Managing Teams Part 3: Understanding Emotions
“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
Seeing the emotions that arise in interpersonal conflict is essential, but it’s only a starting point. We need good ideas about what’s going on in order to take effective action. But how does someone understand something as complex and multifaceted as human emotion and relational dynamics? Not everyone has the time to get a degree in psychology, let alone test competing models of human behavior in practical settings.
After years of school and working with clients as a counselor, I’m happy to say that there only a couple of core ideas that you need to know in order to begin effectively navigating interpersonal conflicts. A trauma-informed, attachment-based lens of relationships can help cover the bases. Let’s look at the core ideas of these models.
The Trauma-Informed Lens
Trauma-informed is a popular phrase right now, and it means that one has taken into account the recent research and theories that have come about in the past few decades of studying the effects of trauma on the human nervous system. Here are some core takeaways from this research:
Trauma is the impact an event or series events has on a person. Trauma describes a state in which one’s nervous system is stuck in either a hyperactive or underactive state, meaning one is either very agitated and anxious, or depressed and shut down. Unresolved trauma means that we oscilate between these states and almost never experience “normal,” restful states of being. Unresolved trauma affects our relationships, self-perception, mood, physiology, and nearly every other facet of our experience.
Challenging behaviors that were once thought of as pathological (depressive tuning out, anxious rumination, anger in interpersonal relationships, addiction, etc.) are better understood as unconscious attempts to manage the effects of trauma. Though these behaviors cause problems for the sufferers and those around them, they result from overwhelm and an inability to regulate or soothe the impacts of trauma.
Folks with unresolved trauma are constantly seeking safety. This may mean physical safety (“I won’t be harmed of killed”) or relational safety (“I won’t be rejected or abandoned”). Even when they are safe, they probably do not feel safe.
What does this mean for professional settings? Let’s revisit the situation with Layne from the example above. Even though Layne did not want to take on new work, he felt compelled to do so. Why? Well, imagine that something in Layne’s life has taught him that his physical security is always on the line. Maybe he experienced poverty and food insecurity in childhood, which is very traumatizing. So, even though Layne knows he has no capacity, his need to seek safety (“I can’t lose this job otherwise I’ll be unsafe again, so I’d better do absolutely everything I can to keep it.”) overrides his other needs. Therefore, he takes on more than he should in order to assuage his fear, and thus sets himself up for burnout.
The Attachment-Based Lens
Nestled within the trauma-informed lens is the understanding that human relationships are incredibly impactful, emotionally. So much so that major interruptions to our relationships affect us just as strongly as threats to physical safety. Here are some takeaways from trauma-informed attachment theory.
You don’t have to survive a fiery car crash or warzone to experience the effects of trauma. Simply having a parent or another attachment figure who conveyed insecurity, misattunement, or instability is sufficient. We call this “relational trauma” because it has the same impacts on the nervous system that other types of trauma do.
Early experiences with caregivers create templates for how we experience relationships, even as adults. Being ignored, abused, minimized, etc. by a caregiver has serious impacts on how adults perceive and experience every type of relationship. These relationship templates are especially rigid and resistant to change for folks with relational trauma. Fear of abandonment and rejection can be triggered by friends, family, strangers, coworkers, and bosses, even if these signals aren’t being sent.
Humans are hardwired to seek safety and reliability in relationships. Even those of us without relational trauma or attachment wounds are attuned to social signals that communicate whether relationships are safe and reliable (feelings of being rejected, ignored, abandoned, etc.). For those with relational trauma, monitoring these signals becomes a primary focus in life, and managing anxiety about being abandoned or rejected becomes a chronic struggle (this could be called “relational hypervigilance”) which usually leads to coping strategies, many of which become harmful.
Let’s return to Layne’s story to put the pieces together. In addition to trauma from food insecurity and poverty growing up, Layne also had a parent who was harsh, demanding, and cold. As a result, he learned to “people-please” in order to keep his parent happy, because that was the only way that he could maintain his attachment with his parent. This relationship template (“I must please others in order to be accepted and liked”) remained in his adult life, and now folks who have power, especially managers and bosses, trigger Layne’s sense of relational insecurity. As a result, when asked to overextend himself for the good of the company, Layne reactively does so, because that feels safer than having reasonable work-life boundaries. Unfortunately, many managers love employees like Layne, because they can unconsciously offload their anxieties onto them!
In summary: Unprocessed relational or physical trauma leaves us chronically afraid, and attempts to manage this fear often creates behaviors that damage us and our relationships. In the professional environment, we need to keep an eye out for how trauma and attachment dynamics relate to challenging behaviors so that we can respond appropriately.
With this understanding that complex interpersonal dynamics usually have to do with trauma and attachment issues, we can take a shot at the most important questions so far: How do we work with these dynamics?
