Although she had initially been relieved that she would continue working with two of her former team members, she discovered that the men seemed to stick together but excluded her from their casual conversations. She had tried to insert herself in their shared jokes but gave up after a few weeks. When she had commented that their new supervisor was a real stickler for grammar, one of them had replied, “Guess Sandy won’t be able to protect you anymore.” Ruth realized that they had harbored resentment toward her close relationship with Sandy and obviously didn’t think that she had deserved her promotion. From that day on, just seeing them or hearing their voices filled her with tension. She worried that they were out to get her and that instead of supporting her, they wanted her to fail. Ruth even started to wonder if her supervisor had covered up her weaknesses and if without Sandy’s guidance and supervision she would be fired.
Ruth had cut herself off from so many important feelings. The merger had made everyone anxious about job security and the changes in personnel that were bound to occur. She had also felt grief that she would no longer be working with Sandy, for she had come to think of Sandy as a kind of aunt whom she could trust and rely on. Getting Sandy’s approval had meant a great deal, and Ruth felt a void that was difficult to put into words. But when she saw her new office arrangement, she understood that there was no one there who could guide her or share her simple pleasure in things like noticing a new bloom on her plants. She felt that it wasn’t fair that after six years she would have to start all over. When she realized that her coworkers were resentful and unsupportive, Ruth felt alone and vulnerable. She became more aware of the competitive nature of this new work environment and her inability to protect herself from an unanticipated source of aggression. Any one of these events would have been difficult enough to process, but together they pushed her into a state of emotional numbness.
How different it could have been if Ruth had been able to identify her feelings and ask herself if there were old emotional memories adding to the intensity. She would have realized that her new work situation had triggered childhood experiences that had never been fully worked through. The most important ones were connected to her experience of losing her best friend and social standing after her family moved across the country for her dad’s new job. Ruth might have remembered that her parents were too busy to notice or help her deal with her loss and the challenges of being left out and eventually bullied by the kids in her new class. Ruth’s passivity had led to a two-year nightmare that had reemerged to shadow the present in ways that left her powerless and emotionally overwhelmed.
Rejection at Work
While work is not a popularity contest, people need to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance. Even if you are the kind of person who likes to keep your personal and work lives separate, knowing how to build and foster relationships with the people you work with is important. At the end of the day, your coworkers are the ones who participate in group decisions that affect your own goals and opportunities. Even if your ideas are solid, if someone in the group with stronger relationship connections opposes your plan, chances are that the group will side against you. If being in control is one of your triggers, then things are set for you to overreact in ways that keep this vicious cycle in play.
Psychologists who specialize in the work environment have just started to explore the dynamic of rejection by work colleagues. While past research has explained how we react to harsh and punitive bosses, the new research explains that we are even more likely to react when we feel excluded or treated like a scapegoat by coworkers (Penhaligon, Louis, and Restubog 2009). When the work culture allows unbridled competition and jockeying for position, some employees will respond by becoming more assertive. Those who back away or implode may easily become targets for the unrest and anxiety that the entire group is struggling with. Being able to use our awareness and name our feelings allows us to think more clearly about the dynamics and to generate productive options that are not shadowed by unfortunate childhood experiences.
A Thoughtful Perspective
The more familiar we are with the kinds of dynamics that can lead us to an emotional overreaction at work, the better prepared we will be to manage it. Work involves relationships with others who may activate control struggles, criticize our performance, and compete in ways that breed envy and resentment. Work is also the arena where we test our own competence and efficacy and endure disappointment and, occasionally, failure. For many of us, the work we do is an important part of our identity and our financial security, as well as our self-esteem. Our emotional responses can be just as intense at work as in our private lives, and our need to stay calm while thoughtfully processing information is as vital to emotional health as it is to career.
Taking Responsibility
Overreactions can have a negative effect on the way you are perceived by others. If you’ve had a meltdown or explosion at work, you are better off taking responsibility for your behavior and attempting to repair relationships that have been affected than trying to ignore the situation. Most colleagues will appreciate a coworker who apologizes and admits to being under too much stress. Colleagues are more likely to let the incident pass if they realize that you truly regret making them the target for issues that didn’t involve them. It is also important to take the first step in apologizing to your supervisor, boss, or clients who may have witnessed or heard about your overreaction. Taking this stance requires maturity and humility, which is exactly what you’ll need to have in order to counteract any impressions that you are immature or have a sense of entitlement. You may not think that overreactions of the implosive kind create problems for others, but that is simply not the case. If you become withdrawn and moody, you bring that atmosphere with you. Cynicism and pessimism can bring down the spirits of coworkers and push people away. Taking responsibility by admitting that you haven’t been managing your stress in the best way possible helps correct the image you project and opens up potential connections that could help you turn your situation around.
Chapter 11
Challenges at Home
Why is it that we have one set of rules regarding the way we treat the people we work or socialize with and another for the people who mean the most to us? Sometimes we can admit that it’s easier to let off steam when we don’t have to face the reprimands or consequences in a job setting, but most people I know deeply regret the times their overreactions have hurt their partners, parents, or children.
Daily Life
Being part of a family automatically reminds us of the memories formed during our childhood. Triggers related to criticism, envy, rejection, and control are easily activated even though the people involved are completely different. Shared living almost always guarantees that we will have to face the same demands and issues that created turmoil when we were young. We may be older and wiser, but we are not always prepared for the emotional minefield we navigate on a daily basis. Each time we step on an emotionally charged mine, we are swept back into expectations, emotional memories, and childhood beliefs that haven’t been thoroughly resolved. Once the brain has processed an event as a danger, the stage for overreaction has been set.
Costly Implosions
If your childhood experiences make it difficult for you to express your point of view and risk conflict, then you may find yourself avoiding problems until you are over your limit.
Sarah’s Story
Last week Sarah called to cancel an appointment she had for marital therapy with her husband, Rob. “I just don’t think this will ever work, and I don’t have the energy to keep on trying. I’ve been thinking about divorce for almost two years now, and I don’t want to put it off any longer.” I coaxed Sarah to keep our appointment and asked what had led to her despair. Sarah started to speak about their daughter’s soccer game and how badly Rob had behaved. The kids had been overscheduled that day and needed two parents to rush one child to a baseball game while the other child was taken home to shower and then on to
a music lesson. As soon as the last whistle had blown, Rob was anxious to get to Sarah’s car in order to retrieve the baseball equipment and water bottles he had promised to bring for the team. She found herself scurrying behind him, arms overfilled with practice balls, half-finished snacks, and their son’s backpack. The worst part was when Rob found the car door locked and snarled at her to hurry up so that he wouldn’t be late for the game. At that moment, the story of her marriage coalesced. She would be overburdened, taken for granted, and forced to answer to him. Her own dream of having a partner who would gallantly offer to share in carrying the kids’ belongings and make her feel appreciated would shrink until it was invisible.
In therapy, I was able to explore how that one harried moment of switching equipment at a car had unleashed hundreds of memories of times when Rob and other family members had placed burdens on her without seeming to notice or care about her. How different it might have been if Sarah had paid attention to the way she felt as she started to pull belongings together at the end of the game. She might have noticed her stomach twisting into knots at the sight of Rob casually turning his back. If she had been able to name her feelings, she might have known that she resented the way he assumed that she would do all the work. She might have noticed first a fleeting wish that someone would see that she needed help and then the way she checked her urge to call Rob and the children back to her side and demand that they help. If she had noticed these feelings and thoughts, she might have been able to ask herself to name the old emotional memories that were stopping her.
In therapy, Sarah was able to identify the feelings and themes that culminated in her decision to pursue a divorce. Even though Sarah knew she felt overextended and taken for granted, she was not comfortable asking for help or complaining when others didn’t volunteer to help her out. Instead, Sarah displayed a veneer of capability and preferred to view herself as being self-sufficient and capable. When I asked Sarah if she had always been like that, she assured me that she had been that way all her life. Sarah could rattle off stories of winning tournament trophies and buying her own clothes but had difficulty coming up with memories of being taken care of by her parents. If anything, the roles had been switched. Sarah told me that she had learned to cook and do the laundry when she was nine years old, and she remembered making lunches for both herself and her mother. She didn’t want to blame her mother and tried not to think about how difficult their lives became after her father’s unilateral decision to get a divorce a few weeks after Sarah’s eighth birthday. Sarah’s mother had managed to find a job that helped them survive financially but was so exhausted and depressed by her situation that she let the burden of household responsibilities fall on Sarah. Even worse, Sarah’s mother would go to bed right after dinner and cry herself to sleep every night.
Sarah had lost a great deal of respect for both of her parents, believing that her mother’s emotional neediness had been part of the reason her father had left. Sarah still loved her father but had privately concluded that men who were faced with too many demands would walk out the door. Until I helped Sarah connect the dots, she had never considered how her own childhood burdens made her want to protect her own children from having any responsibilities. By not repeating her mother’s neediness and ensuring that neither her husband nor her children would have any demands, Sarah was perpetuating a cycle where she could never be taken care of. Without knowing that it was safe to ask for help, she was repeating a past that filled her with resentment and despair.
Once it was openly explored, Rob was able to apologize for being so focused on getting to the baseball game that he hadn’t noticed her struggle. But he also insisted that he would have been glad to help her carry the soccer balls if she had asked for help. It just didn’t occur to him that she was having a hard time. By the end of that session the couple was talking about ways to check in with each other that might prevent this kind of stress, and when they walked out, Sarah was smiling at the man she had wanted to divorce just an hour before.
Self-Sufficiency
Too many people find themselves in Sarah’s predicament, where their obligations and responsibilities have taken over their lives. Like Sarah, they have grown up not really trusting that others will be there to share their load. Being part of a new family offers the opportunity to try doing things differently. Even if you didn’t have parents who were there to notice and step in when you needed help, that doesn’t mean that this pattern will be impossible to break. If you are exhausted by responsibilities, it’s hard not to overreact.
Costly Explosions
Life is full of disappointments and times when things simply go wrong. People forget to set their alarm clocks, dogs get into garbage, and milk expires. But instead of learning to help each other and working together to solve these problems or find a humorous perspective, some families erupt with tension that is partly created by the need to find fault.
Ethan and Olivia’s Story
Ethan and Olivia knew that they each tended toward perfectionism but were relatively happy in the first few years of their marriage. Both found good jobs after they graduated law school, and they celebrated their first anniversary believing that they would be happy forever. Things changed dramatically when Olivia quit her job after their son was born and Ethan learned that his chances of advancing in his law firm were weak. With school loans and a mortgage on their new condominium, both were feeling the pinch of financial stress.
Olivia knew that Ethan needed to put in extra hours at his job, but she secretly believed that his tendency to be forgetful was largely to blame for his lack of success, as well as the extra time he spent at work in order to wrap up projects. A typical argument erupted when Ethan was rushing out the door in the morning only to discover that the car battery was dead. He scurried back and announced to Olivia that he would miss his train to work if she didn’t drop what she was doing and drive him to the station. Olivia needed to get their son ready for preschool and both were still in their pajamas. Annoyed by Ethan’s tone of voice, Olivia coldly responded that things would be a little easier on the whole family if he could remember to make sure the car doors were properly closed before he went to bed at night. With that, Ethan exploded in a rage, saying that Olivia always assumed that everything was his fault and that he’d be happy to be in his pajamas right now if she was willing to get a job. Within minutes, both were screaming at the top of their lungs, the baby was crying, and the commuter train had come and gone.
Better Resolutions
When we have difficulty tolerating feelings such as guilt, inadequacy, or shame, we may feel angry at the other person who is involved in the situation. Instead of recognizing that our own disappointment or sense of failure has awakened painful emotional memories, we think that the person who expressed a need or injury has done something purposeful to make us feel bad. While it’s easy to “shoot the messenger,” it creates unnecessary tension. The person whose needs are expressed ends up being attacked, and a problem that might have been easily resolved gets lost in the eruption that follows.
So many couples come to therapy because they feel that their needs and hopes cannot be safely expressed. The belief that you have no voice is a dangerous one, as it awakens triggers of being neglected, having no control, and feeling unimportant. Adults who turn shame or guilt into rage have difficulty hearing their children or even tolerating situations that might lead them to a happier outcome. The pursuit of blame prevents us from registering the lesson that needs to be learned and offering our support to help others restore goodwill. Situations that aren’t resolved tend to breed resentment and flare up as quickly as a forest fire in a drought.
Taking Responsibility
Perhaps you can identify with the reactions to feeling neglected, misunderstood, or blamed described in the stories in this chapter. Many of the parents and couples I work with have also found that these are the triggers that have led them to withdraw (implode) or start a battle (explode). In chapters 12 and 13,
I will help you consider ways to prevent overreactions, but it is also important to think about how to take responsibility when you have already overreacted and have hurt someone you care about.
Resolving an overreaction can be just as meaningful to you as it is to the person you would like to mend things with. It can only happen when you are able to respond in a thoughtful way that indicates you have been able to reflect on the trigger, identify your feelings, and sort through the defenses and emotional memories that have most likely pushed you into such an extreme state. Your ability to show this more thoughtful self to the people who experienced your overreaction can be beneficial to everyone involved. Mending hurt feelings and disappointments allows you to bring important ingredients to the relationships you value the most. When the capacity to empathize or apologize is scarce in a family, everyone suffers, but as people begin to benefit from the strong emotional resource of feeling cared about and understood, everyone will become better able to provide this when others are in need. You may be the one offering this gift today but enjoying it when it is given to you tomorrow.
Stop Overreacting Page 14