Humanity switch

My mum recently had major surgery, which we don’t yet know the full impact. She went in to hospital 5 weeks before her operation, which finally took place early September. Over this period I’ve seen my mum in a lot of pain and going through many emotions, mainly fear and worry because of the unknown impact of the operation on her mobility.

 I’ve been back and forth to visit her in hospital for quite a while now. During this time my emotions have been racing from anger, fear, overwhelm, frustration, sadness, hope and worry.

I’ve shared my feelings with close family and friends. However, to my colleagues at work I have been guarded about openly talking about my feelings. I reflected on this and asked myself why and what I was afraid of.  

I realised that I wasn’t being open about how I felt because I didn’t want to make myself vulnerable or seem weak at work so instead I chose to create internal turmoil. I was also afraid of how I might make other people feel by talking about it and possibly getting quite emotional by doing so. However, my feelings didn’t disappear just because I didn’t talk about them.

A couple of thoughts came to mind as well as a few learning points that I wanted to share:  

I’ve seen many people turn up to work and flick the ‘humanity switch’, by this I mean they adapt how they present themselves by behaving in ways they think they should to fit in and often this involves suppressing their emotions and feelings.

I’ve been guilty of ‘flicking the switch’ many a time but I want to be me more of the time so I’m being true to myself. I’m a sensitive soul, who wears her heart on her sleeve, a human being who has feelings. I’m also a professional so I understand there must be some regulating of emotions at work. However I can’t just ‘switch off’ my emotions when I’m at work – we spend a lot of time there (a third of our time to be precise as I read in a recent study).

Most of us have experienced times when we’ve regretted our behaviour and wondered why we reacted the way we did. Our emotions can occur quickly and automatically, therefore so can the behaviour that people see.

The good news is we can do something about this! We can move towards emotional balance. This article offers a few simple steps on how to do it.  It reminded me that I can be my sensitive self and share how I’m feeling but with control over what this looks like in terms of my behaviour. Perfect!