Intolerance of Uncertainty and Managing Emotions

Week 4:  Managing emotions by shifting how we think.

If I could use one work to summarise this week it's discouraged. It started off ok, I was reading about being more comfortable with discomfort, the labeling of emotions but when it came to self-talk I draw a blank.

When it comes to this it's less about me as a person but how things are going in my life in general - I don't seem to emotionally be able to separate myself from the issue at hand. So I'm in a difficult situation at work at present but I'm not able to take that situation and dislodge it from my feelings about myself or other things in my life that I'm happy with. 

I don't think it's so much the strategies themselves - as in they're "wrong", but I'm less engaged with them that I was last week which were action strategies. Every time I hear words like "positive self-talk" or "cognitive re-framing" I start to feel myself being weighed down. Perhaps it isn't the strategies themselves - maybe it's more the misuse of them. Or maybe it's my black and white thinking when it comes to adverse events - and I mean those events which impact me personally. Covid I've been fairly ok with once the initial shock had gone, the lockdown, working from home, isolation - I seem slowly to have adjusted to these (although I still need to get out more for exercise). However the works situation which has impacted some of what I'm going I'm taking a lot more to heart. Put simply, I'm dealing with a global pandemic far better than I am dealing with a temporary works thing - which in a years time will not matter a jot.

So what were my issues this week?

Positive self-talk: I don't have any, at least none that I'm aware of. My mind works purely on action-consequence for the most part. When there was the exercise of looking in the mirror I see a person looking back at me but I have no thoughts about who I see. It's all physical - my beard needs a trim. I quite like my head shaved. I'm looking forward to my shower. There's no sense of "me" there - although when I was signed off I was starting to experience that. It's almost as if having things to do "in the world" distracts me from knowing me. Or maybe it's a case I'm not comfortable with how I feel when I'm with others and I either want to compartmentalise, suppress or avoid it - I mean me! Maybe looking out my thinking is skewed - other people looking on see things from a different perspective. For some reason I seem to struggle to do that if it's about me.

Cognitive Reframing: I think I do this already to some extent at least. But I still had resistance to the term and practice when I heard it and I think this hearkens back to the days when I was growing up when my folks (well 1 of them as the other barely spoke to me) would seemingly dismiss any issue I had "It'll look better in the morning, think of this you have" when what I wanted and needed when trying to share a problem was practical strategies. What do I DO!!!!!!!! Anything other than felt like the topic was being avoided or I was being dismissed. Many a time I think it was - because I was never taught anything practical in my family or any life skills shared.

Perhaps the other issue was I did a lot reframing when I had a religious thing going on - which led me not to being aware of or handling my feelings but completely dismissing them in favour of a sacred word or phrase (or prayer). Should have been harmless but I got sucked into the whole "victory" mentality of the charismatic movement- which illustrated the danger of my thirst for absorbing information without critical evaluation. All that happened was that I continued to exist in tension for weeks, sometimes months before collapsing in an emotional heap. I've never really got over that, even now where I hear someone talk passionately about religion the alarm bells start ringing. 

What I did connect with though was not only mindfulness but also the concept of connecting with ancestory. From the course---

Rambles- this ended up intended for a response on another thread, but it didn't seem to answer the question of the OP. So I'm putting it here - because I don't want to delete it.

How I see things on the AS. 

One is that as recently diagnosed on the AS I don't understand gossip. I understand the purpose of it - in a sociological sense, but I can't bring myself to take part in it. Even if I hear something about someone else through a third party who volunteers up the information I'd never think of sharing it with anyone. To me a conversation between two people stays within two people (I know) and conversation in a group stays within a group and people shouldn't be talked about when they're not around (I know). Decisions should never be made without all affected parties informed (including children - so I was disappointed a lot as a kid). I seem to live in this cognitive dissonance where in practice I have clear evidence that these things don't apply at all times - and yet I strongly believe they should and I get very uncomfortable if I'm in positions where that belief isn't being held. 

The second is something I found out about just by accident. A project at work I was pushing for, had been agreed, but the scope of it changed and a new manager installed without my colleague or myself being fully advised. So both myself and the colleague who'd been pushing this for over 18 months had the same reaction - anger, frustration, confusion, disillusionment but the source was of our experience was very different.

My colleague interpreted it through a social lens. "Who does this person think they are?" "Why are they trying to take this over?" 

I interpreted it very differently - through a rules based lens

"Is there something I misunderstood?", "Why weren't the communications better?", "Is there something I missed?", "What was agreed?", "DId I have a right to even be advised of this in advance?", "Is there a misunderstanding - why install a new manager when both I and my colleague were able to steer this? - what's the rationale?".

Where my colleague was able to switch off, because the person was the problem, I couldn't because I couldn't understand if the process of the project agreement was faulty or my understanding of it. 

The third is that I have a very literal interpretation of job roles and high expectation of people in senior roles (I know!). So when I'm communicating with higher ups I'm astounded at the level of non-understanding or questions that are asked. A lot of my frustration comes when managers don't meet my unrealistically high expectations. After all they're getting the dosh - why aren't they reading how to be an effective manager, or leader. If I tell one how I've observed a model of consensus decision-making in action moving from divergent thinking, to groan phase, to convergent thinking to majority consensus (although I didn't name of it at the time - I had to go hunting for the thing I'd just seen) why did they not know instantly what I was talking about? 

As my therapist pointed out I have a habit of treating people like widgits (the roles they are in) - instead of people (who they are). 

Fourth, I need things explained literally to me. I can't dance around topics, understand hidden messages or read between the lines. If it needs to be said, then say it. If it remains unsaid then it's not a problem. At least that's how it should work. At work, I'm very task orientated - if I don't have clear goals or expectations communicated to me or made aware of resources available then I struggle. If I'm in a job and expected to figure it out with no clear role or benchmarks then I'll fail (which has happened more than once).

Rambles- this ended up intended for a response on another thread, but it didn't seem to answer the question of the OP. So I'm putting it here - because I don't want to delete it.

How I see things on the AS. 

One is that as recently diagnosed on the AS I don't understand gossip. I understand the purpose of it - in a sociological sense, but I can't bring myself to take part in it. Even if I hear something about someone else through a third party who volunteers up the information I'd never think of sharing it with anyone. To me a conversation between two people stays within two people (I know) and conversation in a group stays within a group and people shouldn't be talked about when they're not around (I know). Decisions should never be made without all affected parties informed (including children - so I was disappointed a lot as a kid). I seem to live in this cognitive dissonance where in practice I have clear evidence that these things don't apply at all times - and yet I strongly believe they should and I get very uncomfortable if I'm in positions where that belief isn't being held. 

The second is something I found out about just by accident. A project at work I was pushing for, had been agreed, but the scope of it changed and a new manager installed without my colleague or myself being fully advised. So both myself and the colleague who'd been pushing this for over 18 months had the same reaction - anger, frustration, confusion, disillusionment but the source was of our experience was very different.

My colleague interpreted it through a social lens. "Who does this person think they are?" "Why are they trying to take this over?" 

I interpreted it very differently - through a rules based lens

"Is there something I misunderstood?", "Why weren't the communications better?", "Is there something I missed?", "What was agreed?", "DId I have a right to even be advised of this in advance?", "Is there a misunderstanding - why install a new manager when both I and my colleague were able to steer this? - what's the rationale?".

Where my colleague was able to switch off, because the person was the problem, I couldn't because I couldn't understand if the process of the project agreement was faulty or my understanding of it. 

The third is that I have a very literal interpretation of job roles and high expectation of people in senior roles (I know!). So when I'm communicating with higher ups I'm astounded at the level of non-understanding or questions that are asked. A lot of my frustration comes when managers don't meet my unrealistically high expectations. After all they're getting the dosh - why aren't they reading how to be an effective manager, or leader. If I tell one how I've observed a model of consensus decision-making in action moving from divergent thinking, to groan phase, to convergent thinking to majority consensus (although I didn't name of it at the time - I had to go hunting for the thing I'd just seen) why did they not know instantly what I was talking about? 

As my therapist pointed out I have a habit of treating people like widgits (the roles they are in) - instead of people (who they are). 

Fourth, I need things explained literally to me. I can't dance around topics, understand hidden messages or read between the lines. If it needs to be said, then say it. If it remains unsaid then it's not a problem. At least that's how it should work. At work, I'm very task orientated - if I don't have clear goals or expectations communicated to me or made aware of resources available then I struggle. If I'm in a job and expected to figure it out with no clear role or benchmarks then I'll fail (which has happened more than once).