What I am learning from my coworker

AFter reading the comments on my previous blog on this specific coworker of mine who I judged to be negatively impacting me, I decided to investigate further what this coworker is telling me about myself. In other words, where I fit in this picture so that I can realize a lot of things.

 I find this coworker getting annoyed so easily at almost every situation that you can get annoyed about.
Here are some examples of instances:

1. When nurses order urine tests on every patient in the Emergency room, she gets annoyed at that especially if the diagnosis of the patient is something where you don't really think that a urine test is needed.
She also tends to not deal with the urine tests right away because she thinks that they can wait. When the nurses call and ask for patient results, she tells them : "well, the urine test won't really change the diagnosis of the patient, would it?" She then comes to whine to me about that. Where do I see myself in this? Well, I feel the same about the excessive amount of orders for urine tests. Yet, I don't say much to anyone. I do feel angry sometimes at the nurse for just ordering the test but I don't see myself whining and complaining about it. I tend to just accept it and do my job. After talking to my friend A about it, he told me that what you are doing is self supressing yourself. The coworker T. is just revealing what you are trying to suppress. I guess T is somewhat of a reflection of me. SF : I forgive myself for allowing myself to experience emotions of anger, fustration, pain, nuisance and disbelief at the nurses and also at T whenever she whines about the situation. I realize by doing so, I have participated in this mind construct enslavement pattern. The next time I have to perform urine tests or any other tests that we question to be unecessary and if I start to experience feelings of anger inside of me, I stop, breathe and tell myself that the reason I am able to get a paycheque is via these tests. Therefore, I commit myself to performing my duties without any emotions involved because what is best for all is delivering great patient care and I ensure that I do all I can in my control to deliver proper care.

2. When certain trauma cases happen where there is an amount of stress such as having to work fast or phoning other healthcare workers or just processing tests fast, she tends to get fustrated and starts to take
it out by complaining and whining that the system is shitty and that the ward needs to revisit their decisions of handling the patient. . Whenever she starts to feel fustrated, I often find that I participate in her reactions by taking things personally. For instance, if I deliver to her a sample, she will get pissed off and say things regarding the nurse, and I often get mad because I am like : "come on, shut up and just do your job!" or her reaction/curse words used would cause me to just crush and fade like a flower under a heavy weight. SF: I forgive myself for allowing myself to react with anger, fustration, pain, madness at T in my head because I judge her work mannerism and I find that they suck because i believe that my work ethics are right. I realize that by judging her I have put myself in a higher position and creating inequality and operated from the point of self- righteousness. I realize that judging someone is participating in the mind system causing more charge and enslavement. I commit myself to : Whenever a similar situation happens where I feel that T is evoking emotions, I breathe, stand back and now assume the role of an observer as opposed to being in that situation. I observe her and do not allow myself to participate in any reaction/emotion/gossip that my mind may make me think at that time. I focus entirely on my work and walk away if I have to to perform my own duties.

3. She  has an issue with immigrants coming into the country and not working but ending up getting a pension because of their age. She also whines if she looks at the diagnosis of a patient and judges them for bringing diseases into the country if these patients happen to be immigrants or tourists eg Malaria. I tend to take that personally because most immigrants are from Asia and when she complains about the system, I feel that sometimes she is seeing other ethnicities as unequal to her. SF: I forgive myself for allowing myself to experience feelings of inferiority because of my ethnicity. I realize that by me taking her personally when she judges other races, I am not seeing myself as one and equal to her and I am self sabotaging myself. I realize that I am also participating in the mind system by experiencing anger, shame, embarassment, bitterness and fustration towards T. The next time she says something about a patient who is of color, I stop and breathe. I stand up, raise my chin, and become an observer. I let her vent, remain silent and do not allow my mind or myself to participate in this conflict via the mind gossip or internal judgements. I realize that the more I will allow myself to be crushed with her attitude, the more I am creating such situations. I realize that me taking things personally is just self sabotage and I commit myself to push myself to walk through this point of mine through breath.

4. She gets annoyed with certain assistants because of bad work ethics. Most of them happen to be of color and therefore as above, I used to take her personally as above.  I now realise after talking to another coworker that she is not a racist, plus that those lab assistants indeed had bad work ethics but because I had judged her as being prejudiced, I automatically took her personally when she would tell me that this MLA is doing a bad job. SF: I forgive myself for allowing myself to experience feelings of inferiority because of my ethnicity. I realize that by me taking her personally when she judges other races, I am not seeing myself as one and equal to her and I am self sabotaging myself. I realize that I am also participating in the mind system by experiencing anger, shame, embarassment, bitterness and fustration towards T. I correct this to: The next time she says that an assistant is performing a bda job, I step back, take a breath and ask her :"what can we do to rectify the situation?" And based on the conversation,   I take 100% responsibility to correct it. I do not allow my mind and feelings to make me judge her or gossip about  her, I simply assess the situation and do what is required and what is best for the job.

5.  She gossips about everyone behind their back. For instance, she gossips about A to me and with A she may gossip about me. I tend to fear gossip and whenever someone gossips or says something about me, I instantly experience feelings of fear and anxiety in me. Therefore I end up moulding myself in a way where I am not natural, but try to stay away from her as much as possible and avoid having to talk to her to prevent situations from happening where I give her a chance to gossip about me. SF: I forgive myself for allowing myself to fear and feel anxious about someone gossiping about me. I realize that people only gossip about a negative situation that did not turn out to their liking. I realize that people should take responsibility and make their point across to the other person and not spread gossips to others in an attempt to just avoid talking to them to make their point across. I forgive myself for allowing myself to suppress myself when I want to make my point across to T but failed to do so because I fear her reaction and the consequence which is creation of more gossips in the workplace. I forgive myself for participating in the mind system by allowing emotions and feelings to rule me over. I forgive myself for allowing myself to internally in my mind gossip about her by having all sort of thoughts about her. I realize that by me gossiping about her using my mind, I am not putting an end to this point of gossip, but rather ensuring its continuity. I correct this to: The next time something comes up where I fear being gossiped, I stop and breath a few times until I no longer experience any pang of fear/guilt/anxiety inside of me. I tell myself : "If people do not have the guts to say something in my face, then the gossip is obviously unecessary." I also realize that when people talk about me, they are talking about me in a situation that had previously happened and if they were not pleased with the way the situation had been dealt with, then they would have pointed that across to someone else, without necessarily having the intention to downgrade me as person. I realize therefore that people only talk about me due to some work related manner which they hope that I would do differently. Therefore, they are not necessarily gossiping, but describing how they would have wanted the situation to unfold. I therefore stop, breathe, understand where the person is coming from and correct myself to ensuring that in the future, I direct myself to doing what is practical in the situation.

Coworker's negative behavior affecting me

A few days ago, an incident happened at work that got me really disgusted and fustrated with a specific coworker. A patient had drowned and they ended up in the Emergency Dept at the hospital I work at. The health care professionals were doing all they could to resuscitate the person. Our task in this was to analyze this patient's sample as fast as possible and phone the doctor and give them results.

It happened to be that we were getting numerous samples one after the other from the patient and this particular hospital I work at is  not defined as a trauma center where trauma cases as such are usually seen.
Having done my training at a trauma center, I was well aware of how to deal with these kinds of situations as they arise because at that training hospital I was told to work fast and accurately. However, my coworker that evening ended up getting really annoyed and fustrated as more and more samples from this patient came in. She told me that the doctors should really be considering transferring that patient elsewhere as we are not equipped to handle such cases. On one hand, she was right. On the other, patients need to be stabilized first before they are shipped to other hospitals and that was what the doctors and nurses were attempting to do.

My main concern that evening was 'why is this one coworker so annoyed everytime she sees a case like this?' She always seems to complain and question what other healthcare professionals seek for as opposed to just accepting orders and doing her job. It almost seemed as if she just didn't want to work for patients or she was doing her profession not from the standpoint of really wanting to help patients heal. And what if that patient happened to be her brother, how would she react to that?

I noticed I started to get really angry inside but didn't allow myself to force this anger on her because I know from experience it would end up being a gossip show where she would just end up gossiping about me to the whole world.  Instead, I just swallowed my anger and continued to work. Yesterday, I decided I was going my supervisor know about this incident because I felt that was taking 100% responsibility to at least spread the word out about attitudes and workplace.

I realized also that there were 2 main points that arose in this particular incident. I realized that I feared being gossiped about and because of that I didn't want to talk to the person to let her know how I felt. I also allowed my emotions to enslave me by reacting to the situation and experiencing all forms of emotions such as anger and fustration at this person.

Here is the self forgiveness in relation to this:

I forgive myself for allowing myself to allow backchats to influence me and render me silent, depressed, anxious and miserable. I realize that I have the power to stop backchats if I choose to do so.

I forgive myself for allowing myself to fear being not liked. I realize that by me fearing that that I end up moulding myself in a way to try to prevent people from disliking me and therefore not expressing myself completely, not living and breathing myself but existing for others as opposed to for myself. I now realize that by pretending to be someone else, I have also rendered myself as a victim and made my life more miserable by allowing emotions such as anger, pain, sorrow, frustration and bitterness to prevail. I realize that when I am moulding myself to express ‘someone else’ but me that the type of relationships I am creating with people is not the type I want to create as these people like the fake personality I am expressing as opposed to true being of me.

I forgive myself for allowing myself to fear gossip, thus making decisions in an attempt to avoid gossips as opposed to realizing that I have to do what is required and best for all. I now realize that gossip only reflects who one is as in one being a nasty person and has nothing to do with me. I forgive myself for allowing myself to not do ‘corrected reports’ at work because I fear that my supervisor  would go and tell the whole lab that I had made a mistake and gossip about it so that she can satisfy her own ego and personality design.  I realize that by not doing the ‘corrected report’ I have placed myself in a more vulnerable position with regards to my job security because I have not followed the procedures that the job required and instead tried to avoid having to confront my supervisor by not correcting the mistake. I realize that eventually the mistake was shown to me by my supervisor because she had fished through patient reports and saw the mistake I was trying to cover up and that is the consequence of me wanting to evade the situation at all cost. I forgive myself for allowing myself to get angry at the situation, at myself and at the boss for finding out about this mistake because of my fear of being gossiped about by her in the lab.  

 I forgive myself for allowing myself to be ruled by T who is another co-worker who tends to enjoy gossiping about other people. I realize that by me fuelling the gossip in an attempt to win her friendship that I am allowing the mind consciousness system to work as opposed to just stopping it by giving her mind and mine the energy to drive the gossip further.        

I forgive myself for allowing myself to feel bad whenever I bring something up to T regarding work to make sure we are delivery good patient care because she tends to get annoyed when people say something to her. I realize that when she gets annoyed I start feelings emotions of anger, panic, anxiety, fear, wanting to withdraw and resentment because I fear that she will judge me and start gossiping behind my back. I realize that her being annoyed is just part of who she exists as in her chosen personality. I realize also that I do not have any control over what she chooses to accept and allow and therefore if she reacts in a certain way, that is not grounds for me to taking her personally.