From Where I Sit

Angela enjoyed her job, well she would have it weren’t for her boss. Her boss was one of those people who suffered from unpredictable mood swings and all the drama that went with that. One day her boss would be the best of buddies and everything was sweet, the next, her boss would be on the rampage lashing out at everyone in sight. Actually it was even worse because things could change from one hour to the next.

For Angela this meant that she was never really sure where she stood with her boss, leaving her with a sense that she lived in a “danger zone where storms could erupt at any moment”. What was worse was that when the storm passed, her boss acted as though everything were normal and nothing had happened, but Angela lay in ruins from the trail of destruction that had swept through the office.

For Angela the boss’ emotional storms wreaked havoc on her sense of self-esteem, her sense of competence and any sense of security. This is what brought Angela to counselling, her job was making her stressed, sad and sick.

Clearly Angela wasn’t going to be able to do anything to control her boss’ emotional storms, which left only finding better ways to weather the storms. We likened it to living in ‘Tornado Alley’, the area of the USA where tornadoes frequently pass through leaving a trail of destruction. Given that residents living in tornado alley aren’t able to control tornadoes, they need to arm themselves with early warning systems, good safety plans and safe bunkers where they can survive the storm. This is what we built for Angela.
The first part of the plan was for Angela to develop an early warning system which involved watching out for the build-up of one of her boss’ storms. There usually wasn’t a lot of warning, (just as there isn’t for tornadoes) but Angela had noticed that there was a certain tension in the air prior to a storm, and she had also learned to spot an existing storm from the look on her boss’ face from thirty steps down the hall. So when Angela noticed that a storm was imminent or was upon her, she moved into the next phase of the plan.

This involved repeating a key thought to distance Angela from the storm and protect her from emotional damage. The key here was for Angela to remind herself “this is her storm, it has nothing to do with me“. The strategy was to repeat this thought prior to, during and after the passing of a storm.

This was a pivotal part of the strategy because much of the damage to Angela’s equilibrium came when Angela personalised what was going on for her boss. When her boss blamed Angela for one thing or another, Angela felt bad and felt responsible, even though she really knew it had nothing to do with her and she wasn’t in the wrong. By reminding herself herself that her boss’ storms had nothing to do with her, she was able to stop feeling bad and stop feeling responsible

The third part of the strategy wasn’t always possible, but where she could the strategy, called for Angela to get out of the way of the storm. Find some reason to be in a physically different space (just like running for the storm shelter when the tornado hits).

Together the three parts of the strategy, early warning, ‘not my storm’, and get out of the way, restored Angela’s sense of comfort in her workplace and diminished the unpleasantness that had been her workplace for many months. At our last visit Angela even reported she was enjoying work more, even though the storms still raged all around her.

permalink