Are you a victim of weaponised incompetence? It’s a term that’s gaining some traction at the moment.
“Strategically avoiding responsibility” is how psychologist Jocelyn Brewer described it to The Briefing host Katrina Blowers.
“It could be quite damaging for for women and the division of labour in the home. And I know I’ve often heard men, when they’ve become new parents. Say ohh I’ll just leave the first six to twelve months up to mum… you know I I have no role here… The baby doesn’t want me…” Katrina explained.
Weaponised incompetence is a passive-aggressive pattern of behaviour in which someone in a relationship (professional or intimate) either deliberately performs a task poorly or pretends not to know how to do a task to avoid responsibility.
In this episode of The Briefing, psychologist Jocelyn Brewer shares how it can manifest, and how to tell if you might be an unknowing victim.
“That’s where a lot of it starts, I think is around caregiving,” Jocelyn explained.
She said it’s important parents have conversations around who can do what, and how people can help with caregiving in different ways.
She said women can often feel like because they are good at a job, they should to it.
“Women who are not necessarily good at taking compliments, may feel like. “Well, if I’m good at it, I should keep going and this is my role and my contribution”
“They then take on more and more, which then depletes them not only physically and psychologically, but then really can disrupt a a relationship and and start to, you know, create that conflict and resentment, and that’s the start of a bigger downfall within relationships, which gets quite tricky.”
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