Workplace mental health and workplace psychological adjustment

The essence of workplace mental health is a dynamic balance between individual occupational needs and environmental feedback. There is never a universal standard answer to truly effective workplace psychological adjustment - it neither requires everyone to "endure the humiliation" and digest all emotions, nor does it advocate the extreme avoidance of "quitting if you are not happy". Instead, it requires choosing a flexible response plan based on your own personality traits, career stage, and the causes of specific problems.

I didn’t make this up from a textbook. I learned it from real experience last year when a 25-year-old head Internet operator resigned. The little girl had just worked for 8 months after graduating from the 985 program. She received S grades in departmental performance for three consecutive months. Her eyes were swollen like walnuts on the day she resigned. She said that she woke up at 3 a.m. every day for three weeks and stared at the ceiling thinking, "Today I have to deal with needs from three departments again." She was already moderately anxious when she went to the hospital for a checkup. She had read a lot of workplace emotion management posts before, forcing herself to practice the so-called "insensitive power". In the end, she couldn't even muster the energy to kill her favorite script, and her whole body was like a balloon that had been sucked out of air.

About the causes of psychological problems in the workplace, scholars in different research fields have actually been arguing for many years, and there is no unified conclusion yet. The school of clinical psychology was the first to emphasize "prioritizing pathological signals": If you have experienced sleep disorders that last for more than two weeks, a drastic change in appetite, and you are completely unable to get excited about things you are originally interested in, don't think about "self-adjustment" first, and go to the psychology department of a regular hospital for investigation. For pathological emotional problems, it is useless to "think about it". You should take medicine, take medicine, and rest. Don't treat the illness as "hypocrisy" and drag it into a big problem. Scholars from the school of organizational behavior believe that most workplace psychological problems are essentially structural contradictions: for example, the imbalance of power and responsibility - you are only an executive but have to bear the blame for the entire department's losses, or the evaluation system is chaotic - you don't get paid as much as you do. In this case, just providing psychological counseling to employees is purely "the boss is sick and the employee takes medicine". The core is to change organizational rules. Relying on personal adjustment alone is essentially treating the symptoms but not the root cause. There is also the school of positive psychology that has become popular in recent years, which pays more attention to the controllable parts of the individual: how to establish one's own psychological buffer zone and minimize the erosion of work on life under the premise that the environment cannot be changed temporarily.

I have worked in corporate employee relations for more than three years, and I have seen too many examples of people being tricked into using rigid methods. Previously, the company invited an EAP (Employee Assistance Program) agency to give lectures. The teacher taught everyone the "Five Steps of Emotional Management" and taught everyone to "empathize" when encountering dissatisfaction. As a result, a young girl who had just graduated came to me and cried after the class, saying that the leader had taken away her project credit. You see, if the method is wrong, it will cause secondary damage.

If we really want to talk about how to adjust, it is better to first clarify what kind of problem you are encountering. If it’s just short-term project pressure, such as working overtime for a month to catch up with 618 or Double 11, don’t force yourself to “maintain self-discipline under pressure”. You have to work out and learn English after working overtime. Simply put more burden on yourself and get some “instant positive feedback” than anything else: taking a detour after work to buy a cake you’ve been thinking about for a long time, staying at home on the weekend to watch mindless dramas, even finding a place where no one is around to scold the leader for half an hour, as long as you can vent your emotions, it’s a good way. If you can't help but recall the unpleasant words your boss scolded you, try a little trick of cognitive dissociation: think of that sentence as a spam text message on your phone. When you see it, you can just swipe it away without clicking on it and reading it again and again.

If you encounter a long-term environmental mismatch, for example, you are an introvert with a highly sensitive personality, but you are placed in a position that requires you to deal with dozens of customers every day and deal with various wine shops, don't believe the nonsense that "you can grow outside your comfort zone." I once met a R&D colleague who was forced by his boss to practice communication skills for half a year, which almost led to depression. Later, he switched to low-level technologies that did not need to be connected to the front end. He obtained the company's technology patent in half a year, and his income more than doubled. To put it bluntly, there is no need to stick to what you are not naturally good at. A change of environment is more effective than any adjustment.

There is another hotly debated topic on the Internet: Should emotions be involved in the workplace? Some people say that "adults should give up their emotions", while others say that "suppressing emotions is chronic suicide". In fact, both sides are right. The key is that you should not harm your core interests by venting your emotions. Last time, there was a design in our department that was revised to 12 versions by Party A. In the end, Party A wanted the first version back. She didn’t have a fit on the spot. She ran to the stairwell and scolded Party A for ten minutes in the air, calling Party A an idiot. Then she came back and sent the first version with a smile. She neither offended the customer nor suppressed her emotions to the point of internal injury, which was good. There is really no need to hold back for the so-called "professionalism", and there is no need to flip the table on the spot just for the sake of temporary pleasure. It is you who will lose.

In fact, to put it bluntly, when everyone works, part of the salary they earn is "mental damage expenses". There is no need to take every criticism from the leader and every blame-blaming by a colleague to heart. You are a KPI number and a position number in the company. When you go home, you are yourself, your friend's partner, your cat's poop manager, and an ordinary person who can be happy for half an hour over a cup of delicious milk tea. If you really feel like you can't hold on any longer, just take a couple of days off. If the sky doesn't fall, you can find another job if you don't have one. Your health is the most important thing.