Real Life Stories
THE CASE OF Sally
“I don't know what to do. Each time I have to go to a board meeting in the corporation I work for, I get cold feet. This feeling of anxiety wells up inside of me and I get tense. You see, I am the only female among a group of 12 top level male executives in a corporation. Since I am the only woman, I know that men relate to me differently than to each other. They are a little bit more deferential to me. At the large board meetings, my heart begins to pound when it is my turn to report and to share my opinions. I am not a shy person. But at these corporate board meetings, I feel as if I have to prove myself. Sometimes I lose my authentic voice and other times I become overly aggressive. I am just not myself.”
After Sally shared her story, I asked her to see an image in her mind's eye of the corporate meeting, in order to concretize the experience that was already forming in her mind as she was telling the story. Sally said, “They are huddled together talking to each other, looking confident. There is a feeling of camaraderie among them. I feel like an outsider."
I asked Sally to scan the image for more detail. She examined the image more closely and was surprised to notice that the men talking were actually competing with each other, each one trying to impress the other with his ideas or accomplishments. Instead of camaraderie, she saw tension and competition between them.
Sally had already begun to feel more relaxed after seeing the image of how the men spoke to one another. I then invited her to see herself interacting with them in the images. Surprised again, she said, "What I see in their eyes is pleasure as I enter the room. They are happy to see me. It reminds me of the look they have when I have lunch with them or meet with them individually. When we meet informally or at lunch it is more relaxed. Often, we talk about our personal lives. In fact, they tell me some of their problems with the other men they are working with, or about their wives, girlfriends or families."
Once Sally found her natural connection to some of the men she worked with, I asked her to relive the first image of the board meeting. By this time, her perceptions of herself and of them had dramatically shifted. "This time the men appear competitive and not that trusting of each other. I see that they like me and are not threatened by me. Looking at the image now, I feel more secure, more powerful. I see that my ideas are indeed heard. I thought I had to act like one of the guys to be more respected and seen, but I can see that I actually have an edge being a woman. My genuine caring and connection are a kind of influential and positive power. I feel much more confident now to just be myself."
Sally had been seeing her work situation from the narrow perspective of her insecurities and fears. She had been raised to feel that women and their ideas were not as valuable as men's. This information had been passed on to her from her mother and from our culture's many overt and subtle messages about men's superiority, which lived within her unconscious mind and popped up uninvited when she interacted with the men at work. Yet, inside her existed a storehouse of her authentic gifts and abilities, which she could uncover through working with the eidetic images in her mind.