I usually don’t feel angry while interacting with coworkers & friends. I have felt disappointment & boredom, for sure, but rarely anger. But with my family, it’s a different story. I sometimes lash out at my parents when I want to be left alone or if they nag me with something. Usually it is with good reason IMHO (not sure if my parents agree), but still I end up feeling bad. I don’t know which of the two is the “true me” — the angry guy or the usually-not-angry guy.
Oh, please do start it. I have quite the list.
It sounds like you see having emotions as something outside your control. I don’t. I would not have any problem making myself temporarily feel bad for the sick person or feeling happy for the pregnant person. I just sorta put myself in their place and empathize. And I don’t find this hard to do, even if I’ve never really experienced what they are going through.
In other cases, I may have to be more creative. I will think about something that makes me feel a bit of the emotion I want to convey, and then put on the appropriate facial expression–and that emotion is just there. (When it comes to being happy, I just smile and look down and squint a bit, and boom.)
I’ve only had problems with this when being depressed. I can even do it when really anxious, although I’ll have to pretend the anxiety isn’t there since it’s the emotion that is a bully and always wants to be in the front of your mind.
I concur with Trinopus that I sometimes have to fake not feeling emotions. You can’t make yourself not feel something the same way you can make yourself feel something, to the only thing left is to fake it.
Though I cannot fake not being angry–the best I can do is to try and be civil and accommodating.
This actually sounds like good practical advice. Need to fake sadness? Think about the time your puppy died. Need to fake happiness? Think about your wedding day.
Maybe it’s obvious, but I’ve never thought about it before. Thanks! I’m writing it down in my book of tricks for passing as a convincing humanoid.
I’m the same as monstro. And worse. My trouble is my stress colours my empathy. If someone is stressed out, boy do i feel for them. People with depression, too.
But if you’ve got a light form of cancer and will just get to relax at home for two months, and only have a little pain and a little nausea…i’m just secretly envious, really.
The pregnant co worker…i make all the right noises, but i secretly feel sorry for her, because it is a huge responsibility and she can kiss her me-time goodbye for the next years. The supposed joy a child brings? I’ve got the best kid in the world, i love him, but my joy button seems to be broken.
So i just make the right noises and don’t initiate that kind of chit chat myself. I don’t have the time anyway, and it helps no-one.
Or the one who lost his/her job will be the talk of the entire place for the next couple of weeks then will gradually fall to the back of the line. That’s what happened the last time.
But yeah my coworkers are like this. I’ve worked with, and I myself have had a few personal issues percolate and boil over at work without meaning to. There are no write-ups or anything like that. If anything, we give each other a very wide berth and an ear if anyone wishes to discuss it, depending on the overall mood.
I’m going through a particularly difficult personal time right now. My coworkers know the general gist of it but not the details. I figure I owe that least that to them. In return they watch out for me and make sure I’m feeling OK. For somebody who has no family outside of her husband, that’s a godsend.
A fair bit of my emotional display is fake, in the negative sense. I strive to maintain a calm demeanour regardless of what’s going on beneath the surface. Few work situations are improved by panic or flighty emotional behaviour.
I do allow some things to surface - empathy for colleagues, concern for worried clients, etc. But if I don’t think it will make things better, I keep it in.
I think the thing for me is I’m an action person. I volunteered to coordinate the baby shower for the pregnant coworker, for instance. It was a lot of work, but I found it much more tolerable than talking with her ad nauseum about pregnancy and babies (which I ended up doing as well because that’s all pregnant coworker could talk about for the past nine months). Even when I tried to talk about other things with her (like the big news in my own personal life), it wouldn’t take long for the conversation to go back to her and her delicate situation. Perhaps it wasn’t difficult for other coworkers because they had their own pregnancy/child-rearing stories to share with her, and they had their own experiences to draw from to create genuine emotions.
Yesterday, I asked the coworker who is the sick coworker’s best friend what kind of “get well” gift he was thinking about getting for him with our donations. He didn’t know. So I scoured the web, looking for ideas, while he sat in the breakroom, talking about the sick coworker to whomever would listen. Then I stopped researching because I realized I’m not the appointed “coordinator” for this particular task.
I’m not good with “sitting around and talking”. Even when I visit my therapist, I don’t do most of the talking. I guess for me it just feels non-productive, and in the workplace setting, maybe even a little inappropriate. But I’m fine with behaving as if I care as long as it results in tangible results.
Ain’t that the truth! It often amazes me how people want good leadership, but then mistake the necessary self-control as coldness/lack of empathy. Big problems simply require Vulcan emotional abstinence to identify the best solution. I’ve never found the best leaders to be warm & fuzzy.