GET COMFORTABLE WITH DISCOMFORT

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

RECLAIMING AGENCY OVER OUR EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS 

I love the month of December, but it’s probably because it’s my birthday month, and I grew up with a lot of “HYGGE” for this month. Danish people have many ways to cultivate the holiday spirit. Between candles and warm drinks for the dark afternoons, which get dark really early in December, to conversations covered in blankets at home and offices with gatherings for lunch and special treats in the afternoons that bring people together. 

It’s the togetherness that matters for me. 

However, togetherness and stress from work don’t mix well. Stress at work is relieved when we can stay focused on navigating challenges together as a team. However, stress tends to isolate us. 

Emotional agency is key to transforming triggers into conversations that foster connection and collaboration. 

KNOW YOUR TRIGGERS

The patterns of reaction and response we have at work are similar to the patterns of coping that we learned as kids. 

Without pausing to reconnect with how we feel, we will stay in the mindset of automatic reaction driven by stress. And believe me ––it happens all the time as we go through our day.

We are all emotional beings, and our upbringings have given us a collection of memories that have created a pattern of how we deal with the circumstances we face daily. Memories are triggers, and circumstances might remind us of old feelings, some of which can be either painful or loving. It can be a smell, a sound, words, situations, and, of course, people. 

Getting to know our triggers is how we reclaim agency. For example, I have had to get used to facing conflict in a constructive way because my memories of conflict meant my mom would sometimes stay in her room crying for three days after an argument. 

OWN YOUR POWER

Learning to pause with the feelings that arise around conflict takes work. However, by doing so, I can now choose how to face these conflicts instead of running away, as I did when I was younger. 

I was unconsciously attached to easing the discomfort of conflict, and my automatic habit had become diffusing the conflict by distracting myself, changing the subject, making a joke, or simply figuring out a way to leave the situation. As a small child, I would literally run away when in trouble, and as the years passed, anger became my version of running away from the situation. 

You may have patterns of reaction, too, that are built to protect yourself when they only keep you from transforming the trigger into a conversation that builds understanding, connection, and collaboration. 

Around the holidays, we see this flare-up at work and home because December is a month of all kinds of stressors and triggers.

With self-awareness, we can learn to face these stressors so that we can instead choose the kind of response we want to cultivate. Diffusing discomfort with anger or escaping into numbing behaviors is not helpful or healthy for anyone. To own our power is to learn to be comfortable with discomfort when triggered. As a leader, be it in a family or a team, it’s essential to our own and collective well-being to reclaim agency over our emotional triggers so we can cultivate a healthy culture where we are able to communicate with care, navigate change and challenges, and grow stronger together.