Rabbit Write

A few days ago Ned and I were talking about the stresses of dealing with people out in the workforce. Sometimes it feels like you are dealing with people that are closer to barbarians than the empathetic and aware people we all have the capacity to be. Of course you are not dealing with savages but rather with everyone’s inner child; sometimes it seems as though in the work world everyone is perpetually stuck at the age of eight. A few days later Time Magazine came out with a piece about this whole topic, diving into how we re-play our childhoods in the workplace.  This story relied on data from Sylvia Lafair, a Ph.D. in clinical psychology whose book on the topic, Don’t Bring It to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns that Limit Success, was recently published.  Lafair’s studies show that unconsciously we react in accordance to the role we played in our family, because this is unconscious and so often unexamined we play these same situations out over again and again.

“When a co-worker tries to one-up you and make you feel stupid, you may suddenly find yourself reacting to the older brother who always put you down. Or when your boss demands that costs be cut, suddenly he is your parent who could never make ends meet,” says Lafair, adding, “Reactions happen in milliseconds. The trigger is usually stress. As anxiety rises, people’s ability to respond in a mature manner goes down.”

You may see this in co-workers or in yourself. At work I am very aware when people are airing their insecurities and letting their unconscious and inner child roam (and sometimes terrorize or bully.) I’ve found myself thinking of the work-space like a playground where the work we do is like a giant game. When I first imagined it this way it seemed silly that we all took it so seriously, dressing up and emotionally investing so much  into it. While I feel I am somewhat aware of this dynamic I cannot say that I am not susceptible to it as well. In the playground of work I fear I am not all that much different than in the playground of elementary school: I am still stand-offish, easily hurt and feel like I don’t fit in. In my family I was the one who was made to process and feel emotions for my parents, taking in sadness, stresses, worries.  I am all too aware that I still have problems doing this in my day to day life.

A technique  that I have found somewhat helpful is to actually imagine your co-workers and everyone you interact with for one day as children. Try to see that inner child, what they looked like, sounded like, what their lives must have been like. I think this does wonders for the ability to empathize with people, and it also sheds new light onto why people react the way they do as well as bringing sympathy and understanding for bad moods or overall sourness. It may also help your inner child as well by showing it that it doesn’t need to take other people’s moods personally.

I’ve talked before about how what we don’t process from our childhoods, we will go on to replay in our adult lives over and over, eventually repeating it to our own children. This is a prime example of doing just that. In regards to this the thing that stings me the most is the person who hears this and says, “Well you can’t blame your parents — you can’t just blame the past — you have to take responsibility.”  Woah.  So examination of your past means blaming someone? Asking questions and learning about who you are and where you came from is not a crime, but rather a positive move. This type of reaction seems like blaming yourself as a child for the actions of others, which is heartbreaking. You have every right to honest answers to questions about your past.

More to the point, taking responsibility means not reacting agressively to co-workers or ultimately passing it along to the next generation. Taking responsibility means examining the past, processing it and working through it weather through meditation, therapy or deep reflection, as tough and long as that journey is. It is hard because that is breaking the cycle, who knows how long the same abuse has been filtered through your family tree. When you break out of that mold, you change history, you create a new path, new hope, and new life.

Subscribe to my blog!
Subscribe to my podcast!

Related posts:

1. PTSD: Post Traumatic Sex Disorder
2. The Beauty of Personal Freedom (Or Why I don’t talk to my Parents)
3. Sex and Relationships
4. Good People, Bad People + Dropping Defenses
5. Potential Parenting