Workplace mental health and workplace psychological adjustment

The core standard of workplace mental health is "your emotional sovereignty is not tied to job evaluation." Effective workplace psychological adjustment can never be solved by simply "adjusting your mentality" or "thinking a little bit more." The essence is a dynamic process that combines "individual boundary establishment + environmental screening + professional intervention when necessary." This is the most practical conclusion I have come to after 7 years of corporate EAP service and nearly a thousand workplace consultation cases.

The consulting case I just received last week is still hot: Xiao Zhou, a 28-year-old e-commerce operator, worked for 18 consecutive days during Double 11. The final activity data was 8% worse than the target. The department boss threw his plan on the table at the all-employee review meeting and said, "You can't do this well. If I were you, I would have resigned." He walked out of the company and sat by the river for three hours that day. He even wrote his resignation report. When he got home and touched the cat's head, he realized that he had just made a down payment last month and his mortgage was 8,000 per month. He didn't dare to resign naked. During that time, the first thing he did when he woke up every morning was stomach cramps. He felt nauseous even while brushing his teeth. When he went to the hospital, he found no organic problems. The doctor said it was a physical reaction caused by anxiety.

In fact, the current academic circles are divided into two groups regarding the attribution of psychological problems in the workplace, and no one can convince the other. The school of positive psychology that prefers individual intervention believes that the source of most negative emotions in the workplace is "cognitive distortion" - for example, equating a single work mistake with personal incompetence, and treating the leader's emotional evaluation as a denial of oneself. As long as the cognitive model is adjusted and separated "I am not good at this person" and "I have not done this well", 80% of the emotional internal friction can be alleviated. The other school of industrial-organizational psychology has a sharper point of view, directly exposing the lie that "the problem lies with the individual": According to data from the "2023 Workplace Mental Health Research White Paper", nearly 72% of workplace psychological problems are essentially caused by improper organizational management - such as unequal power and responsibility, meaningless internal overtime, nepotistic promotion mechanism, and blatant workplace PUA. In this case, allowing individuals to "adjust their mentality" essentially means making the victim pay for the perpetrator.

Both views are correct, but the applicable scenarios are different. I have seen too many people go into the dead end of adjustment, or they try their best to blame themselves inwardly, thinking that it is all their fault, and endure it until they finally develop thyroid nodules. ； Or when things don't go well, they blame all the problems on the company and make excuses at every turn. I once met a product manager who graduated from 985. He changed jobs 5 times in two years, and he stayed in each job for less than 3 months. Every time I asked him, he was told that he was a "stupid leader" and "coworkers are difficult to deal with." However, after a deep conversation, I found that he never refused chores thrown at him by others. He also took jobs that were clearly not his own. In the end, he couldn't finish the job and took the blame. No matter how many jobs he changed, it was useless.

I usually don't give my clients any poisonous chicken soup of "be strong". I just give them a few simple methods that can be used easily. They are not fancy to say, but they really work. For example, every time I meet someone complaining with a sad face, I don’t let him dump out his emotional garbage. I first ask him to take an A4 piece of paper and make two lists: The left side is “the parts that I can’t control at all”, such as the boss’s temper, the company’s layoff plan, and colleagues’ meetings. I don’t know how to blame someone. The right side is “the part I can control”, such as whether I should reply to work messages after get off work, whether I should explain when I am blamed, whether I should record the boss’s curse words and keep them as arbitration evidence, and whether I should submit my resume to find another job if I really can’t stand it. After you finish the list, you will find that 90% of the things that make you so anxious that you can't sleep are in the left column. You can't control them at all. Just focus on the right column and do your work. Don't struggle with things you can't control.

Many people say that you need to be an "emotionally stable adult". I want to laugh every time. Emotional stability does not mean that you should be a work machine without emotions. Just like the faucet in your home, it is always blocked and will burst sooner or later. There must be a flood outlet. I know a girl who works in an investment bank. She goes to the boxing gym to hit the punching bag for an hour every Wednesday after get off work. She treats the punching bag as a client who makes random demands. After punching, she feels refreshed and goes back to work overtime. It is more effective than any mindfulness meditation. There is also a young man who works in research and development. He has a whole box of decompression music in his drawer. When he is scolded by his boss in a meeting, he hides under the table and pinches it until he feels good before continuing to listen. You really don't have to force yourself to use any "high-end" adjustment methods. Anything that can smoothen your emotions is a good method.

There are two particularly popular arguments on the Internet now, which are very controversial. One is "just lying down is justice", which says that as long as I have no desire, the boss can't PUA me; the other is "you don't have to suffer when you get to the top", which says that no one will dare to look down on you when you reach the management level. I have seen people who are really able to sleep peacefully. They have no mortgage and no pressure at home. They get a salary of several thousand yuan a month and are able to spend it. They get off work every day and raise cats and dogs. They are really happy. But if you have to pay back a mortgage of more than 10,000 yuan a month and raise children, why don't you give it a try? I felt even more anxious when I was laid off at the end. I have also seen someone at the level of a group director still replying to messages from her boss at two o'clock in the morning every day. She was diagnosed with breast cancer during a physical examination last year and was still changing the project plan before the surgery. Do you think she is not stressed? Impossible. So there is no standard answer. What suits you is the best. Don’t listen to people on the Internet giving you blind advice.

In fact, after doing consulting for so many years, my biggest feeling is that people really don’t need to take the workplace too seriously. When you go out to work, you are selling your time and ability in exchange for money. Part of the salary you receive is "mental compensation." There is no need to take a comment from the boss or a look from a colleague as a big deal, and there is no need to bring unsatisfactory work into life, even having a sad face when eating with your family. If you really feel that you can't take it anymore, go to the hospital's psychology department for a consultation, or talk to a professional psychological counselor. This is not shameful, and it is much more cost-effective than struggling to deal with hyperthyroidism, nodules, and depression.