Unless you’ve been a big success in your chosen career, you probably have a boss. Even if you’ve become a boss, you still usually have a bigger boss over you. If a job is like a piece of wood, then bosses are just part of the grain of it all, the part that gives you splinters. Some bosses are OK, some are really bad, and most are mediocre. If you play the game right you get thru the day with them, and life goes on.

There is a certain kind of boss that can be rather difficult, though. That’s the “paternal boss” (for lack of a better description). I’ve had two of them in my time. You really have to be careful with them, because you’re in for a lot of head games.

How does it all start? Well, maybe you first meet your future boss in an interview. Or maybe you know them in passing, and one day they mention to you that there might be a good opening in their company, and would you be interested. However it happens, they seem to like you right from the get-go. They’re very positive about all the interesting things you’ll be doing for them. You really feel appreciated; it’s great.

But after a month or two, things get just a little bit weird. For a moment or two, you’re not the golden boy (or girl) anymore. You did something wrong – but it’s hard to say just what. It’s not like you made some huge mistake and sent a million dollars of stuff off to the wrong place. It’s much more subtle. And then it goes away. But eventually it comes back again. And then things are fine again. Back and forth.

Eventually it gets worse. Your boss-friend now has some comments about your habits. Maybe you’re a bit too quiet at meetings. Or maybe your clothes or haircut aren’t exactly right. It’s all kind of insulting, but allegedly the boss is trying to help you. Your actual work product may be just fine; you’ve done everything you were asked, and you did it very well. But that’s just not enough for your parental boss. You should have put just a little bit extra into it. You didn’t see the big picture. Of course you won’t get fired; you’ll probably still get an annual raise. But the attitude remains: if you don’t change, then how can you ever get ahead . . . . like guess who . . . . . yes, like your wonderful head-case boss.

Then you’re into the thick of some heavy role-playing. Your boss is the successful parent, who works hard to make it in the world despite tough odds. And you are the lazy child, the one who has all the talent but just hasn’t yet learned how to unleash it in the world. The problem here is that the parental boss looks at you as something that he or she can change. You become their project. They want to change you. They want to turn you into them. They’re quite certain that this would all be for the best.

Hopefully, you have enough self-regard to resist being changed. Hopefully you’re going to stick with being you. Again, I’ve had two bosses like this in my life, and in both cases they came from families with fathers who were very demanding. These fathers came up in tough circumstances and fought their way to career success. Obviously they wanted to imprint it onto their own kids.

Some kids rebel against fathers like this, but some kids give in. (For both of my own parental bosses, they went thru rebellious phases in their teen and early adult years, but by age 30 or so they settled down into the kind of career that their father might approve of). And in the giving-in process, something is lost. Something of the real you, the deep-down inside part of you; it’s gone forever. And that makes a person insecure.

So in a nutshell, that’s what’s going on with a parental boss. He or she is very insecure, deep down inside. You couldn’t tell directly that they were insecure; they seem very self-confident in their actions. Hey, they’re bosses, after all. They’ve made it! But way down inside, they know something is wrong. And to help shield themselves from this quiet inner knowledge, they force themselves on you. They want to see you “blossom”, so as to affirm the goodness of what their fathers did to them.

And if you don’t play ball with them, then it can get very weird. You eventually split them in two. One day it’s dad, all mad at you for being a failure in life despite all he did for you. Then, another day it’s the “real person” down inside trying to come back to life, wanting to be your friend. But hopefully, your schitzo boss eventually gets tired of what you’re doing to him or her, and then just treats you like another worker. So long as you don’t make any big mistakes, they leave you alone, mostly. But the other two inner-characters never completely disappear. So long as you keep working for this boss, things will be unpredictable.

Hopefully you’ll eventually get a better job. But until you do, you just need to keep on believing in yourself, and in your ability to do a good job your own way. In both of my parental-boss jobs, other people in the organization – including the boss’s boss – saw that I was doing good work and told me so, without any head games. “Stay in the light”, and eventually, it will all be all right.