How do you properly deal with your emotions at work or in public places?

Hi Jamie,

I've worked in agencies for more of the last 25 years than as a counselor, so I have A LOT of personal experience with difficult and challenging bosses and coworkers and I had to learn ways to deal with it to not be snapping, getting too emotional, and coming off as unprofessional.

So, there are several things I'd recommend.  To begin with, I think it's worth defining the entire subject of "what is work to me?'  When answering that, focus on why you go to work in the first place.  Most of us go to work for like 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and the purpose is just to make money to pay our bills and be able to afford the things we ACTUALLY care about.  Hence, it helps to remember this in that moment when your coworker is really bothering and upsetting you.  Ask yourself "How important is this?" and "Does this person really matter to me that much?" Doing this will help you with the basics of whether or not the annoyances are something worth addressing or is it healthier to just be like "Whatever....I only have to deal with these people or this person for work and it's just not worth it...I'll let it go and focus on other stuff."

When I am in the middle of work and if I see the person every day, it's easy to fool myself into thinking those relationships matter more than they do.  I will tell myself things like "this job is not my entire life," "this job is not my family", "this job is just how I pay the bills and how I try to be a productive citizen", "I am not here to make best friends.  If I do great.  If I don't that is okay too."  These are basic statements to keep your thoughts more grounded and to keep your emotions more in check when at work and dealing with coworkers from day to day.  Work is not, and should not be your whole life.  If you find yourself ruminating and taking the work day home with you too much, that is a sign that you need to expand and develop yourself, relationships, and other hobbies outside of work.

Other than this, I would say to make your boundaries clearer with coworkers.  You are having large ups and downs probably because you care too much what your coworkers think about you and you care too much what they do.  Sometimes people act like jerks in the work place and there are multiple reasons.  I have had conflict with coworkers who acted like my boss when they weren't.  I have had conflict with bosses who only gave criticisms and never gave praise.   I have left some jobs because the work environment with boss or coworker(s) was intolerable.  Hence, I want to make it clear that not every situation is going to get better with you just "pulling back a bit and tightening up your boundaries."  If your bosses and coworkers literally are making the job miserable for you, you have a couple recourses.  1. Go to human resources. 2. Find another job.  I am of the firm belief that no job should make you totally miserable.  Life is simply too short to literally make yourself totally miserable over any job.

My last suggestion to you is this:  People make a lot of snippy and backhanded/passive aggressive sort of statements in the work place.  If I am right, I think you are asking how to not be so reactive to this.  My suggestion is to take a several minute pause when you feel like you are about to yell at someone or act out in a way that is overly emotional.  There have been days at work where I wanted to yell at people and was about to take thinks personally, and when I kept silent and then let the day progress, I realized it was not as big a deal as I thought at the time.  Had I just snapped back, I would have gotten more upset and incited a bigger feud than was worth it.  Since I put this in practice, I've reduced the amount of drama and chaos in my working environments quite a bit.  

So these are my best suggestions for you and I hope they help!

Mark