According to Andrew Naber (industrial-organizational psychologist and data scientist) an average person spend 90.000 hours at work over a lifetime. That’s roughly one third of our life. No wonder that the emotional and mental state we are in during these working hours affects our overall well-being.
It could already be challenging to handle the constant pressure, the far from ideal working environment, yet oftentimes we face injustice, hurtful criticism, or even abusive behaviour either from a superior or colleagues.
It might have happened to you as well that you received an evaluation of your work that felt harsh and not fair at all, especially because the way they delivered it to you…those not so carefully chosen words that could make anyone feel stupid or inadequate. You might have gotten belittled in front of your colleagues, told off or even shout at. There are countless ways at work in which you could find yourself in a situation where you feel angry and hurt.
In an ideal word everyone could express his or her feelings and verbalize them to the person who hurt them in that very moment, but unfortunately it is more likely that you swallow your feelings instead, put on your poker face, nod, and act like nothing happened. After all you don’t have the luxury to lose your job, they wouldn’t even listen anyways, would they?
What happens with these feelings? Where do they go?
The problem is that they don’t go anywhere. We can deny or suppress our feelings, but these very same feelings are here to stay and they get stronger and deeper eventually. You are probably playing that hurtful scenario in your head on repeat, and it doesn’t hurt any less, right? If anything, it makes you feel angrier. As a result, you might get into that ticking time bomb state, which sooner or later results in an outburst – usually not at the right place, not to the right person, and certainly not at the right time – or you might even develop some physical symptoms over time.
So, what to do with all those feelings?
First, it is crucial to allow yourself to feel whatever feelings you must have and then to accept them without judgement. We live in a world where expressing our feelings still considered to be a weakness, in some cases even taboo. We’ve been carrying this belief through generations while it could not be further from the truth. You have every right to feel how you feel without any judgement. There is no wrong or right feeling. It is okay to feel angry, it is okay to feel hurt, it is okay to feel jealous or envious from time to time. Your feelings are the most real things you have. Even if it doesn’t seem to make any sense at that moment, they are there for a reason, to show you something.
Once you are aware of the feeling you have and accepted to have it, you can move on to the next step which is to express it, to verbalize it, to put it into words. Saying out loud how you feel is what’s going to free you from that situation. It is important though to do this in that very moment or the closest to the situation in question, simply because years and even months or weeks after the incident, the person might not even remember what happened, or not exactly the way you remember it, so it will no longer be accurate, and you will not get the same satisfaction if any at all.
Now expressing our feelings does not equal with making accusations and calling the person in names, it is simply sharing how we feel. So, make sure that instead of saying things like “you hurt me…” or “you made me feel…”, you start by saying “I was hurt….” or “I felt hurt when….”.
What if I can’t tell the person that he/she hurt me?
There could be various reasons why we cannot or do not want to address the person who hurt us. In cases like this I suggest to make a use of the restroom and do what I call the RELEASE – FLUSH – REASON (RFR) exercise.
After all, restrooms are for letting go, and that doesn’t necessarily have to refer to our bodily waste exclusively. The point of this exercise is to release the anger and frustration, to let go of any hurt, and reason your natural confidence back to the game.
All you have to do is go to the restroom, lock the door, and don’t hold back. If you feel that you need to cry, just cry. Crying is a wonderful way of letting go. If you feel anger and rage, just go for it, picture the person who hurt you in front of you, and shout out everything that you held back. In this case, make sure that you are alone, otherwise do it in a silent manner as if you were playing air guitar. Feel free to use as many inappropriate words as you wish, because they have a lot of emotional charge. You want to really release whatever you are feeling at that moment.
When you are done, when you no longer need to feel that anger, it is time to flush as the symbol of letting go, getting rid of the anger, frustration and hurt, so just picture these feelings going down with the water while flushing, see them leaving your body.
Finally, you can move on to the reasoning part. You have to know and make yourself aware of the fact that you always have a choice. No one can hurt you unless you let them, no one can criticize you unless you let their words in, and to accept them as if they were true. It is never the event itself that hurts us, it is how we interpret it, the conclusions we draw about ourselves. So at this point you are choosing not to let those hurtful words in. You are choosing not to believe them as true anymore. Just keep repeating these sentences out loud or in your head over and over again until you confidently own them, so your mind can act upon them as well.