger on the reason.  These and the above are what I call Goliaths.\u201d (beginning of the Introduction from Facing Goliath: Breaking the Bullying Cycle<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes our Goliaths are real and ruthless, sometimes they\u2019re merely perceived.  Regardless, facing them is no easy feat.  You try to remain calm but deep down you feel a whirlwind of scenarios play out in your mind, your imagination fueled by primal emotions that fight for control.  Your heart rate responds in kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goliaths present threats that trigger our survival instincts to fight or flee.  When neither option seems worth the risk, we freeze.  Think of it this way.  It\u2019s like in the first Jurassic Park movie when they come face to face with the T-Rex who just broke out of its enclosure.  They freeze.  There\u2019s no point trying to run for it, they won\u2019t get far.  Fight it?  Yeah right!  So they wait until it gets distracted so they can leave.  Now thankfully we don\u2019t come face to face with towering carnivorous dinosaurs, but our Goliaths are nonetheless intimidating.  Their voices get inside our head and back us into a corner mentally.  Then comes the tough decision: I fight (stand up to them), I flee (spend my time trying to avoid them), I freeze (take the abuse as if there was no other viable option), or I confront them.  Ideally, we would choose the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s not confuse confronting with fighting.  Fighting, in this case, refers to responding in kind.  Two flames don\u2019t put out the fire, they make it bigger.  It\u2019s counter-productive.  It ends with one Goliath standing over the wreckage of the other.  Confronting refers to the use of empowering strategies that keep the toxicity of our Goliath\u2019s influence out of our lives and out of our heads. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the image of David facing Goliath, we stick to those strategies that give us the mental upper hand.  In a contest of brute strength, David would have been crushed like a bug.  The use of his sling gave him the means to overcome Goliath before the latter could get close enough to do damage.  Obviously, I\u2019m not suggesting violent means for handling our Goliaths.  In David\u2019s case, his people were at war and he had no other options for handling the situation.  In our case, we need to neutralize the venom inside our Goliaths\u2019 sting.  He will try to sting, but what is he going to do when he sees it has no effect?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key to facing our Goliaths is to not let ourselves slip into the victim role.  Now you could tell me that it\u2019s not like you have much choice if someone wants to victimize you and you would be right.  You don\u2019t have much influence on what people choose to do.  You do, however, have all the power to decide if you\u2019re going to play the victim or not.  The Victim, in the Drama Triangle sense, is the one who lives at the mercy of people, circumstances, and conditions, as though these are the cause of his woes and the source of his unhappiness.  This type of Victim has an approach of \u201cit\u2019s not my fault, it\u2019s not my responsibility\u201d to the whirlwind of bullying he feels he\u2019s been swept up in.  He blames his Goliaths for his unhappiness and expects them or some Rescuer to fix the mess, instead of rising to the challenge himself.  As opposed to Victims, empowered individuals are Creators, to use David Emeralds\u2019 terms, who will rise to the challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing to keep in mind when considering our Goliaths is that we are teleological beings by nature.  We do things for a purpose.  Bullies or Goliaths do what they do to us for varying reasons, but mainly for control so they can avoid being hurt and victimized.  Problem is, their bullying actions gets them reactions that cause them to feel victimized, and so they repeat the same pattern to try to regain the upper ground and in the process continue to get the reactions, and so the cycle continues in a self-fueling loop.  Ironically, sometimes they enjoy that ongoing cycle because their actions cause predictability and thus gives them a sense of control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how do we step out of that loop?  In a nutshell, we mind our reactions to our Goliaths\u2019 tactics so we don\u2019t fall into the Dreaded Drama Triangle with them, an art that has to begin from within.  We set and maintain the necessary boundaries to stop them trespassing where they are not welcome.  We let go of all injustices suffered at their hands.  To learn more, you are welcome to read my book or buy me a coffee and I\u2019ll tell you all about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe\u2019ve all had experience of dreading interactions with certain people.  Your cell phone rings and you release a deep sigh when you see the name pop up on the caller display.  You\u2019re walking into the office and you see that coworker with the uncanny ability to get under your skin, so you feel like dashing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001034,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEmpowerment Is to Face Your Goliath - L'Association canadienne de counseling et de psychoth\u00e9rapie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ccpa-accp.ca\/empowerment-is-to-face-your-goliath\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Empowerment Is to Face Your Goliath - 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