In your life you have lots of different relationships. In both your personal and professional lives you have close relationships and sometimes you get extreme feelings about others—anger, disappointment, aggravation, etc. However, because of professional standards, our response to moments of anger at work are different than at home or with friends. At home and with good friends we have permission to be messy because we can share our feelings, process them, accidentally hurt each other, reconcile and develop stronger relationships through all that processing.

The thing is, at work it’s different. We still have extreme feelings about the people closest to us there, but we can’t necessarily process and hurt and reconcile in the same ways that we can with our personal relationships. This doesn’t mean we can’t process feelings with coworkers, it just means that there are stronger parameters on how we should go about that to preserve the focus on the work and maintain productivity. And this can be a good thing because it’s nice to have boundaries on how to deal with emotions at work and to understand the need to put the work first. However, it doesn’t always work out so well. 

When it goes wrong, it’s usually because of a lack of discernment between personal and professional relationships. For some, they are accustomed to all the processing with personal relationships that it can be difficult to refrain from going through all the steps with coworkers in order to overcome conflict. For others, they see their relationships with coworkers as very intimate and resolve conflict in the way they would with loved ones. 

It’s important also to remember that getting to lose it every now and then with your family is okay. I actually think that for many people getting to let out the extreme feelings in your personal life helps you avoid bringing in such reactions to the workplace. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed with work and home-life, and you have a little meltdown about it at home, it’ll actually help you not have that meltdown in the office. Of course, it’s okay to experience extreme emotions in the office. It’s just that regulating your response to those feelings should come with some more parameters when you’re at work. How do you overcome issues in your relationships at work while preserving your reputation?