Why you need to know your work triggers
What sets you off?
I often think about how much of work is about emotions. All the soft, complicated feelings stuff. So much of what we do at work is shaped by things that happen outside the workplace. When we clock in for a shift, we don’t just bring a laptop, a pen, and our hard skills, we bring parts of our entire selves, complete with all the baggage of our upbringing, our relationships, and everything else that goes on in our lives beyond the 9 to 5. Of course we do, and of course we should. We’re not emotionless work machines and often what makes someone great at what they do is their human-ness; their empathy, their creativity, the perspective they only have as a result of their experiences.
I think about this often when it comes to management, because so much of managing people is understanding what makes them tick, but also each time I find myself reacting to a challenge in a way that doesn’t make the most sense. There are some work situations that send me spiralling into an anxiety that’s entirely disproportionate to what’s going on. There have been times when an innocuous comment from someone senior cut far too deep. I’ve overreacted over and over, taken things to heart, and regularly allowed the smallest blip at work to become something that consumes every waking thought.
Why is that? When I did some therapy many years back for depression and OCD, I was surprised how much of the sessions were taken up by discussions of work, but also how often these work discussions would be linked back to something else I’d mentioned that was unrelated to my job. I started to identify certain trigger points for me in the work realm, certain themes of the spirals. Things like: not feeling listened to, a sense of unfairness, not understanding why we had to do something beyond it just being your job. When those feelings came up, echoes of past experiences would ripple out and be the catalyst for kick-offs.
I say this not as a form of self-criticism or to suggest that I or anyone else should react neutrally to poor workplace practices (having a negative reaction to being shouted at, for example, is not a problem on my part… no one should be aggressively shouting in the workplace), but because simply starting to recognise and understand these triggers has been transformational, and I think everyone could benefit from doing the same. Acknowledging that there are certain sore spots that can be nudged at work means I’m more able to understand why I’m reacting the way I am, and can navigate that reaction from a place of compassion.
Similarly, I’ve started to recognise other people’s trigger points… although I’d never point that out to them, of course. Being aware of what sets other people off hugely helps our working relationship. I recently came across a suggestion of creating a ‘how to work with me’ manual, and while I find that a touch too cringe-inducing, I can imagine it’d be helpful to communicate to your manager or colleagues any trigger points by way of explanation of your reactions. For example, if your manager knows you take negative feedback hard, they’ll understand when you bristle at constructive criticism. And they might be able to tailor their approach in light of this knowledge.
If you’d prefer to keep the details of work triggers to yourself, however, that’s totally fine too. Just knowing yours can still be helpful. You might not be able to avoid all potential triggers in the workplace (or in the wider world), but knowledge is power and will allow you to be better equipped to handle them, whether that’s by shifting the way you work or upping the self-care when work triggers abound.
Questions to ask yourself to figure out your work triggers
What pisses me off at work?
What immediately sends my stress levels rocketing?
What hurts at work, often for reasons that don’t seem to make sense?
When you experience negative emotions or physical symptoms: what’s happening in my body and mind? What was happening just before this?
Once you’ve found a pain point: what does this remind me of? Does it feel familiar? Is this a dynamic I’ve experienced previously?
What thought patterns do I keep stumbling in to?
When I can’t sleep because I’m thinking about work, what exactly am I thinking about? What happened that day?
Work-related reading recs
I’m very pro WFH and hybrid working, but there are benefits to being in the office, one being visibility. Kate Lucey (my former editor!) writes about this for Stylist.
Fascinated by this feature on the ‘Gen Z whisperers’ being employed by various companies
Sophie Beresiner, who I’ve long admired from afar (her makeup on public transport skills alone are deeply impressive) has written a great Substack about the identity crisis prompted by being made redundant. Well worth a read.
On ‘organisational drag’ being the thing people hate about their jobs
How do you feel about the work you do? What matters most to you; time, meaning, or money? If you’re up for answering these questions in my Working On Purpose survey, you will have my eternal gratitude. It doesn’t take long and is quite an interesting exercise, if I do say so myself. Do it here:
Great piece, resonated on a number of counts!