Counter-Transference In The Work Place
In a previous article, I described transference in the work place. In this one I will describe the other side of the coin, counter-transference.
Counter-transferences are the reactions we have to the unconscious beliefs, emotions and desires being communicated implicitly through another person’s behavior. It can be empathy based or authenticity based. Meaning, you can experience the way the person is feeling in reaction to them (likely you feel more of their feelings and have a deeper sense of understanding and compassion for them) or you can feel how it feels to be treated the way they are treating you (you could feel great about about being idealized for example or really annoyed if you’re being treated like you don’t matter, etc.). Counter transference is unconscious (again without practiced awareness) and can be problematic if it causes you to engage in a drama of the past (e.g. perhaps you unwittingly take on the role of a parent with someone who needed more care than they got and so look to you for guidance. This might activate you're own unconscious adaptive strategies from childhood in which you pleased/entertained/cared for others as a way to experience emotional security. Re-engaging in such a drama replays how you had to be more responsible than your parents and causes you to struggle with your own personal boundaries around your time and effort - working longer and harder than you should. You once again might be stuffing anger and unwittingly be trying to please [i.e. control] the person who unconsciously is communicating unprocessed emotions of need by intensely needing your mentorship. These kind of enactments usually work for sometime until the authentic needs of the one being idealized clash with the unconscious needs of the one being mentored. Such ruptures are confusing because they can reveal upset emotions and even lashing out over reasonable boundaries.)
So, counter-transference is the emotional reactions we have to the unconscious and implicit expression of emotions and needs from another. Depending on the dynamics it can create re-enactments of insecure relating. Knowing how to identify and compassionately help transference/counter-transference can give your work culture a great advantage.
Transference In The Work Place
Transference is when a present moment is read by the brain as being the same as a moment in the past and then treated as if it was the past. Meaning, the ways we coped, the ways we felt, how acted and how we understood the moment are imported from the past. This happens all the time, it’s why we can automate so much of our lives. Most of our life is not lived in the present moment, it is lived in what McGilchrist calls re-presented. We are experiencing our own reconstruction of life that is based on what we’ve learned and predict from those memories and models. The type of transference I’m talking about however is more relational based. This type of transference is noticed when either it reveals unprocessed memories in which we were in some kind of survival mode or when it reveals memories of unmet developmental desires. With survival moments we see people treat the present as a threat at some level when it really isn’t. With developmental desire moments we see people treat the present as something to harvest when it’s more than just that. Both are unconscious processes (unless the work is done to be aware of such phenomenon) and not always easy to decipher.
For example, if a co-worker launches into taking up all the space in a meeting it might mean they are unconsciously in a survival based moment in which they are working to control the situation through avoiding silence and other’s reactions in order to avoid feeling abandoned. Such unconscious behavior would help them feel more safe. Or it could mean they have become excited about the possibility of feeling seen and validated which unconsciously leaves them trying to resume getting natural unmet developmental needs satisfied. Either way, it derails the meeting.
If this kind of transference is not understood and helped it becomes limiting to our professional and personal lives. It’s also why I suggest we stop calling companies families. It suggests something that isn’t true (companies are motivated by profit, families are motivated by relationship) and that can unnecessarily provoke transference.
Next I’ll talk about counter-transference in the work place...
The Danger of being out of touch with your emotions and how Being In Touch With Your Emotions is Not The Same Thing As Being Out of Control
Chronic stuffing or being unaware of your feelings is a big problem. If that is happening it is probably a case of biological needs in competition with personality needs. Meaning, your biological needs are to express your feelings while your personality is saying it’s not okay or safe to express. For example, let’s take an emotion that is very challenging in our culture for people to be encouraged to have (especially women due to the sexism), anger. Being unaware of your anger means you will potentially be unaware of a dangerous or unjust situation (or perhaps a situation that is not dangerous but that has tricked your brain into remembering an unjust situation in your past and importing that onto the present). You then could potentially: be taken advantaged-of, express an unnecessary aggressive response, increase avoidance, become passive aggressive, maybe even feel bad physically. So, being in touch with basic or primary emotion is important for adapting in life but the instincts of our emotions sometimes need to be re-tooled to fit our current situation. Which is why we have that great gift of our upstairs brains! Our basic instincts, reflexes, impulses and feelings need to be channeled through our values and goals. For example, just because you feel angry and the instinctual impulse for that is to attack doesn’t mean that you attack! It means you need to find a way to acknowledge and accept your emotion without judgment and learn from it about what the moment means to you so you can prepare to adapt. You might have to learn how to express it in alternative ways so that you can channel that anger into something empowering and not settle for stuffing.
This can be really difficult to realize if you have set your life up in light of stuffing your emotions because getting in touch with your emotions might really mess with your life. You might realize that you’ve been settling for unsatisfying relationships and people might be surprised or even offended by your new self awareness. Re-finding and re-being your self can cause big uncomfortable even painful changes when life has settles around you and taken advantage of you not being in touch with your feelings. Additionally, getting in touch with stuffed feelings might create a release of a lot of back log of emotions and survival based protocols needing to express and complete still. That can be overwhelming and even feel confusing. So it is no small thing to take on your feelings sometimes, it can be super messy, take real courage and sometimes needs the help of good therapy too.
Five Things You Need to Know About Emotions To Succeed
Five Things You Need To Know About Emotions To Succeed:
1. Emotions are like the color wheel: there are primary, secondary and tertiary emotions.
2. Primary emotions are the most important ones because they are our inherited tools for survival. Primary emotions are the ones that are the building blocks for all other emotions, and they are the ones that have adaptive instincts built into them.
3. Being in touch with primary emotions will help you make better choices (they are what intuition comes from). If you are out of touch with your primary emotions you run a bigger risk of making: tactical, ethical, relational and survival mistakes.
4. Primary emotions are first available to our awareness as physical sensations and each primary emotion has particular visceral expressions. Being in touch with your body (a right brain thing), and knowing what the general visceral of each primary emotion is (a left brain thing) is important for being present and able to successfully adapt in the face of new information.
5. Primary emotions give us massive amounts of information about ourselves and the world. If you are out of touch with your full range of primary emotions you are missing out on tons of information which puts you at a disadvantage.
The difference between anxiety and panic!
Did you know there is a difference between panic and anxiety? Knowing the difference can guide you to knowing what you really need.
Anxiety comes from the FEAR system deep in the brain. Panic come from the PANIC/GRIEF system also deep in the brain. These systems labels come from Jaak Panksepp’s work. Here are some differences:
Anxiety produces fear of harm while panic produces the pre-cursor to the pain of separation.
The goal of anxiety is to promote you to vigilance so that you don’t get caught off guard with something threatening. The goal of panic is to express the distress you feel at the loss of connection in attempt to elicit them to return and support you.
Anxiety is about avoiding threat. Panic is about avoiding abandonment.
Anxiety requires safety to be felt to turn off. Panic requires connection. If the demands of anxiety aren’t met it stays on until we get exhausted and dissociate or collapse. If panic isn’t met it eventually caves into despair and grief. We feel the pain of the alone-ness and helplessness to get our connection back.
These two systems obviously work together often. There was a study quoted in The Archaeology of The Mind where people with panic attacks were given anti-depressants. This stopped the panic attacks from happening but not the anxiety about having a panic attack. When the same people were given anti-anxiety medications as well they stopped having fear about having panic attacks too.
Panic attacks by and large are about the fear of abandonment or being alone in the face of something difficult. For example, public performance or speaking often stirs panic attacks because it is a scenario in which a person is likely (consciously or unconsciously) predicting abandonment (ie judgement, rejection, criticism, dismissing, etc.) in reaction to their performance and are feeling the need for reassurance of their connection.