Blame

It's all your fault

Yesterday I had a notification from LinkedIn whilst I was on the toilet. Had one of my contacts posted about being “humbled and blessed” about some recent achievement? Had someone viewed my profile and did I owe them money? Did Microsoft know something about my bowels that I did not?

Stuff it, lets see.

Oh, thanks LinkedIn. F- you too.

That is truly my dream toilet experience (well, apart from getting one of those fancy Japanese bidets): Being gaslit.

So I did something I probably shouldn’t have done. I took the bait. I clicked on the link to see exactly how atrocious this was going to be.

That led to this news article which turn featured this post.

Now let me be fair here. Linda Ray’s advice for how to manage stress in the short-term is not terrible. And, yes, the unfortunate truth is that no else is looking out for you in the working world.

But more than one thing can be true at once. It is possible that there are steps you can take to reduce your stress AND there are larger, structural changes that are creating this stress in the first place.

It’s pretty busy for me at the moment at work. And that’s a good problem to have. I am doing all of the breathing, naming emotions, getting up and moving around, talking to someone, etc. But I am also telling some people very politely that my plate is full and either they f- off for a couple of weeks or they can help out.

Predatory managers love the neuroscience and psychology stuff because it puts all the onus on fixing things on the employee themselves. The person who has the least power is therefore to blame for everything. Remember this article was published recently? Lets remind ourselves what the conclusion was:
”The results in this article pose a challenge to the popularity and legitimacy of individual-level mental well-being interventions like mindfulness, resilience and stress management, relaxation classes and well-being apps. I find little evidence in support of any benefits from these interventions with even some small indication of harm that would confirm fears from critics… Future research ought to evaluate if individual-level interventions are effective alongside organisational change, or whether improvements in working conditions are a superior alternative.”

Bitchy moment: I am also a bit suspicious of all the neuroscience experts we have out there. If you don’t know how to do a brain MRI then I’m going to have trouble taking you seriously as an expert in that field*. Perhaps go back to leadership coaching.

So if you are feeling stressed then yes, there are some things you can do to help regulate it. But probably the biggest thing is not mentioned in the article - remove the source of stress in the first place.

I vow that next time I am on the toilet, I will make better decisions.

*Yes, “Dr” David Rock, I’m talking about you. I have read what passes for your doctoral thesis and I am judging you for it.