Nina B. (SLE) - Mistress of Her Own Territory, a Need for Control

At work everything was always my way. I had a warehouse, with a phone in the warehouse. You call, give instructions, and they tell me: “Wow, you’re just like a commander!” People sometimes take offense at my voice—it’s a commanding voice. Sometimes I say: “This is the last time! Eliminate everything immediately!” Everything was my way. There was order. I feel that people obey me. If someone didn’t obey, I would leave for a while, but in the end they still caved in.

I remember there were a lot of children’s coats. I come in—piles! I tell the storekeeper: “Give me size thirty-two.” The storekeeper starts rummaging around, and I say: “How many times do I have to say that everything needs to be sorted by size!” The next day I come in—everything is sorted by size.

I walked around the warehouse like the mistress of the place. If I came to the warehouse and someone else was there without my knowledge, it irritated me: “Why did he come onto my territory? Only I should be the mistress here, and everything should go only through me!”

Redoing things my own way—that’s mine. I come to the village to visit my brother. He has a table standing there, and I need to move it to another place, clear everything off it so nothing interferes with me. In the room I also need to rearrange things; I don’t like how he has it. I don’t think about whether my brother will like it or not—as long as I like it. And he says to me: “Don’t touch anything here! Don’t touch it! You came here just once!” And I say: “It’ll be more convenient for you, that’s all!” And I redo everything my own way.