Managing Distress

Doing Facebook calming duty is burning me right out. I am inclined to go back to not volunteering, so I can work, and feel peace. I don't know why people can't manage their emotions. I mean, I do know. It takes a lot of learning, as my generation wasn't taught as many skills as kids are mostly taught now. And they are scared. There's a lot of fear right now. Maybe I lost some credibility when I put on that golden wig last weekend. (that's a joke...)

Emotional damage persists and most of us tend to spread it without reflecting on reasons we might not want to escalate things, especially when we are angry. It's hard for me still to feel my stomach clenching up and my hands beginning to tremble. I mostly have learned not to immediately type something on social media, but my first reaction is to write things down, which I do here if I think they might be useful, or just in my journal if they are less organized and need more sorting out.

What I am trying to do on the Facey is try to point out some ways to move forward. A lot of people are hearing part of the story or only hearing it from people who are also mad, and in a community like ours you always  know someone who is hurting from what has happened. You generally gravitate toward the ones you care about the most, without necessarily knowing how things might actually be different from what you believe. I know I am only seeing part of the picture myself, so I'm trying to be careful.

One thing we are not addressing, and won't, is the underlying emotional landscape filled with people who are or were being misled, whether that is intentional or innocent. There are false narratives. I just pointed one out, after someone declared that the Board doesn't care about the staff and the staff knows it. That is called the member/staff divide and it does not exist. All of our members care deeply about our staff, and depend on them for all of the ways we work together to generate the income we all use to live on. Not all of our members know many of the staff, as our interactions don't always get personal. There is likely some reluctance to engage on both sides, for all kinds of reasons, but we gladly earn the money to pay them, we like to pay them well, and we are grateful to them for all that they do. 

Another of the false narratives is that there is some bad person out to ruin what we have built together. That is simply not possible. We never have a situation where everyone agrees, and we have plenty of stubborn people who insist on thinking for themselves, and will stand up for justice and truth. We actually react quite uniformly to manipulation and deceit, and sometimes that is one of the things simmering under the surface that is driving what is more diplomatically phrased. Most of us can recognize power trips and gaslighting and excuses and while we might not seem to react, we check that box in our minds and take future action carefully. We have people among us who use bullying tactics. We all need to learn more about how to identify and counter them.

And we tend to see everything down on the Park Blocks and in the LEC. We might not talk about it or let on, but we are observant. We spend all day looking closely at our customers and other members so we can refine our own actions to make ourselves more successful. When someone is doing well, we see if there is something they are doing that we can try. When they aren't, we usually have an opinion about why. And we talk to each other. We all have our networks.

So there is the public version, which is what I am trying to preserve on the Facey, and there are the many private versions, which we share in our networks. We all know things that we can't really say out loud without causing a fight. 

We're actually arguing about bullying now...it's centered on one of the Board members, mostly, who is assertive and has made a big impact by calling out some of the loose and unfortunate things that we were doing on the Board level and in general, but in my case, and others, we were bullied by the GM and some of the people aligned with her. They would deny it is bullying...this is known as DARVO, which is deny and reverse victim and offender. People like me who have trauma in our backgrounds have a broader identification of bullying than others. For me the gaslighting and manipulation with charm kinds of things are more triggering...I'm easy to manipulate so it happens rather often. Coercion, slipping things by me, setting me up...I identify these as bullying tactics while other people just use them as a way to get their needs met. For me, the toxicity was coming from the top.

The way the Committees were being used to exclude and terminate members, and keep them from actually doing things as members, was offensive. I saw more than one person be pushed out for the comfort of the people I started calling the Mean Girls. I saw a lot of control tactics being used, a lot of dismissiveness, and heard a lot of discriminatory language and just mean comments coming from a few people. I felt dismissed and disregarded rather frequently, or just bypassed and prevented from making the contributions I had formerly been welcomed to make. I'm sure this would be denied so it isn't useful to fight about it at this point. I just don't want to see a controlling, manipulative person in power again. 

We'll see how that goes. Interpretation of bullying is very personal and confusing to most people. Generally correcting a bully requires some type of assertion that also looks and feels like bullying. It's a real skill set to draw boundaries in a calm and nonviolent way, particularly with people who see calm as passive and angry as positive. For that reason I am unlikely to attend the Board meeting. 

I had to call it out, actually, the last time we had a staff transition that was unpopular. One of the people we fired/let resign manipulated a bunch of people to come and fight the Board to save his job...they were gaslit to misinterpret the Board's actions, and then he broke confidentiality to accuse the Board of things to which they could not respond without breaking confidentiality themselves. Some did. it was super difficult to calm down the crowd and convince them we would be okay, and I finally just called it bullying and inappropriate in the board room and the managers stalked out and proceeded to do some really shady actions, that we didn't find out until later. We naively extended them some kindnesses while they were essentially sabotaging our office, as we found out the next day, but it was all set aside so we could get up and running for the market in two days. We couldn't get into our database due to those actions, so we had to wing it for two weeks, but we did it, and put things back together, and righted our ship. It took a lot of volunteers and some really long hours.

So far, this is nothing like how bad that was. This is relatively orderly and I don't think there is any sabotage, hopefully, except for a nasty FB post to break the confidentiality and get the members all upset. It prevented the Board from framing things in a positive and legally responsible manner, which is still brewing on the site, so this is day two of me trying to spin things to let's fix it mode, which is getting a little more complicated. There are definitely a couple of people whom I will be trying to avoid in the future. 

But also, the good people are coming out and offering to help and I think things are going to survive the turmoil. I think it had to happen, judging by the number of members in my network who are relieved and ready for this change. As I recall it took a season or so for the atmosphere to settle the last time...the crimes were not addressed, the people involved went on to get their second chances, and only a few of us were forever changed. This could settle down faster once people are reassured that it is okay and once we get the manager we imagine. Let's hope we get that person. The uglier it gets, the less likely it will be that someone will want to step into it, so there's that concern. I wish I knew how to make that point to the people who are angry. They're angry at me now, for trying. 

Oh well. Comes with the territory. The people in my network get me. That's enough for now. 

Later: Actually after reading some hateful and humiliating comments directed to me I deleted my posts and comments. I'm back to not volunteering. They can figure it out for themselves. I'll provide archives when asked but that is it.  

Now this is the next day and I feel like I made the right decision. It's like I was never there. People call for calm are trashed, and there's a recall petition and a hope that the GM will be reinstated. A much bigger mess than expected...but for my self preservation I will have to stay out of it. I'm beyond hoping or trying to make it be the market I have given my life to support. It's not my market, and a lifetime of giving does not guarantee a thing, not even gratitude. Lesson learned.