Standards for mental health in the workplace

Individuals can maintain a dynamic balance of self-function coordination, clear relationship boundaries, and sustainable development motivation in the professional scene - please note, it is a dynamic balance, not always free of worries and always positive energy.

Many people have misunderstandings about this matter. They think that mental health in the workplace means not complaining, not fishing, and always being positive. They even regard "emotional stability" as the only indicator. This is purely an illusion caused by too much PUA. I took over an EAP project for an Internet company two years ago. A young girl who was doing content operations took the initiative to do the evaluation and said that she felt that she had a psychological problem: she complained about the product manager's weird needs three times a week, and occasionally quarreled with the docking design in the group group, which definitely did not meet the health standards. The results showed that her condition was much healthier than half of her colleagues in the department who kept silent about it every day and who had three breast nodules discovered in a collective physical examination last year.

As for the specific judgment dimensions, the views of different academic schools are actually quite different. The school of positive psychology is more "meaning-oriented" and believes that a healthy workplace psychology should be able to gain a sense of accomplishment from work, often enter a state of flow, and even combine personal interests and career development. However, workplace consultants with an existential orientation generally do not agree with this standard - to put it bluntly, most people work to make money, so why should everyone be required to find the meaning of life from work? For ordinary people, being able to separate "work evaluation" and "self-worth" won't make you feel like a waste just because you didn't get S in KPI this quarter. You won't go home and lose sleep and reflect for three days just because your boss scolded you. This is a more important sign of health.

We have been providing corporate psychological services for almost five years. When we help employees conduct status assessments, we do not use fixed scales. Instead, we first ask a few very real-life questions. The first one is "Will you continue to live in your work role after get off work?" I have seen too many people whose sense of boundaries is worn away by work: a man in middle management who comes home and gives orders to his wife and children. He is used to saying "I want results for this matter" and even asking questions. Homework for children is like holding a department meeting; a little girl who has worked as a customer service worker for three years often dares not rush her friends when she is late in ordering food when she goes out with her. She reflexively says "I'm sorry to trouble you" when she opens her mouth. She even has trouble arguing with her boyfriend. She always feels that it is her own problem. This is a typical self-boundary being swallowed up by professional roles. No matter how good your performance is in the company, your status has actually turned red.

Another point that is easily misjudged is the handling of negative emotions. Nowadays, the whole Internet is advocating "emotional stability in the workplace", as if shedding tears or quarreling with colleagues in the company are heinous capital crimes. But we have seen too many so-called "emotionally stable" people who either suppress all their emotions in their hearts and suddenly resign at the end of the year, refusing to even hand over the job; or they suffer from all kinds of problems, such as migraines, stomach cramps, and aunt's disorder. No organic problems can be found in the hospital. To put it bluntly, they are somatic, and their emotions have no place to go, so they have to attack their own bodies. On the contrary, those who can drag each other downstairs to eat skewers after arguing with the product and come up with a plan are mostly in a healthy mental state - they allow themselves to have tempers and are not bound by emotions. This is much more reliable than the "stability" that is forcibly suppressed.

Finally, let’s talk about something that many people don’t realize: a healthy workplace psychology will definitely not go to extremes. Either you have to beat chicken blood every day and shout that you will have a million-dollar annual salary at the age of 30 and you will have financial freedom at the age of 35, or you can simply lie down and say, "I will die anyway if I can't roll." These two states are actually manifestations of psychological imbalance. Last year I came into contact with a programmer from a large factory. At the age of 32, I was not rated as a technical expert. I felt that I was completely useless in my life. I had insomnia for a month in a row. I sat at my desk and cried at the code every day. I even thought about quitting my job and going back to my hometown to eat my old age. After chatting for almost two months, he slowly adjusted. He said that he suddenly figured out that there was nothing shameful about being a senior engineer for the rest of his life. Writing code is inherently fun anyway, and you don’t have to be a manager or an expert to be successful. Now he works on open source projects at home after get off work. Last month he even won the department's technology innovation award, and his overall condition is visibly relaxed.

Of course there are exceptions, such as freelancers and artistic creators who do not work, and the judgment standards are different from ordinary workers. I know an independent illustrator who only sleeps 4 hours a day for half a month in order to catch up on an exhibition project she likes. Her income is not as high as that of an ordinary office worker, but she is cheerful every day and says that she is not tired at all doing what she likes. For her, "being able to produce content that she approves of" is much more important than "having a regular work and rest schedule and a stable income." You can't use the same standards as workers to say she's unhealthy.

In fact, to put it bluntly, there is really no need to use the online standards to check whether you are healthy enough, just like you don’t know whether you have a fever by holding a thermometer between you every day. Whether your mental state is good or not in the workplace is best determined by your own feelings: When you wake up in the morning and think about going to work, it is not a physiological nausea; after get off work, you can turn off the computer and have a solid meal and catch up on a TV show, and you will not be modifying PPT in your dreams; when you encounter a stupid customer or stupid leader, you can fight when you need to, and you can forget about it when you turn around, and you will not be stuck in your heart for several days. If you really can't get over it for a week or two in a row, and you feel chest tightness and shortness of breath when you think about going to work, don't force yourself to do it, and talk to a professional counselor. It's really not a shame. Everyone is just out to work, so there’s no need to stifle your own mistakes, right?