touchy feely
i’ve been at my current job for two and a half years, during which i’ve cried in front of other people more than five and fewer than ten times. my favorite time this happened, a coworker, at a loss for what to do, sat down on the floor next to me and said, “ok, well i’m just going to play this game on my phone until you’re ready to go back out there.”
what did you feel reading that first sentence? slight horror? surprise? a small exhale of relief? envy?
what thoughts crossed your mind?
“she must not be very good at her job.”
“i hate that this perpetuates the stereotype of woman being emotional.”
“as a guy, i could never do that. it would be career suicide.”
“how awkward for her coworkers...i would totally play games on my phone too lol.”
while it’s become almost cliché to talk about ‘authenticity in the workplace’ and ‘bringing your whole self to work’ (#millennialcatnip), the reality is that the place where we spend most of our waking hours is positive vibes only. even though four of the five universal human emotions — fear, anger, sadness, disgust, joy — are decidedly not that.
why is this the norm? some possibilities:
workplace cultures dominated by male leaders value stereotypically masculine traits like confidence and decisiveness, while undervaluing stereotypically feminine traits like vulnerability and cooperation. knowing that this is true doesn’t protect you from internalizing the bias — for example, practicing self-compassion can be especially hard for women because 1) we don’t want to feed stereotypes, and 2) everyone knows that you don’t become successful without a lot of ‘powering through’
if you don't learn healthy emotional regulation as a kid, you tend to grow more out of touch with your feelings as you get older. it happens a lot in therapy where i’ll describe something that occurred earlier that day and my therapist will ask, “how did that make you feel?” it’s usually not until that moment that i stop to fully process and acknowledge the emotional impact of the event. i’m often surprised by the intensity of the words that come out of my mouth: fear, hurt, worry
we don’t know how to respond to others’ emotional distress. my coworker deciding to play games on his phone is actually not a terrible reaction; better than trying to ‘solve the problem’ and get me to stop crying, or freaking out and running away. some tips if you want to practice:
brené brown on empathy vs. sympathy in a beautifully animated video
the difference between a shift response and a support response
how you can express support when someone is suffering. i highly recommend listening to the entire episode (and subscribing to where should we begin?) but the tl;dr is:
acknowledge the feeling
validate / empathize with it, if you can
just be there in that moment with the other person
can the norm change?
yuval harari once gave of this summary of his book, sapiens: “the defining feature of humans is that we tell stories. we began with telling stories about gods. then we transitioned to telling stories about each other. and now we’re telling stories about data.”
his quote is an interesting complement to one that i heard at a mindfulness & EQ leadership workshop: “in the past we hired hands to do physical labor. then we started hiring heads to do knowledge work. in the future, we’ll hire hearts.”
for every action — the rise of automation and gobs of data — there is an equal and opposite reaction — a focus on what makes us uniquely human relative to machines: creativity, taste, depth of emotional connection.
five of the ten jobs with the fastest employment growth through 2026 involve high touch human interaction and significant emotional labor.
there’s a story from the workshop that’s stuck with me:
a lawyer had to get surgery to remove a tumor in his prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that’s responsible for decision making. during the operation, doctors accidentally severed the connection between his amygdala, which processes emotions, and his prefrontal cortex.
after the surgery, the lawyer’s life fell apart. he was fired from his job, his wife left him, he lost his home. a battery of neurological tests turned up nothing — his memory was fine, his IQ unchanged. it wasn’t until the doctor asked him to pick a date for a follow up appointment that they got a clue as to what was going on: the lawyer could list every pro and con for every available time slot in the next week, but he couldn’t say which one he preferred.
without emotional feedback from the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex can’t do its job. by telling us how we feel about different options, emotions play a critical role in our ability to make decisions.
//
i want to try something new inspired by invisibilia’s post-credits ‘moment of non-zen,’ which i’m tentatively calling so this awkward thing happened.
we’re all living our best lives on instagram and indulging our worst selves on twitter, but it’d be nice to have a space where you can share your embarrassing, i just wanna be like homer and disappear into a bush moments, too.
e.g., last week, in an effort to meet more people who are writing and podcasting, i rsvp'd to a mixer for asian american journalists in the bay area. i had asked a friend to introduce me to the host before the event, but life happened and that ball got dropped. i decided to go anyway because the bar was just a few blocks from my apartment. on the walk over i practiced introducing myself as an ‘independent radio producer,’ which was _really_ hard to do without scrunching my face in a way that betrayed how ridiculous i felt saying that.
as soon as i stepped into zeitgeist, i realized i had made a mistake. everyone at the mixer looked like they already knew each other. i, on the other hand, knew no one, and i couldn't imagine why anyone would want to talk to me (ah, our internal monologues). to buy time, i did the thing where you walk around as if you’re looking for your friends but really you’re just making awkward eye contact with strangers and pretending to text people who are not coming. i did that twice, turned around, and left. the whole ordeal lasted about five minutes, but it felt like an eternity.
so yeah, that awkward thing happened.
what do you think? should i keep doing this? do you want to share a story too? this is probably enough questions?
lu
p.s. hi to everyone who stumbled across this letter through the 99 tabs drawing / joined recently! i’d love to learn more about what’s on your mind and what you’re interested in. shoot me a note and say hello :)