What It Means To Get 'Hooked'
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Katherine Crowley is a Harvard-trained psychotherapist
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Despite the fact that emotion is discouraged in business, if you scratch the surface of any organization, you find people feeling anxious, angry and misunderstood. What is the result of this paradox?
Unfortunately, the result is interpersonal warfare that quietly goes on behind the scenes and that employees and bosses find very difficult to address directly, because it’s not recognized as a valid part of the work experience. Employees can find themselves caught up in turf wars, power grabs and e-mail battles – yet by and large, they don’t possess the tools and tactics to address these problems.
What does it mean to be ‘hooked’ by something or someone?
This term describes what happens when someone or something triggers a strong negative internal reaction in you. It could be as simple as getting irritated by the chronic throat clearer who sits next to you; maybe that sound just gets under your skin and drives you crazy, making it hard for you to concentrate on your work. Or it could be something as scary as an abusive authority figure whose personality disorder is making your life a living hell. The key to being hooked is that you are plunged into a state of emotional turmoil that causes you to function in a much less productive manner. The sooner you recognize that someone’s behaviour is hooking you, the sooner you can do something about it. I advise people, during the course of a work week, to notice which people and circumstances are eliciting positive internal responses in them and which ones are leaving them feeling tense, churned up or defeated.
What are the first signs that you’ve been hooked?
The alarm usually goes off in one of three ways. It can be physical, in which case you might experience tight shoulders, heart palpitations, stomach churning or back pain. Somehow your body is telling you that something is very wrong. The second way the alarm goes off is mentally. You might find yourself obsessing, spacing out or having revenge fantasies. Maybe you imagine this person getting hit by a car or somehow disappearing; or you might have escape fantasies, where you get to leave or they get fired. Last but not least are the emotional hooks that people feel. You might notice that you’re feeling angry or anxious all of the time, or that you’re depressed. Maybe as you start to prepare for a presentation you have a panic attack, or in the latter stages of being severely hooked, you might just feel generalized despair.
You have said, “If you can change your reaction, you will change your life.” Please discuss.
I’ve been working with business people for more than 20 years now, and what I’ve found is that as hard as people try, it is usually not possible to change the other person’s behaviour. The one thing you can change is your reaction to that person’s behaviour, and by doing so, the relationship can literally be transformed. For example, you may not be able to change that lazy co-worker who always tries to dump work onto your desk, but you can change the way you respond to her. Normally, if someone does this, we either take the work on and are quietly resentful, or we get mad and yell at her. Changing your reaction can be as simple as saying, ‘Sorry, but I really can’t help you with that; I’m rushing to meet my own deadline.’ In doing so, you are also setting a boundary, which eventually this person will either respect or reject (and move on to someone else.)
‘Unhooking’ has four steps. Please summarize them.
First, let me say that these should always be done in order. The first step – unhooking physically – involves doing something physical to release the negative energy and calm your system. I highly recommend rigorous exercise like running or working out. If you’re less severely hooked, you might take a walk, or if you can’t leave the office, splash some cold water on your face. Sometimes just breathing – deep, gentle, consistent breathing – can unhook you physically in the moment. That’s the first step.
The second step is to unhook mentally by asking yourself some important questions. First, ‘What is really happening here?’ Your description will likely be pretty vivid – ‘This idiot is interrupting me again!’ The next question is, ‘What are the facts of the situation?’ Here, you have to look at the scenario more objectively; ‘This person clearly has a hard time understanding that I’m working and that I don’t like to be interrupted’. Next you ask, ‘What is their part in this scenario?’ Their part is that they seem to be oblivious to what you’re doing and unable to read your cues. The fourth question is, ‘What’s my part in this?’ Your part may be that you keep allowing it to happen and that you aren’t being clear about it being a problem. The final question is, ‘What are my options?’ If you can answer the first four questions – especially ‘what is my part in this’ – then you will begin to see options emerge. For example, with the chronic interrupter, you might need to sit down with this person and tell him, ‘Consistently being interrupted by you is not working for me; we have to devise a system where I can hear what you need to say, respect you, and still get my work done.’
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