Blindsided at work
I recently saw a post on an online group I’m a part of where someone was told her team wasn’t performing as well as expected, despite having previously received great feedback during the review cycle. They were devastated, felt blindsided, and were (very understandably) reeling from this news. They were really proud of all of the work they and their team had been doing, and in addition to being blindsided by the feedback, were hurt that something they’d put so much thought and effort into was being so devalued.
A decade ago, when I still worked as a product manager in tech, I was called into a small 2-person conference room by my boss. He asked me a couple of questions about how my team was performing, and then let me know that one of the people I worked with had asked to move teams. Because of me. I was stunned. It was quite literally a shock to my system and left me spinning. How is it that I thought I was being supportive of this person, yet they experienced me as being overly intense and aggressive? How did I miss it? I was flooded with emotion and completely unable to function. I felt terrible.
An aside on giving feedback
Before we dive into what was happening for me and the group poster, consider this my plug for delivering kind, compassionate, and direct feedback earlier in relationships at work. (If giving feedback or even the thought of giving feedback makes you want to crumble, give my little mini podcast episode about giving feedback a listen.) It may be hard to give critical feedback and it may be hard to receive critical feedback, but it is much easier to receive feedback and have space to make a change than it is to be blindsided. It’s just the kinder and more relational thing to do.
Your nervous system… blindsided
When you feel blindsided, that is a surefire sign that your nervous system has left your window of tolerance and has gone into overwhelm, likely hyperarousal. -brakes screech- Oh, I guess we have some terms to define. Let’s get to it.
Window of tolerance (or window of capacity) When you feel safe enough in your body and don’t feel any literal or figurative threats to your well-being, your nervous system is pretty chill. When you’re in this state, you can laugh, you can play, and you can also take some amount of discomfort. If you’re truly in your window of tolerance (and none of your trauma is being poked) you’re able to receive feedback, consider it, and respond accordingly. You’re able to stumble or hit a roadblock and, instead of just lying down and calling it quits, you have enough capacity to stand back up or find a new creative way around the roadblock. This isn’t to say you won’t have any emotions about it—you’re human, you’ll feel things—but it won’t completely derail you.
The window of tolerance is not a fixed width for any given person for their whole life; rather, it is informed by your life experiences. For some people who haven’t experienced a lot of safety in their lives, the window of tolerance is extremely small. Seemingly insignificant events might exceed their window. For others, it’s wider. The good news is it can and does change. (In fact, one of the benefits of therapy is the ability to slowly and gently expand your window of tolerance over time.)
Hyperarousal Hyperarousal is on one side of the overwhelm continuum, and you are likely more familiar with this concept if I use the words “fight, flight, and freeze.” This is a very energy-filled, activated state that comes on when your body thinks you’re in danger and often feels like your heart is thumping out of your chest. If you are about to be attacked by a mountain lion, this is a hugely useful state! In addition to increased blood flow from that pounding heart, your body also begins to secrete stress hormones that will give your muscles a boost if you need to fight or run away from the mountain lion. In hyperarousal, your body also shuts down unnecessary processes in order to tune your performance (like closing all your open apps and browser tabs that aren’t useful to the task at hand). This is great! Except… one of the things that it shuts down is our left brain. This includes things like… our speech center. Our ability to be analytical or fact-based. Our ability to stay rational or do reality testing. So what we’re left with is our emotions, instincts, and heightened sensory perception. Fantastic in a life-or-death situation with a mountain lion; awful at work.
Ok, so how might you know you’re in hyperarousal? (You might not know while you’re still in it, especially if this is a new concept to you, but over time you’ll start recognizing the signs.) If you get blindsided at work and you get super defensive and angry, maybe even yell, you might be having a “fight” reaction. If your reaction is to leave immediately and go get drunk/high, you may be attempting to “flee” the situation. Or you might be frozen in your seat while the world is spinning, unable to fight or flee. These are all very common responses when your nervous system is in hyperarousal. In each of these instances, you may find that you don’t really remember what you said, you may not be entirely certain of the order of events, and in hindsight, at least, you didn’t feel entirely “present” for your words/actions.
(Note: this is never an excuse for violent, aggressive behavior. We all are responsible for our words and actions and have the agency to seek help and continually work on ourselves. We should take accountability and apologize for inappropriate behavior, even when it happens from a place of hyperarousal.)
But there is no mountain lion
I know, right? There’s no mountain lion, it’s just a person at work saying words at you, so you might think that shouldn’t count as a life-threatening situation. Your body and your nervous system are doing their best to keep you safe, and they get it wrong sometimes. Even a lot of times. Here’s (maybe) why.
You’re probably familiar with the word trauma as it relates to something like PTSD. Something happens either one time or on a recurring basis that is life-threatening, and it wreaks havoc on our nervous systems. Well, that’s one type of trauma, but it’s actually a pretty limited definition of ways in which humans can experience trauma. Some trauma is a lot more complex—you might have heard the term CPTSD or complex trauma—which occurs when someone we love and who is supposed to love us hurts us repeatedly. And some trauma is more developmental in nature, which means unexpected, overwhelming things can traumatize us when we’re babies and young children. (Often these same things would not be traumatizing our adult selves). You can have loving, well-meaning caregivers but still have had experiences that overwhelmed you. As a baby, your life depends on the love of your caregivers, so anything that seems to take their love away may be perceived as dangerous and life-threatening.
Ok, so back to your brilliant nervous system, body, and mind. As humans, we’re really, really great at recognizing patterns and categorizing things. For example, we can recognize the difference between a dog and a cat somehow. (Just try explaining the difference using words, though… it seems impossible.) We do the same thing when we assess danger and safety—we see something, it looks like this other thing, and we categorize it as such. The categorization gets more robust over time… more input, more data, more robust. The problem is, that what was once dangerous to us as children is not true for us as adults in the world, but no one told our categorization machine. So all of a sudden our boss telling us we messed up feels the same as our caregiver being angry at us and that is dangerous to our life.
So… what can we do?
Build awareness of the experience
The first step to any sort of change is awareness. By reading this post, you’ve likely already increased your awareness of what you tend to do when you’re overwhelmed, and perhaps also what situations tend to overwhelm you. Keep building out that awareness. At first, your awareness may happen in the aftermath of something. Something happened at work, you got overwhelmed and reacted however you did, and later that night once you get home you suddenly realize, ah hah! I was in total fight mode. After some time, you might start to have awareness that you went into fight mode closer in time to when it happened, say an hour or two later. Eventually, you might recognize when you’re in mid-overwhelm. That will be wild, but I will be super happy for you and you should celebrate! Becoming more aware means you will start to have more choices, and being aware of overwhelm while it is happening means you can begin to pull yourself out of it.
Build awareness of your triggers
While you’re building all of that awareness of the feelings of being overwhelmed, you can also start to build a better understanding of when you’re likely to be overwhelmed. When you have that ah-hah moment of having been in overwhelm, you might ask yourself what happened just before you went into fight/flight/freeze mode, and just notice it. “Oh, I was overwhelmed right after my coworker pointed out my mistake.” Keep in mind that certain phrases or even just a certain facial expression can absolutely trigger your overwhelm. Note here that I am using the word trigger—because that is what it is—and there’s no trigger warning in the world that can account for all of the nuances of each person’s trauma. We cannot reasonably demand that we never encounter our triggers in life, but we can become more aware of them and help ourselves weather them better.
Practice techniques to stay in or get back into your window of tolerance
There are a ton of tools for you to add to your toolbox that can help you stay in your window of tolerance when you are aware that something/someone may trigger you and help you return to your window of tolerance once you’ve gone into overwhelm. What works for one person may not work at all for someone else. In fact, some of these tools will soothe some people but might actually trigger someone else’s trauma. Experiment gently and find your tools. This is a non-exhaustive list of things that might help:
Getting grounded. Feeling your feet on the floor. Feeling gravity pull your hips into your chair. Lying down on the floor.
Mindful breathing. Signal breaths. Candle breaths. Box breathing.
Tapping (EFT or emotional freedom techniques)
Butterly hugs (cross your arms and alternate tapping your shoulders)
Shaking. Shaking your hands, your arms, your whole body.
Orienting to your space. Look around the room, and notice where you are. Find 5 things that are (whatever color).
Changing your body position. Sit upright and move your shoulders slightly back
Use your hands to support yourself. Put your hand on your chest, on your belly, or anywhere else that feels strengthening and soothing.
Holding an ice cube. Splashing your face with cold water.
Massaging your face. Massaging your ears.
Less useful for in the moment, but very useful for later:
Moving your body. Going for a run. Dancing. Lifting heavy things and putting them back down.
Singing. Playing an instrument. Making art.
Laughing.
Taking a shower.
Social interactions. Being around friends.
Expand your window of tolerance
This is not a quick process, but it really does work. If you are interested in expanding your window of tolerance, I highly recommend you reach out to a licensed therapist. The first step is always developing trust and safety in a therapeutic setting. Once you feel safe enough and trust your therapist, they will help you use these various tools while working with material that is just on the border between your window of tolerance and overwhelm. It’s important to do this with a therapist, because they are trained in keeping you regulated, helping you back down from overwhelm, and can help cue you to employ different techniques (because, if you recall, your rational left brain goes offline in overwhelm and might simply not remember what to do at first). It’s like having a spotter at the gym if you’re lifting heavy—you need someone there to keep you safe while you’re still building the muscles. Over time your window of tolerance will expand, giving you more freedom and flexibility in your life.
Perhaps this is more than you ever wanted to know about your nervous system, but I hope it helps your understanding and awareness of the totally normal and terribly un-useful process your body goes through when it feels blindsided at work, or any other place for that matter.
If you’d like to have a partner in expanding awareness and a more personalized exploration of what’s going on for you, I am accepting new clients in California! Click around to learn more about me, or reach out.
