Sometimes being at work can feel like being with toddlers, everywhere you turn it seems like someone is pushing your buttons (or maybe you have toddlers, and this happens as soon as you walk in the door from work).
To be clear, this experience can happen even if you work with the loveliest people in the world. I know this because I work with a great team and can still feel triggered throughout the day. Unfortunately, it’s part of the human condition.
Do you ever feel super reactive? You are minding your own business, doing your job, and BAM something happens that gets you instantly riled up? It could be an email, an interaction with a patient or a coworker, a call from home.
You feel your chest tighten and your heart rate rise. You find yourself wanting to snap back at someone, or send that email RIGHT AWAY WITH CAPITAL LETTERS, or start crying. You find a colleague and immediately start venting, defending why you should be so triggered.
And the heart rate stays up, the tightness in your chest swells, and you continue to feel awful.
That peace and determination that you felt when you got to work goes straight out the window.
So how do we become less reactive (since we can’t necessarily control the triggers)?
How do we stop this springboard to rumination, anxiety, and feeling even worse?
The first step is to think about it after the fact.
“Wait, isn’t that what we are trying to avoid?”
Yes and no.
When a situation like this occurs, take some time to examine the experience after it happens. When you get home, take a few minutes to see if you can step back and examine the facts. This takes stepping back the defensiveness you may feel and dropping into curiosity. The defensiveness comes from thinking you’ve been wronged in some way, but it has to be put aside in order to move forward.
As Byron Katie says,
Defense is the first act of war
I don’t want to be at war. I don’t want to be at war with myself, my job, my patients or my coworkers. War feels terrible. I didn’t choose nursing to be at war.
Start with basic facts (leave out all the colorful dramatic words.)
Ie: My coworker said____________ to me.
Then observe what happened next, describe what happened in your physical body. This may take some practice but it’s important to not jump right to what you DID next. We HAVE to pause here, it will become apparent why this is so crucial in a minute.
Ie: when they said _______________ my chest got tight, my face got flushed, my heart rate went up.
These are the physical signs of emotion.
What emotion was it for you?
Anger? Indignation? Frustration? Embarrassment? Shame? Fear? Irritation? Disbelief? Sadness? Righteousness? Disrespected? Ignored? Undervalued?
It may seem that naming the emotion is arbitrary but it can give great clarity for the next step.
Why did you feel this emotion? When your coworker said those words, what meaning did you attach to them? WHY did you feel angry and not sad? WHY did you feel irritation and not fear? The truth is, a lot of these emotions FEEL the same in your body. We separate what we feel by looking toward the meaning behind them.
Let me give you an example of finding what meaning you are giving to it.
Your coworker said ___________
I felt these feelings in my body: chest tightness and palpitations
These physical feelings meant I was angry.
I was angry because… (here is the meaning) if they respected me they wouldn’t say/do that. They should respect me.
There’s the painful thought, the one we were looking for.
They should respect me, and they don’t.
The problem is, in the moment of being triggered, we aren’t even aware of that thought. It happens so fast that the physical feeling seems immediate, and we drop into fight or flight. And fight or flight is not what we want to hang out in at work because it takes us away from our purpose in being there, to take care of people.
So again, to quote Byron Katie,
Where would you be without that thought?
Can we get out of fight or flight faster?
This exercise can help you do exactly that.
If you review these situations after the fact and can identify the thought that you had, you can regain power over the situation. (Doesn’t that sound great?)
As you identify the thought, “they should respect me and they don’t”, you can ask yourself “Where would I be without that thought?”
Answering this question will take you out of fight or flight very quickly because it was that unconscious thought that put you there.
You would be out of rumination. You would be able to get back to focusing on the meaningful work you do, the work that gives you purpose, instead of defensiveness.
To be clear, you don’t have to decide that the original thought was untrue, you just have to explore where you could be if you let it go or if you chose a different thought.
It may be true that they don’t respect you AND it may also be true that they said what they did because they felt disrespected, or undervalued. Maybe they said what they did because they actually thought it would help the situation. Maybe it wasn’t actually directed at you at all.
But if we don’t stop and evaluate after the fact, if we don’t step away from being defensive, we won’t come up with any of these opportunities to feel better.
Here’s the best part. If you make a practice of evaluating your experience when you feel triggered and reactive (extra points if you actually write it down), you start to realize IN THE MOMENT IT IS HAPPENING that your thoughts are what triggers you, not the other person.
Sure, you need to process those same physical feelings in your body, but you will identify that you are triggered by your thinking, and you can pause before you react.
You can create a little space.
You can take some deep breaths and stop yourself from going down the rumination highway of defensiveness.
You can avoid having your day derailed.
I know it seems more reasonable to blame the other person or the situation, but if we do this, we lose our ability to control our own experiences. I would rather feel better and get back to doing things that give me personal satisfaction.
Yes, this exercise works. No, it isn’t magic. What are you willing to try to change your experience of your life? Are you willing to take 10 minutes to examine your triggers and explore where you would be without those thoughts?
Wouldn’t it be amazing if this one thing could change everything for you at work?
You won’t know unless you try 🙂
Sometimes when you start doing this work it can be difficult to find other, less painful, thoughts. Or maybe you just don’t have the energy to do it alone (Or maybe you are just curious about what working with a coach would be like.)
This is exactly what I help people with. Identifying the thoughts that are holding them back, exploring where they would be without them, and supporting them while they try the strategies in their everyday lives. If this sounds like exactly what you need, reach out today for a free consultation call. Transformations start there.
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