Thoughts on mental health in the workplace

It never requires you to completely eliminate negative emotions such as anxiety, grievance, and irritability, and there is no one-size-fits-all adjustment formula. The essence is to find a "stress tolerance range" that suits you in the dynamic pull of personal goals, ability boundaries, and workplace rules. The best method is to be able to last for a long time.

When the Internet industry was shrinking last year, I was doing project docking in the operations department, and I watched two colleagues in the same group who were in similar situations take completely different paths. The 32-year-old Zhang Ge was afraid of being laid off, so he took the initiative to work overtime until 2 a.m. every day. He took on whatever work his boss gave him. Even the mindfulness practice guide given by the EAP (Employee Psychological Assistance Service) teacher provided for free by the company was completed by him as a "KPI to improve stress resistance." As a result, he lost two bald patches in three months. He also almost committed a serious offense because he stayed up late and wrote down the wrong allocation of core activities. Another little girl, Lin Lin, who was born in 1998, picks up her bags on time every day. She doesn't read any work news at all on weekends. She enrolls in a pottery class and makes cups every week. She seems to be "not working hard enough", but she is extremely efficient during work hours and improves the delivery quality of several projects. They all came to the front, and the last two people stayed. It was not until Brother Zhang went to the doctor that he was awakened: what he called "adjustment of mentality" before was actually taking all the problems on his own, and even treating unreasonable demands that should be rejected as "emotions to be overcome."

Nowadays, the content on the Internet about psychological adjustment in the workplace is basically divided into two quarrelsome camps. On one side are the "mentality adjustment groups" who tend to look inward. Most of them are promoted by psychological practitioners and corporate human resources departments. They focus on methods such as mindfulness meditation, emotional diaries, and cognitive restructuring. The core logic is that "the source of emotions is not the event itself, but your interpretation of the event." This method is indeed useful, but I have met many people What's wrong - a friend who used to work in product development was handed over to him by his boss every day. He followed the blogger to learn "accepting emotions" for three months. In the end, he failed to accept emotions and developed grade three breast nodules. To put it bluntly, the prerequisite for inward adjustment is that you first keep your boundaries, otherwise it will only become a tool for self-PUA. On the other side are the "outward rebels" who have become popular in recent years. They focus on rejecting PUA, getting off work on time, and letting the leader's words go in one ear and out the other. This method is refreshing, but it is not a panacea. An intern I led last year, just graduated from the "anti-work" He talked about "market pressure", and the review meeting for core projects was held until the end of the day. He just picked up his bag and left. After several times, no one dared to take him to do the core business. After two years of staying there, he was still doing basic information collection. When he changed jobs, he didn't even have any project experience that he could use.

I have tried more than a dozen adjustment methods in the past few years and have encountered many pitfalls. What I am left with now are small habits with little technical content. For example, when I changed my plan and my head hurt and my chest felt like a piece of wet cotton was pressing down, I never carried it hard. I put on my phone and went downstairs to walk twice around the park. I bought a popsicle and squatted on the roadside to watch stray cats fighting. After ten minutes, my mind was clear after I came back. ； In the past, I always regarded "emotional stability" as a necessary quality in the workplace, and I would hold back when I was wronged. Now I allow myself to have a "legal breach of defense" quota once a week. Last time, a customer called me three times in a row and scolded the plan for being rubbish. I hid in the tea room and cried for ten minutes. After crying, I wiped my face and made a list of the customer's needs to change one by one. On the contrary, it was twice as efficient as holding in my anger and making changes. ； Also, I set my work group to Do Not Disturb after get off work. Except for urgent matters such as server crashes and bugs in online activities, I will send all other messages until work the next day. At first, I was afraid that my boss would have objections. But later I found that as long as you do your job well at work, no one will bother you about whether to reply to messages after get off work. On the contrary, even non-emergency bosses will not come to me after get off work.

I have also seen many people say, "The job is just to make money, not to talk about emotions." In fact, there is nothing wrong with this. I have a friend who wanted to save money for medical treatment at home in the past two years. He took the initiative to apply for the most tiring customer position, and was scolded by customers every day without saying a word. After saving 200,000 yuan in a year, he quit his job and went to Yunnan for half a month. For him, short-term emotional concessions are for more important goals, which is totally fine. What you fear most is that you want to make more money, but you don’t want to be angry at the same time. When your abilities are not worthy of your desires, you will easily be torn apart by the opinions of both sides and become even more anxious.

I met Brother Zhang a few days ago. The alopecia areata on the back of his head has grown a thin layer of hair. He said that now every day at three o'clock in the afternoon, he goes downstairs to smoke a cigarette and relax for ten minutes. If the boss has too much work to do, he dares to directly mention it. Recently, he won an award for a project and was promoted. Lin Lin was promoted to team leader last month and occasionally had to stay up late to follow the project, but she still kept her pottery class every Sunday morning, saying that no matter how busy she was, the time she had to make mud was completely hers and no one could take it away. You see, there is never a right answer. Some people are suitable for a little more hard work, and some people are suitable for a more steady one. As long as you don't feel sick when you get up every day and think about going to work, you still have the energy to eat your favorite hot pot after get off work, and you can sleep well, you are in the best state.