"Die Vampire, Die!"
This is the title of a song in one of my most favorite little musicals called [Title of Show]. The plot revolves around two friends who are trying to write a musical about trying to write a musical with the goal of submitting it to a theater competition. It's a short show with just 4 cast members and a piano, I discovered it by accident my freshman year of college and it is SUH GOOD. During this particular song, the best friends/cast mates of the pair writing the show are trying to cheer them through a serious bout of writers block and self doubt, and they encourage them to kill off the vampires that may fill them "thoughts of self-consciousness, feelings of worthlessness, they'll make you second guess..." and that is what I want to do today. They go on to define vampires as any person, thought or feeling that stands between them and their creative self-expression; I'm here to broaden up the definition in an effort to help us all come to a place of valuing our personal happiness and elevating our self-compassion.
SO! Long introduction aside, this week on the blog I want to focus on some strategies for dealing with stress and other pesky vampires we may encounter at work.
Just the other day, I took a call from a woman named Donna. The call started normally enough- she asked to speak with her son's attorney and I placed her on hold while I tried the line. When I returned to the call to let her know that the lawyer was away from her line but that I would be happy to take a message, things got wild. Donna was immediately irate and told me that I needed to put her directly through because she had called and called and called and had not gotten a response yet. The call ultimately ended in me disconnecting because it was clear that I could not deescalate the situation. Now, I am not calling Donna a vampire. She was having a rough day, and I would certainly be stressed out if I had a child in prison and couldn't seem to reach his lawyer for help. If I had known before I offered to take a message that she had called multiple times I would have approached her call so differently, but you don't know what you don't know, so I did my best.
Suffice it to say, I was caught off guard by the whole whirlwind encounter with Donna. I hit noACD to take a moment to breathe as you often need to after a call like this one. If you took the class on dealing with frustrated callers a few months ago, you might recognize that my amygdala had been hijacked. The amygdala is the part of your brain that processes emotion, and when you come up against a situation that sets it into panic mode it can be hard to come back down from it.
Suffice it to say, I was caught off guard by the whole whirlwind encounter with Donna. I hit noACD to take a moment to breathe as you often need to after a call like this one. If you took the class on dealing with frustrated callers a few months ago, you might recognize that my amygdala had been hijacked. The amygdala is the part of your brain that processes emotion, and when you come up against a situation that sets it into panic mode it can be hard to come back down from it.
In this moment, I could have totally dwelled on why the call had gone badly and blame myself for it. I could have been angry or irritated that Donna would speak to me, another human, like that. I also could have been miffed at our customer for not answering her line and letting a situation like this escalate to this point. Instead, I told myself that I had done my best on the call. I reminded myself that it was not me that Donna was angry at, it was the situation, and she was not equipped in that moment to give me a chance to try and help. I just released myself from carrying that call with me through the rest of my day.
What about a day that just sucks it out of you? A day where it feels like you barely have any bandwidth left and that the call volume has been out of control? Sometimes it is not necessarily a day where you can pin point a specific call that stressed you out, but the whole environment just feels frantic... what do you do? This can be a harder needle to thread because you don't want to abandon your team when the going gets tough, and sometimes you can't step away. Here are a few things I try to do for myself on days when it just feels non-stop:
- On every break, engage with other humans. You don't have to leave your desk to do it, and the way that you choose to interact is totally dependent on what makes you happiest. Some people thrive by heading to Create Community and just chatting it up with whoever they are lucky to find. For me, it's usually a text to a friend or my mom- not to complain about work, but to see what else is going on in the outside world! Refresh your perspective and get out of the head space that can start to feel like a literal box you are stuck in.
- Find or create moments designed for joy. If you're struggling to get through a crazy day, chances are your co-workers are too. Find something that makes you smile and share that sucker! Maybe a gif or a funny meme or a link to a zoo live cam somewhere... whatever it is, spread it around. At the very least, even if you don't have the strength left to search something out, someone else probably does. Send out the bat signal to your team or a buddy and ask them to send you a little magic for your day. It's not fair to say there is nothing a video of unlikely animal friends, a random Buzzfeed quiz or a choice vine compilation can't fix, but there are a lot of things that can definitely be made better by them!
- Make plans. Give yourself a future gift and give yourself something to look forward to. My favorite motivation is planning a stop at Starbucks on my way home, or premeditating what show I'm going to watch on Netflix when I get home. Start identifying the things about your life outside of work that you get to go back to when you make it through the rough patch, and actively anticipate them.
- Become a time bender. Sometimes, just parsing up the way I think about time helps me get through the day. Example: when I was in high school and we had to run laps in gym, my best strategy for getting through it was to NOT think about running for 10 minutes without stopping. That felt impossible and unending and I hated it. But if I broke it down and told myself it was just five 2 minute increments I suddenly felt a little more equipped to handle it. At the conclusion of each 2 minutes, I pep talked myself by saying "yes! just 4 more to go!" or "3 down?! you're more than halfway!" This strategy did not make the time actually go faster, nor did it make me hate running any less, and it certainly did not make running any easier for me. What it did was give me was something else to focus on and make the time pass faster. On really hard days, I find myself saying "okay, just 2 more 15 minute increments before lunch. You got this." Pep talk yourself and trick your brain into thinking that time is passing faster than it really is.
Vampires are unavoidable. Sometimes they sneak up on you and sometimes they slowly creep in. Either way, the best thing you can do when you encounter one is face it head on. Hopefully some of these tips can be part of your slayer kit of emotional health! We can start by being kind to each other and ourselves, and then the rest will start falling into place.
Tune in next time for more emotional resilience tips and tricks!
- On every break, engage with other humans. You don't have to leave your desk to do it, and the way that you choose to interact is totally dependent on what makes you happiest. Some people thrive by heading to Create Community and just chatting it up with whoever they are lucky to find. For me, it's usually a text to a friend or my mom- not to complain about work, but to see what else is going on in the outside world! Refresh your perspective and get out of the head space that can start to feel like a literal box you are stuck in.
- Find or create moments designed for joy. If you're struggling to get through a crazy day, chances are your co-workers are too. Find something that makes you smile and share that sucker! Maybe a gif or a funny meme or a link to a zoo live cam somewhere... whatever it is, spread it around. At the very least, even if you don't have the strength left to search something out, someone else probably does. Send out the bat signal to your team or a buddy and ask them to send you a little magic for your day. It's not fair to say there is nothing a video of unlikely animal friends, a random Buzzfeed quiz or a choice vine compilation can't fix, but there are a lot of things that can definitely be made better by them!
- Make plans. Give yourself a future gift and give yourself something to look forward to. My favorite motivation is planning a stop at Starbucks on my way home, or premeditating what show I'm going to watch on Netflix when I get home. Start identifying the things about your life outside of work that you get to go back to when you make it through the rough patch, and actively anticipate them.
- Become a time bender. Sometimes, just parsing up the way I think about time helps me get through the day. Example: when I was in high school and we had to run laps in gym, my best strategy for getting through it was to NOT think about running for 10 minutes without stopping. That felt impossible and unending and I hated it. But if I broke it down and told myself it was just five 2 minute increments I suddenly felt a little more equipped to handle it. At the conclusion of each 2 minutes, I pep talked myself by saying "yes! just 4 more to go!" or "3 down?! you're more than halfway!" This strategy did not make the time actually go faster, nor did it make me hate running any less, and it certainly did not make running any easier for me. What it did was give me was something else to focus on and make the time pass faster. On really hard days, I find myself saying "okay, just 2 more 15 minute increments before lunch. You got this." Pep talk yourself and trick your brain into thinking that time is passing faster than it really is.
Vampires are unavoidable. Sometimes they sneak up on you and sometimes they slowly creep in. Either way, the best thing you can do when you encounter one is face it head on. Hopefully some of these tips can be part of your slayer kit of emotional health! We can start by being kind to each other and ourselves, and then the rest will start falling into place.
Tune in next time for more emotional resilience tips and tricks!
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