Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a way of recognizing perspectives and thought patterns that don’t serve us, and developing new ones that do. In the workplace, you will encounter people who not only have, but seem to embody, perspectives and thought patterns that drive you crazy. How do you stay sane when everyone around you is acting bananas?

Most of us spend more time with our co-workers than we do with our nearest and dearest, so it’s in our best interest to maintain positive relationships even when our colleagues are…difficult. Techniques developed for use in CBT can help you navigate crazy-making interactions with difficult coworkers while respecting yourself and staying grounded.

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HALT: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired

A lot of people know this acronym from the CBT lexicon, and it’s one of the most important. HALT reminds us that we make our best decisions when we feel our best, and that our physical health is an integral part of our mental health.

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Hungry (and Thirsty!) 

Whether you work in or out of your home, make sure you have plenty of water to drink. In addition to snacks that keep our blood sugar stable, we need plenty of hydrating drinks throughout the day. Keep a bottle on your desk when you can, and pay attention to how much caffeine you’re consuming. Coffee and tea dehydrate you even as they perk you up. If you don’t balance your caffeine intake with enough food and water, you’ll end up jittery and irritable, which means the person from accounts payable who keeps asking you about your receipts is suddenly going to get the business end of your bad mood. When we feel bad, we do bad things - not evil things, but things we would not do if we cared about the consequences. Before you send that tongue lashing email, pause to take a sip of water and stay mindful of your own needs while you respond to the needs of others. The person you’re about to chew out could very likely be over caffeinated themselves and need a little grace from you. Once you’ve given a little to yourself, you may be able to reflect that to others.

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Angry

Anger is a funny emotion because it both gives us energy and takes that energy away. When something happens that makes you angry, your body releases adrenaline because it thinks you’re about to fight someone. Adrenaline causes your heart rate to rise and can temporarily increase your focus and strength. For a little while, feeling angry might make you feel powerful or in control.You may even feel better when you’re actively angry than you do at any other time because neurotransmitters like adrenaline are like performance enhancing drugs our body makes for us. When anger’s effects wear off, your body is exhausted from the effort, as if you survived a real life or death situation - a crash after a high. That’s fine if you’re saving a baby from a burning building or trying to lift a car off your trapped neighbor, but not when you’re in a professional environment.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling angry, and in fact anger can be an important message from your body that a boundary is being crossed, but work tends to be a long-term commitment, and you can’t sustain anger every day physically. In the long run it will literally kill you. How can you recognize when you’re angry and defuse yourself so you don’t blow up at your boss when she asks you a simple question that rubs you the wrong way?

When you take anger apart it can be composed of many pieces: frustration, humiliation, fear, etc. What is yours composed of? Did a boss squash a new project you were excited to start? You might be frustrated. Did a colleague show you up in a meeting you were supposed to lead? You might feel humiliated. Did a client threaten to complain to your boss and get you fired if you didn’t do what they wanted? You might be afraid. Anger is a self-protective emotion that tries to shield you from all these negative feelings. Think of it as an overenthusiastic body-guard. It’s doing its job when it comes up, but in a professional environment it is rarely advisable or appropriate to scream at your mentee or passive-aggressively ignore phone calls from a supervisor. You can and should be angry when someone violates one of your boundaries, but if you direct that energy at the people you work with, you could end up burning bridges that leave your career stranded. Thinking about the other emotions that compose your feeling of anger can help you address what’s really bothering you and tone the feelings down.

A good way to regulate your emotional state is to alter your physical state. Address the specific effects of anger on your body. Your heart rate is elevated - slow it down by taking a walk outside, or simply breathing deeply. Your body temperature is higher than normal - cool off with a refreshing (non-alcoholic) drink or even take a shower if you can. Just as your mind can release chemicals to affect your body, your body can take actions that affect the chemicals your brain releases. By acting like a calmer person, we can become calmer in the moment. It’s ok if you need to do this by yourself, and acceptable to tell a coworker, “I just heard a lot right now and I want to think it through a little before we keep talking. Give me a minute.” You don’t have to direct your anger at them to break engagement and give yourself a chance to get regulated.

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Lonely

This is especially important if you’re working from home for the majority of your week. A bad call with your boss, or a terse email from a department head, can do a lot of damage when you’re sitting in front of a laptop on your own. Before you react by sending an angry rebuttal you’ll regret later, or quitting on the spot, call or text a friend, or privately message someone supportive you know from work. In the time it takes to reach out to them and catch up, you may feel differently about the situation.

In some work environments your colleagues may make you feel even more alone than if you were at home by yourself; for example, if you are a person of color in an office that lacks or ignores sensitivity training. Being forcibly in contact with people you don’t trust can be an agonizing experience, particularly if you don’t have a lot of flexibility in your working situation. Different kinds of relationships operate differently. There are behaviors you may accept readily from your grandparents that you wouldn’t accept from your boss. Don’t forget why you’re in the room with this person: to transact your business. This person may influence your workday negatively, but when you’re off the clock that should be the last time you think about them. It’s great to vent to family and friends at the end of a long day of putting up with B.S. However, if you do it every day for extended periods of time, you are giving these people who don’t support you a lot more of your personal time. Don’t let them have it.

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Tired

A lot of us don’t have control over how much we sleep, even if we do our best to get the recommended eight hours. A sleepless night visits us all from time to time anyway, so if you’re physically exhausted at work, how do you keep that exhaustion from tanking you? One way is to recognize that there’s more than one kind of rest. The physical rest we get from a good night's sleep is critical to our health and should not be taken for granted. If you can’t get that, you should supplement it with mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative, and/or spiritual rest. 

• Mental Rest:
  Some people describe this as meditating or another relaxing solitary activity, but this can be pretty hard to get in the middle of the workday. However, even on a busy day you can give yourself mental rest by doing something “mindless” like repetitive data entry, organizing your workspace, restocking supplies, or anything else you can do almost without thinking.
• Emotional Rest:
  Feeling strong emotions is an experience we have to disengage from and process to resolve in a healthy way - if someone yells at you in a meeting don’t just power through the day right after. Take a minute to recognize how you feel, acknowledge that you don’t like feeling that way, and give yourself some care and support before you move on. Otherwise those bad feelings will stick around, and the effort of acting like everything is fine when it’s not is exhausting.
• Social Rest:
  Some people give us energy, and others take that energy away. For example, you may feel energized and refreshed after a conversation with your funny and understanding boss, but drained and upset after a conversation with an anxious coworker.You can’t control who you’re around at work all the time, but after a stressful interaction either seek solitude or seek support from a person who energizes you.
• Sensory Rest:
  Your brain expends energy processing the information your senses collect. Reduce that expended energy by reducing the information. If you have any control over your work environment, turn down the lights or find a closet or printer room where you can be in the dark just for a little bit. Even closing your eyes for a few minutes while you sit at your desk can help. If you can’t change your environment, try reducing stimuli before and after work, or during your break. If you typically scroll on your phone while you eat, the distraction might give you a little boost of dopamine, but you don’t need dopamine in this situation - you need rest! It might feel like a deprivation at first but ultimately sitting quietly and eating your lunch while listening to the sounds outside will help you feel more refreshed than the most absorbing digital content.
• Creative Rest:
  Rest implies stasis, but creative rest requires action. Said another way, creative rest is a form of play - a series of acts the point of which is not the outcome, but the process. You may have to use your creative muscles all the time at work, but the product of that work is limited and judged by others. Exercising your creativity for the heck of it focuses on the action, not the result. Forms of creative rest could include telling a corny joke, arranging magnets on the fridge into a funny pattern, or trying to draw a face in your latte foam. You can even get more sophisticated and learn origami, bring your knitting with you, or make up a (nice) poem about your work family. You can put it in the garbage right after, but the action you take engages some parts of your brain and reduces strain on other parts.
• Spiritual Rest:
  Belief in God not required. We have control over our actions and to some extent our reactions, but that’s basically it. Everything else is dependent on other people, forces of nature, and so many other things. Feeling like you need to be in control and not achieving it is super stressful. The point of spiritual rest is giving yourself permission to let go and let the world take care of itself. For some, communicating with a higher power through prayer and meditation helps them feel that someone other than themselves is taking care of things, and will take care of them if something bad happens. For others, contributing to a cause or a group through volunteering or fellowship allows them to share responsibilities and trust others rather than focus on their own performance. The goal of spiritual rest is giving yourself a break from making the world spin and lowering the stakes for things you’re worried about. At work, this could mean joining an affinity group where you can get support, bringing snacks and coffee for your colleagues, or mentoring a coworker - anything that takes you outside yourself and makes you feel connected with the community.
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Conclusion

Even if you’re not commuting or running around at your workspace, you’re still using your brain. We estimate that brains consume 400 - 500 calories daily, and that intake increases when engaged in problem-solving. Honor the work you’re doing and give yourself the gift of rest, however you can find it. Curious how this and other CBT techniques can support your mental health journey? Meet Sage Therapy therapists who use CBT in their practice. 

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