Ask Christa! Ugh, I Yelled at Work, and I'm Ashamed-- What Do I Do?? (S1E11)

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! the place where you can ask questions about how to work through business challenges and workplace issues. This segment’s question is, “Ugh, for the first time ever, I yelled at work yesterday—not AT a co-worker, but IN FRONT OF my co-workers. I’m tired, I’m stressed out, and we’re all working too many hours. I’m ashamed, though, and I can’t stop thinking about it. How do I process this?”

I thought about whether I should address this question as written or include it in an over-arching theme of various ways to cope with work stress. I want to be clear—my podcast focuses on answering questions about how we manage through some of the more draining, perplexing, frustrating, or confusing things about businesses and workplaces. I’m a seasoned generalist by training, and I stay sharp with modern knowledge about how every aspect of a business works. I’m a strategist by trade, with a deep understanding of how to execute the strategy also—I’ve done the work, so I know what it takes to get the work done. That gives me an edge as a strategist.

I decided to read the entire question and offer some guidance and additional resources for a few reasons. For starters, although the question was submitted at the end of April, it was queued up to be answered in May, which is Mental Health Awareness Month. I did not plan it that way, since I generally answer questions in the order they are received, but sometimes timing really is everything.

But, depending on where you live and what your circumstances are, you’re probably managing a lot of stress whether it’s Mental Health Awareness Month or not. it’s more important than ever to consider how stress WILL impact you, and since most of us spend an enormous amount of time at work—or again, depending on your circumstances, you may be spending an enormous amount of time seeking for new employment—we would all be right to ourselves to consider how stress impacts our performance at work, the way we are around others, the way others are around us, and where our limits are.

So, as always, I’m going to focus on the question as it’s written, while also being very clear that I’m not a psychologist nor am I a specialist for how to process feelings of shame when you feel you’ve behaved inappropriately.

I WILL offer some tips and tricks for managing stress overall, and each of them are limited, to, your…. head:

1)     First: Breathe out, forcibly. Forget the slow breathing, forget anything that requires an override of high stress—that’s not where you’re at. But pushing breath out? Yeah, you can do that—any time. (inhale—force out) Try it.

2)     Another tip: Sip cold water. This might seem silly, especially if you don’t like cold water or are the type of person who always feels cold [raise hand], but that’s why I’m saying to SIP. It will cool you off in more ways than one—mostly because the speed and action of doing something benign will give you a break and allow you to slow down to calm down. This isn’t about a magic button—it’s that we usually won’t gulp cold water too fast, and again—it forces a change in pace and attention.

3)     Last tip, and this was in one of my recent newsletters: Stretch your throat. OOOooo, boy, we put a lot of strain in our throat, from the poor posture so many of us have to the way we seldom give our necks a rest. 

One of my key phrases is that humans are messy, and most times we’re pretty good at being put together, but sometimes it doesn’t take much or too long to get loose, and fall apart a little—or a lot… 

I remember dealing with a super stressed out leadership team, and we were all trying to manage a super stressed out investor team—the single and only investor in the company (and, btw, don’t ever do that or work in a place like that—it’s a nightmare of group think—maybe I’ll include that in a future episode).

Anyway, there were stressed out people all around, all the time. And it just kept escalating and escalating and escalating. As a clutch player, and one who is seldom afraid of crazy timelines to do very complex work, my stress meter tends to remain somewhat low as long as I can do what I’m really good at: getting hard stuff done in a clutch. But even MY stress meter was going up because the environment was just an impossible environment. And, a belittling environment, too.

I remember thinking about these seasoned leaders I was working with and how stressed out they always were, and I thought about the stress continuum, which spans from coping well or low stress (green—let’s say that’s levels 1-2), to mild stress that’s cope-able and usually temporary (or yellow—let’s say that’s levels 3-4), to panic, loss of control—maybe this is yelling (this is orange—let’s say levels 5-6), to such damaging stress that the person feeling it has a longer-term mental injury that leads to harm. This is red, let’s say levels 7 to 8—top of the list.

When I think of what happens when people are consistently and continually living in a stress zone of orange—and we see leaders do that when they lose control of their temper, they lose perspective, they lose a feeling of stability—of being themselves… it takes just one click to send them to the red zone. Or if they’re constantly in a state of the yellow zone… it takes just one click to send them to the orange zone.

Just. One. Click.

Now, I’m not excusing poor behavior at work, but also: stress is very damaging. Learn what you need to manage it in the yellow so that you can get back to green and not make yellow a habit. If you feel you’re in orange all the time—that stress is permanent and will never be reduced, do what you can to get back to yellow where the stress feels more temporary. 

Yelling at work is a stress response. Breathe out forcibly. Sip ice water. Stretch [stretch] your throat. Learn where you live on the stress continuum and do what you can to get healthy with stress.

I mean… stress isn’t always BAD. It can be one of the biggest and most uplifting motivators we know—inspiring us, generating happiness, giving us things to look forward to; it’s not always bad.

But bad stress… stress at work… when the world often feels stressful… too much of that is… bad.

For this segment’s resources, I included three works about Stress. The first one is about the Stress Continuum model used in the military to support stress awareness. It was developed by the United States Navy and Marines to offer a common language, understanding, category of and scale for different levels of stress.. There are still studies taking place to validate the model with empirical evidence, but the basis of it is based on current stress theories and found to be very useful. There has been additional work done on the model since its original rollout, but the basics still hold.

It’s used by first responders and others whose jobs include a high level of stress on a regular basis, but even if you’re not in an emergency environment, work can often bring a constant feeling of stress. I the model here not to suggest you should adopt the mode, but more so you have a resource to identify different levels of stress and easy language to relate to as you consider which level you may be at. I want to point out once more how easy it could be to move into a high level of stress depending on where you are at any given time with, as I said earlier, just one click.

Speaking of just one click, I also included a wonderful blog written by Captain John P. Cordle, U.S. Navy (Retired) from June 2021 called “Stress Is Not Always a Bad Thing—Until It Is!” It’s a good one. He offers an incredible first-person account of what he experienced when he was already in the yellow zone, getting into the orange zone… unaware… underestimating how fatigue and stress effected his perspective, and how he need to get “Back to Green.” Most of us are not in the US military feeling the strain of combat or of a full fleet in the water, but nearly all of us can relate to what Captain Cordle shares. 

And I included a far more detailed article from the Journal of Marine Medical Society in case you want to go much deeper. About half-way down the online page, you’ll find a section titled “STRESS CONTINUUM MODEL: A MODEL FOR EARLY DETECTION OF STRESS.” There you will see a description of the different levels.

Beyond the Stress Continuum model, I included the “I’m So Stressed Out! Fact Sheet” from the US National Institute of Mental Health—again, I’m offering it as a resource to learn more about stress through a useful resource. It includes various resources available to you if you feel the stress is getting too high.

Last are resources to physically get you on track to releasing stress: I’ll post an article in the show notes that I shared in the first More Answers newsletter about the value of exhaling (although the article offers evidence about breathwork overall—but I’m not sure mindful breathing in the middle of a raw orange zone will work too well, so the focus is on how. You. Exhale.) I also included another article about ways to use your throat as an immediate and effective means to relieve stress and anxiety, 

There are other things to try: kindness, smiling to others and watching them smile back (most will do that—it’s nice to connect with humans in high-stress times, especially good humans), and feeling empowered to break the cycle of bad stress. After all—as humans, we can actually do that—break the cycle of bad stress. Half my mission here is to do that.

And if you yell at work: exhale forcibly, sip cold water, stretch your throat.. then look around you. Apologize if you hurt someone. Find strength in someone or something immediately tangible to you. Plan to take a rest, whatever that might be or look like. If you have a crazy schedule, stay in your car a few extra seconds when you get home, or get the kids to bed an hour sooner, or leave the care of your parents 20 minutes sooner. Take a rest. Get back to the yellow zone or the green zone. That’s what you deserve.

And when you can breathe the right way again, forgive yourself for yelling. Make it right by getting the extra support you might need. Find community. You are not alone. You are not alone.

Alright, there it is, another segment and a heavy topic, but for the person who submitted it—thank you. It takes courage to put yourself out there, and it’s not easy to be a good human all the time, especially in the face of so many stressors so many minutes of each day. And, sometimes it’s not easy to talk about emotions at work—often it’s taboo, something you’re not SUPPOSED to talk about unless it’s all the good ones others can feel good about. But this one… my guess is there are a lot of people behaving in ways they don’t usually behave in, especially while at work. It’s a sign that we’ve hit our limit, and our job is to keep us from the mid-yellow line.

As always, keep sending in your questions. You can do that by going to my website, AskChrista.com, that's Christa with a CH, to submit your question. Sign up for my weekly newsletter too, which comes out every Sunday night to set you up for the week—and it always includes a comic-relief video, too. When you sign up, you’ll receive a free issue of the Survivor's Guide to Business Challenges and Workplace Issues. 

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