24 September, 2012

Finding the Roots of Your Office Anger


Q. Sometimes at work, you feel angry or distressed and lose your composure, snapping at your colleagues or wanting to burst into tears. How can you defuse your feelings before you act on them?

A. When you are losing control emotionally, it’s hard to step back and see what’s really happening, says Lynn Friedman, a psychologist, psychoanalyst and career consultant in Washington.
When you feel an intense reaction at work, ask yourself if it’s realistic and reasonable. Sometimes what’s driving those intense feelings has little to do with what’s happening at the time. “It could have more to do with your professional relationship with this person, circumstances that led up to this upsetting event, self-confidence — or it could spring from earlier life experiences,” Dr. Friedman says.
Rather than reacting in the moment, buy yourself some time by saying: “This is disappointing to me and I want to think about it. Can we talk about it in a day or two?” Then try to look at what is angering and upsetting you as objectively as possible. “If, for example, you’re very disappointed about a decision affecting a project of yours, think about what might be behind that decision,” Dr. Friedman says.
Your reactions could even be linked to your childhood. If, for example, your boss speaks to you in a patronizing way that upsets you, “it could be that you’re not thinking like a 40-year-old man but catapulted back to being a 4-year-old boy whose father is arrogant and condescending,” she says. Making connections like that can help you recognize your emotional triggers and control your responses.
It might help to vent by writing down your feelings and thoughts, says Deborah Grayson Riegel, founder of Elevated Training in Hewlett, N.Y. The writing process may help you resolve your feelings — and you may want to share what you’ve written with friend, a spouse or someone at work you trust. “That person can read it and tell you if they see something in the situation you aren’t seeing,” Ms. Riegel says.

Q. Can suppressing feelings like anger, frustration or sadness affect your performance?

A. Yes. We avoid expressing emotions at work by twisting ourselves in all kinds of ways, creating an enormous amount of stress, says Karen Steinberg, a therapist and coach specializing in work and relationships and founder of the Possibility Practice, a counseling and coaching center in Manhattan. Suppression also thwarts creativity, says Ms. Steinberg, because energy that could be used for creative thinking is being “siphoned off to help you handle the boss or manage the situation.”
When you keep strong emotions bottled up, you don’t think as clearly as you do when you’re calm, says Ms. Riegel, who is also the author of “Oy Vey! Isn’t a Strategy.” “You’re not able to make good judgments,” she says. “You might have a physical response, too — your heart starts pounding, you get nauseated or your voice shakes.”
Although you may think you’re doing a good job of containing your feelings, they usually show in other ways, whether in your facial expressions, the comments you make or your attitude, says Aubrey Daniels, a psychologist who is founder of the management consulting firm Aubrey Daniels International and author of “Bringing Out the Best in People.” He says stifling your feelings makes you “physiologically uptight, and you are much less flexible both in your muscles and your thinking.”

Q. Are there socially acceptable ways to express negative feelings at work?

A. That’s more a question of timing than anything else, Dr. Friedman says. If possible, give yourself a day to think about what’s upsetting you. When you do speak to your boss or colleagues, use the same kind of language they use. If your boss can’t talk about feelings, for instance, use language that’s more task- and bottom-line-oriented, like, “I devoted a lot of the organization’s resources and my internal resources to this project and I’d like to learn more about what happened.”
Being emotional — appearing visibly agitated, red-faced or raising your voice — is generally considered unprofessional, so you want to have fully calmed down before you speak to a manager or colleagues. Before you detail your frustrations, let them know that you value your working relationship with them, Ms. Riegel says. “Then you can say, ‘Let me explain why this is a hot button for me,’ and ask, ‘Can you tell me what was going on from your perspective?’ “

By EILENE ZIMMERMAN

Source: NYTimes


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