how we process anger

Understanding how we process anger – our own and others’ – is helpful in learning how to deal with it on the job. If women understand that men are wired by nature to be more aggressive – with more of their behavior driven by the more primitive part of their brains, the amygdala, and the secretion of epinephrine and cortisol – then male anger should become less disturbing for them. We would know not to take it so personally. If women more clearly understand why they experience a double-whammy speedball when they get angry – that the oxytocin in their bodies is in conflict with the norepinephrine that they also produce when under attack – then they might be less negatively judgmental about their own and other women’s anger. If both genders realize that, as Browde says, “the suppression of an emotional response to being demeaned and belittled in the workplace has physiologic effects and can result in symptoms such as insomnia, irritability, anxiety, panic, and even depression,” then all of us might try harder not to upset each other.

Anne Kreamer

It’s Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace. 2011. Random House.

effective anger

In Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris notes that in order for the expression of anger to be effective, four criteria must be met: 

1. the anger must be directed at the target of your anger
2. the expression of anger must restore your sense of control over the situation and your sense of justice; it must inflict appropriate harm on the other person
3. the expression of anger must change the behavior of the target or give you new insights
4. you and your target must speak the same anger language.

Anne Kreamer

It’s Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace. 2011. Random House.

tears

Psychic tears aren’t specific to any single emotion but are rather the uniquely visible testament that one has experienced something overwhelming – anger, awe, love, fear, pride, embarrassment, or sadness. From the tears of joy at a wedding or the birth of a child to the tears of anger or outrage – often catalyzed by feelings of powerlessness – at a slight, to the tears of grief at the death of a loved one, each emotion elicits a different intensity and duration of crying. Psychic or emotional tears, because they are exceptional, force us and those around us to acknowledge that something important has just happened – my boyfriend proposed to me, my boss yelled at me, I was deeply moved by a sense of the divine, my dog died – and that we should pause and take a moment for reflection.

Anne Kreamer

It’s Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace. 2011. Random House.

engaging in new experiences

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has identified… an important contributing factor of happiness – engaging in new experiences… that broaden our horizons. “Whenever we discover new challenges,” he writes, “whenever we use new skills, we feel a deep sense of enjoyment. To repeat this desirable feeling, we must find ever higher challenges, build more sophisticated skills; in doing so we help the evolution of complexity move along….”

He popularized this notion in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, and described it as that sense of “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

Anne Kreamer

It’s Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace. 2011. Random House.

express more emotions at work

I suggest that if men and women were to express more emotions at work routinely and easily – jokes, warmth, sadness, anger, tears, all of it – then as a people we might not implode emotionally so frequently, or feel the need to gawk at others emoting in inappropriate ways. If we can openly acknowledge our gender-based biological and neurological differences, we can feel freer to tackle whatever challenges we face at full capacity.

Anne Kreamer

It’s Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the NewWorkplace. 2011. Random House.