The “familiar” frustration
Unknowingly enjoying childhood frustrations at work
If unknowingly reliving behaviors from our childhood brings us positive feelings of familiarity and nostalgia, and some may say reminders of childhood warmth, maybe in twisted way some of us can’t get enough of some repetitive frustrations, as these send us back to our childhood experiences?
Frustrations at work can be our fault or our organization’s fault. In both cases these feelings of frustration, and our reactions and actions because of them, might be unknowingly a behavioral pattern we learned as a child and are still part of us, even though we are older and wiser - hopefully ;). While in our childhood these patterns helped us understand the world of adults, in later age these patterns can keep us feeling as kids who can’t control their world and don't understand it.
The dynamics of authority, permissions, wrong vs right, what should we do and how was it perceived by people more “powerful” than us, unwittingly sends us to our childhood when we looked for our parents’ approval, and in some aspects it was connected to the love we got from them and the love we didn’t get. As kids, many times our parents’ logic is hidden from us, and sometimes can also feels arbitrary and unfair, this can become part of what we expects from the world and unknowingly look for. (Note: this is changing these days thanks to recent parenthood approaches where parents are transparent about their logic with their kids, and also more aware for their own motives using tools like psychotherapy and others)
The complex dynamic described above is relived in our work where usually other people in the hierarchy might prevent us from doing what we want or what we think is right, keep us in a cycle of feeling the world is not fair, or that we don’t understand or agree with the logic of their actions. Reliving this dynamics keeps us frustrated and unhappy, but also in a familiar and understandable world. Making these frustrations “good” and comfortable ones.
Symptoms (Some or all):
- Being regularly frustrated at work
- Happily sharing and spreading “problematic” stories about the workplace/ boss/team/company
- Being sarcastic to people trying to change the workplace for the better
- Random rage and negative feelings
- Usage of phrases like: “I knew this will happen”, “it is always like that”, etc
- Easily frustrated or becoming angry at home or with friends
Prescription:
Awareness to the frustrations and their origins is important to our well being, and facing them can bring positive change in other aspects of our life. Understanding the hidden benefits of these frustrations can help us be better employes, improve our work environment, and god forbid, bring more happiness to our work and more importantly to our life.
Our work takes most of our day time, and our awake time in general. Frustrations during these hours can affect the rest of our day, and more importantly symbolize other frustrations in life that are more difficult to identify. Facing the negative feelings we encounter at work can eventually help us identify patterns in other aspects of life, and by working on these in more actionable environment we can bring joy and inner peace to our life after work, and to the quality time we share with the people we love.
Remedy Patterns:
- Help your organization and team to move to data driven and hypothesis based prioritizations and management, thus making your environment less arbitrary and more logical and transparent to others and yourself.
- Encourage openness for feedback and objective criticism using: retrospects, postmortem, 360 reviews and 1:1s.
- Write down frustrations to better understand their source and your point of view on them. Consider using the 5-whys approach to better understand the origin of the frustrations.
- Share negative feedback with relevant people, and work with them on making from it constructive feedback. This will help create positive cycle to these frustrations, and reduce the effect they will have on other aspects of your life.
Note 1: Some managers and organizations are not open for changes and feedback, or encourage efforts for facing problems in their organization. A potential risk could be constant struggle to change the organization, what will create a new “good” frustration. Individuals should be careful from that loop, and eventually prefer working in an environment where they don’t have to relieve these frustrations, for their own sake and for the sake of their loved ones.
Note 2: Frustrations that are our fault, might be failure to communicate our emotions or fault feeling that our needs are less important. This situation will require self work (preferably with someone with you to get an objective feedback on your point of view). For people who feel that, I would also recommend reading: the Drama of the Gifted child.
