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[Truean]

Ideally, find better people and places. Unattainable. Really:

Know where you are: the psychological tempest of human emotions. Welcome to where everyone has unknowingly been, always. In this tempest, waves will crash against you. Customer, she'll stupidly scream, sadly steaming, striking salespersons' souls. She can't cope; she's trying and failing to. In the material world, do what you must: fake smile, state company policy, get manager, etc. Mentally, be there enough to deal with it, but otherwise elsewhere. Masters learn to manipulate their own thoughts and senses. Advanced technique users enjoy imagining the feeling of receiving a massage while someone is yelling at them, and imagine it. Imagine another place and time, to the extent you can. Keep one foot safely in this world to safely observe it, and the other elsewhere when stressed. NOTE: This is the ADVANCED technique requiring expertly diving your attention, don't try this until and unless you've mastered the lower methods, including:

Perceive. Realize who and what this woman is: someone who can't cope, trying and failing to do so. She's a fool, of course she is mean, of course she screams her feelings tell her she is battered by a typhoon she cannot see.. Realize in advance people will be terrible. Prepare for it; it will happen. Get through it and slowly work your way up the advanced techniques of dealing with it.

Differentiate. Customer can't cope. The psychic ocean of human feelings batters us all with waves. All feel the injury; few see the cause. See. Rise above. You aren't her; she's blind to what, where, and why she's upset. If she could see, then she'd realize she's not solving her problem by yelling at you, but rather she's making them worse. She may never see and probably never will. You may not be dealing with a rational person and sadly, she's blindly, stupidly lashing out rather than rationally making her situation better. Don't be like her. Do not what they do. Drag down not, nor be dragged.

Distance. Think and rise. Realize their fury is their fault, not yours. Reflect, reassure this is true. Keep present in the real world enough to deal with the situation. Realize you will lose if you yell back, both immediately at work and as a person. Fight fools to become one. Don't act like the blind psychic tempest tossed fool she is. Why would you chose, knowing what you know, to act as the blind fool, when you are not blind? Don't. Doing so is to drown. 

Discipline. Both during and after customer's confrontation, control your thoughts. Advanced techniques are dual thinking a fantasy location and keeping present in the real world. Even without that, know it isn't your fault. Control your thoughts. Realize she's just screaming and you did nothing wrong, despite her stupid protests otherwise.  Catch yourself thinking negative thoughts (especially about yourself) and replace that with better thoughts. Do the same with behaviors and emotions. Know this incident will eventually end. The screaming will end, dead, and you will remain, alive. You will win, through endurance and discipline.

This is, of course a simplification, because really, it's an internet forum....

The same can be said for those who rant about things, as in your second example. Your family, like the rest of humanity, is much like the customer, unable to cope. They try and fail to use any tools around them (including screaming, yelling and complaining, denial, etc) to cope. It doesn't work. Much as the customer, they don't get it. The flawed tools are different but the fact that they're using flawed tools is the same. Customer screams at salesperson (ineffective, foolish); Family rants, scapegoats and screams (ineffective, foolish). Same idea throughout.

Interestingly this also goes somewhat for past instances you find yourself obsessing over, or possible future instances you might worry over. Focus the material portion of your attention on useful tasks with a probability to increase your success. Same deal with the thoughts. Thinking you are worthless is not helpful.

This is the sea of humanity, tempest tossed by emotions. You know it will be cold, have the insulated wetsuit. It will help with the waves.

P.S. Don't explain any of this to customer or anyone. They will look at you like you're crazy. Remember, you can't see the tempest; neither can they; we're all caught in it. Navigate it well. Learn to think and rise above.

[TheBiggerFish]

Truean, are you trying to get a religion founded after you?

[Truean]

Why have religion founded after me with the world before me?

[TheBiggerFish]

Because extra awesomes?

[Truean]

I am not awesome. I have my own issues with anxiety. That's how I learned any of this.

[TheBiggerFish]

(Yes you are awesome.)

But seriously, that could have come from any number of faith figures and nobody would have batted an eye.  That's seriously deep.

[Trapezohedron]

It's standard business policy to call for supervisory help when you are tackled with a situation you can't handle. Say, youre merelt just a clerk and someone wants to use their coupon which expired. Send the concern to your immediate manager, and let them handle the shitstorm.

For your family abusive issues, and if you can't leave them, it may do you good to play to their strengths and avoiding conflict as much as possible, even if they're trying to harangue you into it.

You see, when you stoke a fire, it burns harder.

And while doing that, follow all of Truean's advice. It is quite profound.

[Robot Parade Leader]

I guess one of my problems is that I can't stand what I see as other people's attitudes right off the bat. It's like they seem to be already thinking of me as a moron who must be responsible for the problem and the constant shock in their voice is just as if everything is unbelievable.

"Why did you do X?"

and I feel like saying "just to piss you off." I mean really, could somebody please assume I'm not a complete moron who does things on purpose to piss people off?
My God, really? I had a reason and it may have even been incorrect, but I'm not crazy for having done what I did under the circumstances. If you have a better way, then OK, but don't think I'm a complete idiot. I just want to just about cry at them and say "please assume I'm not completely stupid."

The other day I told my boss 3 times that the fork lift wasn't working; boss then gets pissed after telling me to use the fork lift to follow him to get some things. I have to walk over to where he is and he is just looking at me like I'm completely stupid and demands to know why I didn't do what he asked. He then denies I ever told him anything about the fork lift being down, etc.  Whatever, he's going to argue with me about it and I'm going to lose, because he's more powerful. I just want to do my job. He's upset that I walked over to him and went the extra mile so we could fix the problem.

This keeps happening. Or stuff like it.

[Truean]

You expect calm seas, finding choppy squalls. Again, welcome, to the tempest in the ocean. We're all here. Get a good view; careful, it's invisible. 

Most people ( >90%, your boss) have problems and suck at dealing with them. Their tools are flawed, include their exhaustion, and reflect their exhaustion. The invisible psychological waves smacking them in the face feel real to them and that will alter their thoughts, emotions and behaviors. This is bad news for everyone, including them. Remember that invisible part? They don't get it and can't really be explained to....

People acting like they can't believe something, probably can't. THEY can't. Again, flawed tools. All they've ever known is bad tools; they can't conceive of good tools. Disappointment will follow an expectation they they can. They won't. Is your boss wrong? Probably. Should you call him on it? NOPE. Does it matter if he's wrong? Not really, because he's in charge. Does that suck? Yes. Is it true? Also, yes.

Follow your own (somewhat implied) advice:
Losing the fight is certain; don't fight. You want to fix the forklift problem. Good, but also fix the "dealing with people problems." Complain or fix forklift. Complain or fix communication with person situation. You will never fix the other person. The waves in the ocean tempest will ever be. Complain {popular, but ineffective}, or deal with it. Hard to do? Yup. Is there any better option? Not really, nope.

Think about the goal (start with the end in mind):
What do you want out of this? A quiet enjoyable workplace. Again, not going to happen. You're in the tempest in the ocean of human emotions. It's everywhere and you can't really get out of it.

Expect smooth sailing; find none; be disappointed.
Expect storm flailing; find it; be prepared through it.

Know your own flawed tools. Improve them as best you can. Focus on fixing it and dealing with him as best you can, as you must. Physically, in the material world, do that. Mentally, know whatever they say, your soul's unbreakable.

[Robot Parade Leader]

What do I do when I just want to scream at people or run away or something but I can't?

[Truean]

Ok, first off, take a second and breathe if you're at that point. Ideally, we do some exercises to preempt that sort of thing from getting that far.

There's meditation, yoga, and tons of anger management techniques including progressive muscle relaxation techniques. Prevention and maintenance help quite a bit. IF you get to the point where you're ready to scream at somebody, then you need to take a minute and focus on breathing and relaxing a bit.

Though you may really want to seek the assistance of a therapist if you're getting to that point. It's not about blame or if it's the people and things around you or not. It's not about blame, because that just isn't effective or helpful. Effective, helpful stuff is what the goal is.

Don't do anything rash, because it won't lead to anything good. Center yourself and think for a bit, breathing and considering what's around you. I realize you may be very upset about something and you may have good reason to be. It's about how you can deal with it the best way possible.

I hope things work out well for you. The good news is that 12 bay is here and it seems to be a pretty good community.

[wierd]

It has been my experience that the worst stress causal situations come from well meaning but unyeilding people.

Not really helpful to people already in the trenches, but useful for avoiding landing in bad places after getting a change of scenery.

Basically, these people really do mean well-- they see a big, generic, picture. They say things like "Every child should be vaccinated, in the interests of public health."  They neglect the actual reality of the world though. There ARE people that you should not force additional vaccination on. (While a small percentage, there are people with medical histories of adverse and serious reactions to vaccination. Most vaccination regimens have multiple courses. After the first one, if the individual has an adverse reaction, their body becomes hypersensitized. Much like you dont give PB&J to a kid with peanut allergies, you dont demand the rest of the regimen of the person with the sensitivity. It literally risks death and debilitating side effects from additional reactions.) Because they fear idiots slipping through loopholes, they write off small percentages that dont fit neatly. They care about big picture issues, and really, they are right at that level.

That does not change the fact that they make things a living hell for the people they write off.

This demographic runs the gammut between well intentioned but unfeelingly callous (as above), to the holier than thou, out to save your soul officious and unbearable type.

Typically, corporate politics creates the former of these, and middle management A-holes grow like weeds in the latter. In all cases, the unwillingness to accept harsh realities and allow leeway for those realities (for fear of enabling shirkers of the system to have loopholes to slip through) create impossible situations for everyone in the enterprise, with the kinds of compounding stresses Truean mentioned prior.

Once you get a feel for this trend, you can pin down if a specific work culture favors realworld pragmatism, or "big picture idealism".

The former produces a more dysfunctional but more pleasant/supportive work environment that accepts that circumstances beyond control exist-- and the latter produces a more totally efficient, but draconian and unyeilding/high stress environment.

The decision which and in what proportions you are able to tolerate only comes with experience.

For me, the corporate buzzwords of "Do you want to work in a fast paced and competative work environment?"  is code for "fuck no, Run away!"  This is because the "competition" is introduced by the global view managment at the top as being a good intrinsic to make the whole company more competative in the corporate financial world. (employees fight over scraps for small perks, and in theory, the whole organization gets more done with less.) I prefer the more pragmatic managerial style, which accepts that individual humans have needs, and that well motivated, loyal employees give more to the company freely, and with less drama.

The recent push has been away from the pragmatic to the idealist ideologies, and workplace stresses have been rising as a consequence. This is typically because the latter is logistically easier for inept managers and financial analysts to track with metrics and manage on autopilot.  This is not a new problem. The dark age analogy is the central basis for Machiavelli's "The Prince."

I prefer good kings, not tyrranical ones, no matter how less stable they are.

Your mileage may vary.

[Robot Parade Leader]

Ok, so all of this meditation stuff seems pretty difficult to understand. I've read some stuff online and they tend to just use vague descriptions like feelings you're supposed to feel or sometimes images that make you feel a certain way. Not really registering for me.

Help with some understanding on that one please?

What Wierd said is good, but it's hard to spot that stuff. Cause the bad bosses want to look like good ones. I don't know if I can change jobs soon or anything but any advice past what you already said? Are there any other telltale signs beyond, "Do you want to work in a fast paced and competative work environment?"

I'm just trying to get this, and it seems I'm maybe not doing so hot at it.

[wierd]

"While maximizing shareholder value" and "Exceeding shareholder expectations" are buzzwords indicating that you, as the employee, are not what the management consider most valuable, and are warning signs as well.

[Truean]

Note: If you are experiencing severe anxiety, then you need to look into a medical or psychological professional, such as a therapist. They can help far more than I. I am not a substitute for these professionals, far from it.

Meditation:

Many ways to meditate. Visualization helps.

The theory is fairly simple. Your body and mind operate off stimulus and response: something happens and there's a reaction to what happened.

S ---> R

Resting Visualization:
Does the stimulus have to be physical? Does it have to be "real" to have a response?

Consider the following. The Marines send a notice a woman's husband has died, KIA. She is devastated, understandably, of course. Turns out, they were mistaken. He's alive. The information was false, but her reaction was real and makes perfect sense. Point being, even false information stimuli can have real responses.

Consider an environment, yours, mine, anyone's. Horrible environment; horrible stimuli with horrible responses. Remember false stimuli and real responses (even if just placebo)? Imagine laying in bed trying to fall asleep there. Which is better to focus on what you can't control and worry, or imagine yourself in a nice place? Again, laying awake in bed trying to get to sleep.... If you worry, you lose sleep, are sleep deprived tomorrow, and anxious. If (laying in bed) you imagine yourself someplace nicer (meditate) you have a greater chance to sleep, be less anxious, and not sleepy tomorrow. Is it guaranteed? No. Does it cost anything? No. It's a simple idea (in theory), wanna think about horrible things or not, and which will help you fall asleep faster?

I know ... I know. Easier said than done. MUCH easier said than done sometimes. This is controlling your thoughts, and that's hard. Worth it if you ask me.

This is my understanding of meditation visualization. It creates a (false) mental stimuli, that may help feeling better emotionally ("happy place," etc). NOW, of course, it's important not to get lost in fantasy and realize it's not real (not losing touch with the real world). Is it perfect? No. It does provide some other stimuli to counter all the negative stuff a little bit. It has helped me sleep, if nothing else, through some terrible, terrible stuff. Of course, this assumes you have a safe place to sleep, etc, and I really hope everyone does.

Simply, what do you do when you are laying in bed trying to get to sleep? Worry or Imagine better.

Example:
You've probably done RPGs, and/or read books with settings. Same idea, creating an imaginary place.  Imagine another place and time, to the extent you can. It is possible to think of being on a gold veined marble beach terrace overlooking the sea, furnished with mahogany, attended by massage therapists, and visited by loving friends. That's just an example. I've used it in combination with progressive muscle relaxation to get to sleep.

Meditation as Organization:
Consider mentally going over a "to do" list. This can help keep things organized and free up mental resources worrying about tasks.

Upon awakening, consider reciting some affirmations to reinforce some self esteem ( "The Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius helps ( I skip book one and go for book two) Also realize this was written by an ancient Roman Emperor, so it is from another place and time (it's going to be somewhat odd). You can of course do your own, something as simple as "I am a good person who does the best they can." It varies by person / situation, and this is another thing a therapist may help with.



These are, in my experience, some of the easier ways to do it in fairly safe environments (a bed, etc). If you are in a safe place with a few seconds to spare, it can be helpful to take 10 seconds to visualize a better place, while breathing out and in. Again, if you are in a safe place.... Annoyed at waiting in the grocery store checkout line, because the person in front of you is arguing with the cashier over coupons the cashier can't take because their invalid? I was last week and I quietly mentally went elsewhere while standing there, because there was no way around it. The fact of the matter was that I was going to be there for a couple minutes, it wasn't for work (no expectation of my producing results), it wasn't a dangerous place, and there was no better option. I know I wasn't really at a beach, but all other things equal, what better option did I have. Given I'm stuck there, I can either fume about this abusive customer, or do something else. Fuming won't help me and exhausts what few mental resources I have to spare. NOTE: always make sure you're in a safe place (Don't zone out while driving, or operating machinery, or any place that is not 100% safe). Only divert your attention when it is SAFE to do so.

On a personal note, I made a point to comfort the cashier somewhat after the difficult customer had left, saying I thought she handled that rather well and wished she didn't have to deal with that (within earshot of her manager).

I do hope that helps somewhat.

Disclosure: I have some real anxiety issues. I don't have all the answers. This helps me a little though. Seek a therapist if you have issues; they can help.