It’s happened again. Unfortunately, the figurative coffee has spilt, you’ve had a minor disagreement with your colleague or a project hasn’t finished in time. Your immediate reaction is most probably to corner your nearest confidante, and air your concerns for some comfort – but a study has shown that this could be worsening the effects of the event.
This 2016 study by Netherlands-based researcher Evangelia Demerouti and US-based researcher Russell Cropanzano, published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, tested over a 100 employees over a three-day period and found that negative events at work only lowered employee work engagement.
Neural networks and negativity
It seems, for our brains, it could sometimes be the opposite – boiling down to how often we use certain parts of it.
Dr Joseph El Khoury, consultant psychiatrist at American Hospital, Dubai, explains: “The more we use a certain circuit in the brain, the more it becomes reinforced and the more it becomes active.
“Every event that happens in our lives, whether positive or negative, but mostly negative events - most do lead to the creation of a neuronal pathway that is specific to this complaint in this event, and also the reactions and feelings that follow from it.”
By complaining then, the idea is that we are reactivating and reinforcing this network further, he says, which can cause more stress – and by not complaining, that we leave it to kind of die calmly in a corner without much impact on our long-term psychological health. This would then ‘block the formation of salient memory links between the event and our feelings’, as per the study. However, Dr El Khoury adds that this remains a theory in neuroscience used for addressing trauma and day-to-day stress, and is still under-researched.
Every event that happens in our lives, whether positive or negative, but mostly negative events - most do lead to the creation of a neuronal pathway that is specific to this complaint in this event, and also the reactions and feelings that follow from it. By complaining, we are reactivating and reinforcing this network further.
“Somehow at work we all spend some time complaining, because it feels good, it does not require any risk or any effort, and it releases our piled up energy," Ira Naeem, Clinical Psychologist, American Hospital, Dubai told Gulf News. “But if you spend so much time focusing on a problem it can eventually take a toll on your mental health – as it may increase feelings of sadness, depression and anxiety.”
Moreover, complaining is not limited to language, and there are often instances where you mentally relive events that have happened without ever expressing it – rehearsing in your minds what may have gone wrong, that could be just as bad.
When this happens, Dr El Khoury warns, these networks created around adverse life events could become the more prominent network: “It becomes like the one network that is working and the other networks that are linked to positive events and positive memories are completely neglected.” This is seen in depression, when it then becomes important to reactivate these dormant, positive networks for treatment purposes.
These include the Job-Affective Wellbeing Scale or JAWS questionnaire of 20-30 questions, which assesses an employee’s emotional reaction to their job, asking them to indicate how often they have experienced the mentioned feeling. Answers range from ‘ Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Quite often, Extremely often or always’.
Another such scale is the Ultrecht Work Engagement scale which studies a range of response options arranged under the topics ‘Vigor’, ‘ Dedication’ and ‘Absorption’. For example, you would be asked on a scale of 0 to 6 how often you experience these emotions:
• Today, I felt strong and vigorous while working
• Today, I felt proud of the work that I did
• Today, I was completely immersed in my work
If you’d like to find out how satisfied you are at work and how you respond to negative events, try taking your own version by testing yourself on afternoons and evenings.
The ‘good soldier’ syndrome
Psychologists have been studying for decades how positive and negative events can affect worker’s satisfactions and job perception under occupational health psychology – with this idea of ‘organisational citizenship behaviour’ or the individual who goes above and beyond for an organisation taking centre.
“This concept of sportsmanship which particularly applies to the work environment – goes back to 1998, is this idea that there are individuals in companies or in big institutions that are almost like champions for the institution without necessarily expecting gain or reward,” says Dr El Khoury, adding that some institutions require this by nature, such as military and medical fields.
“Many companies have tried to work on this sense of loyalty – that goes beyond financial reward or packages where people feel that they are part of a story. “
Within the study, part of this is being willing to tolerate the ‘inconveniences and annoyances of organisational life without complaining', which then helps to maintain work engagement and positive moods and interactions despite negative events.
Dr El Khoury adds, “It is called the good soldier syndrome – because technically it is the best kind of employee an employer could hope for.”
Winds of change
So, if we shouldn’t complain or dwell on it, what can we do then? The answer lies in looking forward to a different future.
“From what we know clinically and in research – the idea of sharing is useful as long as it leads to some form of impact, whether psychological or whether real/ concrete impact,” says Dr El Khoury.
Naeem explains that although holding in feelings can have a negative impact on mental and physical health, sharing should be done with care: “I consider skipping the complaining as it does not bring any solution to your challenges, and start taking positive actions to get a result – for example, go ahead and share, just do it directly and thoughtfully to the person who is the cause of your complaint so at least you can do something to change the situation.”
I consider skipping the complaining as it does not bring any solution to your challenges, and start taking positive actions to get a result – for example, go ahead and share, just do it directly and thoughtfully to the person who is the cause of your complaint so at least you can do something to change the situation.
“Institutions should create space for this kind of venting to be used positively, and to lead to effective visible change whether at the level of the person or at the level of the institution, ” says Dr El Khoury.
If not, he warns that creating space for people to keep sharing without this impact, will lead it to creating negative cultures that are validated inside the work institution.
He adds, “It’s very important that this is not encouraged without this being a safe or effective space for change.”
If you’re worried about how to be a ‘good soldier’ displaying strong sportsmanship everyday, Ms Naeem has a few tips on letting off steam when un impactful venting can worsen the situation:
- Reflecting constructively: Naeem says, “Try to be reasonable by making a table of things you can do to change the situation and things are not in your control.” For example, reading, walking or exercising with a friend.”
- Do talk, but carefully: “Talk to someone you trust because sharing our emotions can reduce our stress while making us feel closer to others while always be mindful that venting over and over again can create frustrations in social relationships,” says Ms Naeem.
