|
|
The boss made me angry today!
We're all brought up to believe that external events cause our emotional
reactions. But that is not the way it actually happens. The ancient Greek
philosopher, Epictetus, is quoted as saying that:
"It's not events that disturb us, but our judgment of them."
In other words our emotions are created from our interpretation of things
that happen, not the events themselves. This is not easy to see at first,
but it is the important basis from which people can learn to take back
control of their habits and gain in emotional maturity.
What the boss did today was to shout at you, that's all. You resented it
and your reaction was to feel angry. But it's possible that under other
circumstances you might have seen it as a threat and had an emotional
reaction of fear. Or, that you could have viewed the shouting as a
personal put-down and became hurt about it. It's even possible that you
could have sensed that the boss was making a fool of himself and you could
have felt amused by the event.
But in all these cases, the boss did only one thing, he shouted at you.
You then made a judgment about what it meant to you and generated a
"feeling" that was appropriate for that interpretation. Once again, this
is not easy to see at first, because we are brought up to think that
things outside us cause our feelings. The intention here is to point out
that it actually and always works the other way around. And since it is
our view of things that really controls our emotions, it follows that our
own thinking habits have an important bearing on our emotions.
Let's examine that idea a little. All of us have some more or less
irrational beliefs in our private self-talk. They may be prejudices. They
may be unreasonable expectations. They may be absolutist and demanding
rules about our own or other people's conduct, all of which influence the
judgments we make about events. If this is the case we can work on
rethinking our beliefs to improve our poise and self-control. Strong
negative emotions such as hurt and anger and fear are a signal to check
into our thinking to see if it contributes to the discomfort. It is not
difficult if you look for over-reactions that may stem from unjustified or
irrational
beliefs. These emotions often lead to what could be avoidable
difficulties.
Let's look again at when the boss shouted at you. You judged it to be
unjustified and you resented it and got yourself angry. Apparently you
were wise enough not to react hastily in that mood and maybe get fired.
(Instead you swore revenge under your breath and kept yourself upset all
day.) Of course, a "strongly assertive" reaction might be justified if in
fact the boss had accused you falsely of something serious. But quite
often that's not the whole story. Is it possible that the complaint was
partially deserved and partly you just didn't like to admit it? If so,
then becoming angry would not be wholly justified. Could the boss have
been under a lot of pressure and blowing off steam that he would later
regret and apologize for? Could you have
an underlying belief that any arousal of emotion such as shouting is
really an attack on your worth? Or could it go back even further to a
secret underlying belief that everything should always go your way? Or do
you think you always have to have his approval to feel OK?
More and more could be said but the bottom line is that quite often it's
neither necessary nor wise to react angrily in such a situation. There are
less harmful things to fall back on. If you learn and practice
unconditional self-acceptance (USA) you would not feel your worth
threatened and get huffy in such a situation. By keeping your cool, the
boss would be seen as the one who is less in control and you would retain
more dignity. By cutting him some slack
for the pressure he may be under, the door is left open for an apology
from him if that proves to happen later. If you react in these less
self-arousing ways, you maintain the poise to deal with the situation in
ways that are more to your advantage. Trying to see both sides can make
you less open to attack, may lead to an objective understanding about what
caused the shouting and build better relations for the future.
The lesson here is not who was right or wrong in the incident. It is in
grasping the fact that you are in control of your own emotional reactions.
And that strong negative emotions are often overreactions from beliefs
like, "The boss is all wrong and I am one hundred percent right." or
"Nobody is ever supposed to raise their voice to me." or "He started this
I am justified in pushing it to the limit even if it costs me my job and a
good reference."
In SMART RecoveryŽ we are interested in this subject because learning
better self- management is a watchword of recovery from unwanted habits.
Sometimes negative emotional reactions and the behavior that follows them
lead to using alcohol or other drugs to relieve the anxiety that is
created. Let them instead be a signal to re-examine your beliefs and
values and see if you are over-reacting in ways that may turn out to be
embarrassing or costly. This is a secret of something you can change! You
can learn to deal with this excellent opportunity using the ABC's of REBT.
It is one of the tools at SMART RecoveryŽ.
|
