Responding emotionally, particularly in the case of anger, is a major cause of breakdowns in social environments, particularly the workplace.
It should be remembered that emotions are a biological – a physical – response to thoughts one might have.
In other words, one thinks a thought, and this causes a response that manifests as a spurt of reactive chemicals in the body. Emotion, for instance, might display itself as tremulous feelings in one’s stomach, hair on the back of one’s neck standing up, or a flushed face in the case of anger, not to mention the adrenalin rush that accompanies anger. That’s why a synonym for the word “emotion” is “feelings’ – because we experience them, we “feel” them, physically.
Emotional responses are complex and involve several biological processes and brain regions. Here’s a brief overview:
- Limbic System: This is the primary area of the brain involved in emotional processing. It includes:
- Amygdala: Plays a crucial role in processing emotions like fear and pleasure. It acts as a rapid-response system, alerting us to potential threats.
- Hippocampus: Integrates emotional experiences with memories, helping us remember emotionally charged events more vividly.
- Hypothalamus: Activates the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the physical manifestations of emotions, such as increased heart rate and sweating.
- Neurotransmitters: Chemicals in the brain that transmit signals between neurons. Key neurotransmitters involved in emotions include:
- Dopamine: Associated with pleasure and reward.
- Serotonin: Regulates mood, anxiety, and happiness.
- Norepinephrine: Involved in the body’s “fight or flight” response.
- Endocrine System: Hormones also play a significant role in emotional responses. For example:
- Cortisol: Released in response to stress.
- Oxytocin: Often called the “love hormone,” it promotes bonding and social interactions.
These systems work together to produce the wide range of emotional responses we experience daily.
Emotional experience is, therefore, not some standalone mystery of the human psyche, the complexities of which are comprehensible only in the loosest sense, by our medical professionals; it’s, in the main, a biological “symptom” of cognitive processes.
So then, the assumption is: “If I change my thinking, then how I feel emotionally will change correspondingly, and I’ll feel better.” There are two reasons why this won’t happen as quickly as we’d like:
- Once I have pumped my body full of one or a few chemical neurotransmitters—chemical compound messengers—that have been produced in response to a particular line of thinking, these won’t magically disappear just because I changed my thoughts to “happy, less stressful” ones. My only suggestion in this instance, which is received with somewhat dubious scepticism, has been to drink a lot of water to detoxify oneself and wash out those uncomfortable chemicals. This is neither instantaneous nor a vastly effective palliative.
- Many of our emotional reactions are spontaneous, unconscious responses, represented by the flesh-and-blood neural pathways resulting from years of particular responses to favoured thoughts that have caused what the Taoists call our “habitual nature.” Changing one’s habits is neither a simple nor a quick process and will take lots of strenuous recall, mindfulness, and effort.
So, we find ourselves effectively “trapped”, by decorum, design or by contract, in social or work situations, in the company of what we perceive (not necessarily realistically) to be abusive and “primitive” personalities. These individuals attack our self-esteem, criticize our efforts and contributions, and denigrate the extent and quality of our conformity to prevailing social norms and mores. Often, these are gaslighting, clinically sociopathic, narcissistic personas whose very existence is made real by overbearing, aggressive, thoughtless, and conflictual speech, attitude, and behaviour.
The workplace is often seen as a realm of logic—where numbers reign supreme, where cost, margins, and efficiency dictate success. In an ideal world, emotions would have no place here. After all, business is math, not poetry. Yet, reality tells a different story.
People are not machines, no matter how hard organizations try to fit them into neat, rational equations. We are emotional creatures, complex and unpredictable. We bring to work our ambitions, frustrations, triumphs, and fears. And when these emotions collide in a high-pressure environment filled with hierarchies, competition, and deadlines, the result can be anything from creative brilliance to complete chaos.
The key, then, is not to suppress emotions but to understand and manage them. Positive emotions—enthusiasm, satisfaction, a sense of purpose—fuel productivity and innovation. They build engagement, strengthen relationships, and create workplaces where people want to stay, collaborate, and grow. On the other hand, unchecked negativity—stress, resentment, frustration—can spread like wildfire, draining morale, triggering conflicts, and ultimately impacting both individual performance and organizational success.
This is where emotional intelligence becomes a game-changer. Leaders who recognize and regulate their own emotions—and who can read and respond to the emotions of others—set the tone for a healthier workplace. They turn tension into teamwork, frustration into motivation, and uncertainty into opportunity.
Even beyond internal dynamics, emotions shape how employees engage with customers. A smile, a calm response, a moment of genuine connection—these intangible factors often determine customer satisfaction just as much as the product or service itself.
Organizations that acknowledge the emotional undercurrent of work life don’t just avoid toxicity; they actively foster an emotional culture that drives success. They create spaces where people feel valued, where challenges are met with resilience, and where emotions—rather than being obstacles—become assets.
Because at the end of the day, work isn’t just about numbers. It’s about people. And people, whether we like it or not, come with emotions. The trick is learning how to navigate them wisely.
But what of those aggressive, abrasive, overbearing colleagues and social associates that enter one’s space forcefully, manipulatively, aggressively, overbearingly, layering criticism upon scorn, who belabour and attack our sensibilities, cast doubt on our self-esteem, wound our values and opinions, who can’t be escaped from, who dominate our spaces so comprehensively?
The great mental health challenge, then, is to develop a “detachment of emotion” reactive process in events in social situations like this. Ideally, we want to respond to abrasive situations objectively and rationally. Some individuals will make that difficult to do. What if we could just step back, leaving those wrought-up emotions where we previously stood?
With a degree of serenity, oversee the situation unattached? Unaffected by the emotional cauldron one has been thrown into?
I use what I cause the “fleecy jersey” analogy.
We’ve all, at one stage, owned one of those jerseys that develop balls of fluff that cling to the fabric with unusual insistence, and detract from your overall aesthetic effect. We are prone to – deliberately or subconsciously – picking some of those fluffballs off the jersey in somewhat of a distracted, ad hoc, obsessive fashion.
Perhaps the key lies in selecting those fluffballs in a concerted, deliberate, selective and targeted fashion what would result in being of the most benefit to you?
Now, imagine you’re eating a toffee apple while wearing one of those jerseys.
You distractedly pick at the bits on your sweater – but now your hands are inordinately sticky. And so, the fluffballs cling to your fingers with unusual persistance.
What’s your instinctive reaction? You smear your hand on a – preferably coarse – surface until the fluff is dislodged, and the adhesion transferred. And then you walk away.
So, it is with the social detachment process.
It is not enough to merely pluck the fluff (those disturbing thoughts or feelings, that abrasive personality, distressing responses that colour or pollute your immediate physical and social environment) from your winter wear (your psyche). You need to put it in a place separate from you (the rough surface). In line with this metaphor, this will take a bit of doing, to rescind your permission for it to exist, to move away from its adherence to you, because the attachment is – positively or negatively – meaningful to you, and cannot just be summarily disposed of.
Yet still, the fluff, the destructive emotion, is within your radar, having its, albeit more remote association with you, so the next step is to walk away until it is neither in sight nor mind.
Here, we have a three-step process:
- detach (remove from your emotional jersey)
- transfer (move it to a place removed from you)
- abandon (put physical, memory, and trigger distance between you and the negative effects.
I’m hoping that this allegory will present as an image in one’s mind, a touchstone for the process of detachment from emotional responses to negative elements in your life that do not serve you…
Let me know what you think, how it goes…
