: Spillover stress
Had a bad meeting at work the other day—I was stressed out about the state of the world and doomscrolled some awful article right before I went in. Ended up being basically unpleasant during the whole meeting, shooting down others’ ideas and saying “That will never work,” etc. Sent a little apology in the group messages afterwards but still feeling a bit guilty about it. I guess my therapist would remind me, in this sort of situation, that the fact that my conscience is still torturing me over the incident is evidence that I am not the sort of bad person that I am worried I might be.
I don’t know if this is me getting older, wiser, and more self-aware about it, or if my personality has actually changed, but I seem to be more susceptible to this sort of “spillover stress” now than I was when I was younger. I have to be very careful about my media diet and what sorts of articles I click on, especially if I know I’m about to go into a contentious meeting or already sleep deprived or whatever.
If I’m doing it right, I have to dedicate what seems like a solid hour a day (not all at once, of course) to this sort of metacognitive maintenance: checking in on my stress and fatigue levels, talking myself out of clicking on a bad headline, keeping tabs on the feelings of colleagues who are dealing with similar issues.
I always thought the hard part of my job would be the technical skills—you know, the ones I spend so much time, money, and effort honing—but what I see now is that the real challenge is managing relationships, and being able to show up with a little more grace and tolerance when everyone’s in the pressure cooker. (Of course, this requires that I be so good at the tech stuff that that is never the problem.)