Workplace Mental Health Standards

It will not affect the delivery of its own work, it will not be led by emotions to make decisions that cause career losses, and it will not continue to sacrifice the boundaries of personal life for the sake of work, causing irreversible internal friction.

I took over an employee psychological screening project for an Internet company two years ago, and I met a girl from the operation position who was particularly impressed: she had just been employed for two years after graduating from 985, and ranked in the top 10% of the department in KPI for three consecutive months. The project she led also won a company-level award. According to the judgment standards of the traditional industrial organizational psychology school, her professional functions were completely intact and she definitely fell into the category of "mental health." But the contents she filled out in the screening questionnaire were disturbing: she hid in the fire escape for half an hour every day after get off work before daring to go home. She felt physically nauseous at the thought of going to work on weekends. She couldn't help but check the work group even when eating with friends, for fear of missing the news. In the eyes of the current mainstream school of positive psychology, this situation is already a clear psychological warning sign - even if the work can still be completed, long-term emotional internal consumption is already damaging her personal state, which is definitely not healthy.

Oh, by the way, don’t be fooled by the chicken soup articles on the Internet, thinking that "mental health means not complaining about work at all and loving going to work every day." I know an HRD who has been working as a manufacturing HRD for 12 years. Every time he has a meeting, he complains about the company’s messy processes and his boss slaps his head on changes to the system. After complaining, he can turn around and come up with a coordination plan. He gets S for quarterly performance every time. After work, he throws his work machine into the hallway and takes his children camping and fishing without delay. Do you think he loves this job? Not necessarily, but his emotions are not accumulated at all. Complaining is his pressure relief valve. He has a clear boundary between work and life. According to consensus standards, this is a true example of a healthy mental state in the workplace.

Don’t impose other people’s standards on yourself either. The occupational attributes of different industries inherently determine the different emotional thresholds: for those who work in To B sales, it is common for them to be rejected by customers seven or eight times a week, and they can still turn around and make the next call with a smile. This is normal professionalism; if it is a young girl who has just joined the administrative position and cries for half an hour when the leader casually says that the report is wrong, it does not necessarily mean that she is mentally fragile, but may just have not passed the adaptation period. Two years ago, an emergency doctor came to me for consultation. He said that he was used to seeing birth, old age, illness and death, but now he didn’t have any emotional fluctuations when his colleagues were fired. Was he too indifferent? Instead, I told him that this was normal emotional isolation in a professional setting. If he really took everything personally, he would really have a problem.

To be honest, I have been doing EAP consulting for 6 years, and I have seen too many people attribute all workplace psychological problems to themselves: they feel that it is their poor psychological quality and weak ability to withstand stress that make them not want to go to work and become anxious. But have you ever thought about it, if the company makes you 996 every day, sets KPIs so hard that you can’t even top the department’s sales, and your direct boss puts you in the shoes every day, no one else can handle it? At times like this, the problem isn't you at all, it's the environment. Don't stupidly carry it on yourself and blame yourself for not being good enough.

To put it bluntly, workplace mental health is not a test paper that requires full marks. There is no need to force yourself to hit the standard line in every item. You don’t have to love your job like you’re on a daily basis, and you don’t have to force yourself to have no negative emotions at all. As long as you feel that doing this job is not to the point of destroying yourself, you won’t have trouble sleeping or eating, and you won’t get scared when you think about going to work, there is a high probability that there will be no big problem. If one day you feel that you really can't stand it any longer, don't hold on. You can complain to a friend or talk to a professional counselor. It's really not a shameful thing - after all, work is only a part of your life, and you are the most important thing.