In my practice I saw many people struggle to manage fight-or-flight reactions in their work relationships. In these settings, since there were both friend- and livelihood-related issues at stake, their reactions were often intense and long-lasting. Sometimes they would get physically sick and often they felt trapped. They needed a bridge to take them over their grief either to adjust to their situation or cross over to another healthier one.
It was helpful for them to learn about the grief process in these situations and lower their stress levels. First we’d look at the first two stages, denial and bargaining, which usually occur without your awareness. At work when you encounter a person whose behavior hurts or frustrates you, you often can’t just walk away. First you assume that he actually could understand what you’re experiencing and help with the situation. When these efforts fail, instead of grasping that he, for some reason, can’t understand, you may deny this possibility. You struggle to reach him too long (bargaining) because you just don’t want to accept that this is true, especially when you must deal with him often. Then your supervisor might also use denial (knowing it or not) and insist that you cope anyway. Sound familiar?
You can maintain denial indefinitely as you suffer anxiety or frustration in these situations. Your Adult can reduce this tendency if it expects your flight into denial. As the graph above Post #24 suggests, denial doesn’t prevent stress, even though it temporarily suppresses intense fear, anger or sadness. When a manager in a work setting won’t engage his Adult to face that he has an employee whose dysfunction is serious, he diminishes the energy of his whole team. It’s hard to manage his own fight-or-flight reactions at the same time that he tries to interpret what’s going on with others. Effective managers can do this. Other managers often don’t know how to manage their own reactions and may also lack the Adult support from their own managers to take appropriate action. “Don’t make waves,” if you want to be promoted, is a formula for institutionalized denial.
After a while, it’s perfectly understandable that the third step in the grief process, anger, would emerge. First you get angry at the frustrating person for failing to understand, no matter what you try. You might even believe that he does understand, but is deliberately antagonizing you. Then you get angry at those who refuse to face the reality of his deficient functioning. You might even get angry with yourself because you can’t resolve what you’re expected to manage on your own. As I noted in Post #23, it’s possible to get stuck indefinitely in the angry stage of the grief process. This is especially damaging, because anger takes so much of your energy and harms your body with toxic surges of fight-or-flight chemicals. It can also lead to more stress and loss if you displace it into other relationships.
Therefore, I recommend that your Adult and Wise Parent help you move on to the fourth stage of the grief process which is sadness. It’s sad that this other person can’t walk in your shoes or find ways to cooperate with you. It’s sad that he may lack the brain functioning (because of his wiring and/or his experience) to use his Adult when he interacts with you. It’s sad that many supervisors don’t use their Adult capacity to manage properly. Sadness is less damaging than anger because it takes your mind and body closer to acceptance of the reality you face. You recognize it’s not within your power to change the situation and you may release your frustration through healing tears.
I haven’t seen people stay for long in pure sadness. They return to angry bargaining or move ahead to the fifth stage of grief, acceptance or adjustment. If you keep going back to “bang your head against a stone wall,” you’re likely to develop depression. With depression you fluctuate between anger and helpless sadness until you exhaust yourself. This can happen without your full awareness unless you keep your Adult alert to where you are in the grief process.
If you have a very toxic work situation it’s usually best for you to move on to another job, after you’ve tried for a reasonable time to cope. If you’re confused or overwhelmed, be sure to find a counselor or wise friend to help your Adult sort this out. Once you accept the sad reality of these non-mentally-fit associates, you can leave strategically, with dignity and less discomfort for yourself and your loved ones. It’s helpful to stop bargaining and getting angry with them. I told my clients how often I’d seen a simple change in work environment end the symptoms that had put them on medication, ruined their relationships or damaged their physical health. The Wise Parent phrase, if I don’t have the power to change a situation, I can’t have the responsibility is good to keep close at hand.