A life without drama?

A coaching client presented an intesting dilema when she came to see me this week. She wanted to work through some strategies that would enable her not to bring home the emotion turmoil that she experienced at work.

She described her day: As a fairly large cog in the wheel of her organisation, she found her job mostly routine. However, every so often there would be an emergency that demanded immediate action. She would devote this issue her undivided attention at the exclusion of everything else (including her personal / home responsibilities). On nearly every occasion, she would rise to the challenge and deliver on time to a high standard.

The problem was, she could never anticipate when these emergencies would occur. Sometimes, she would go a whole week without; at other times, she would have two or three in the same week; during a particularly difficult patch, she experienced four emergencies on the same day.

We established that her performance did not suffer when she was required to respond to these issues. It was her emotional response that my client was concerned about. During emergencies she would feel that addrenalin rush, a sense of excitement mixed with anxiety. Afterwards, she would feel superior. This last emotion was linked to the fact that she has a colleague who is constantly seeking to undermine her.

During the quieter periods, my client initial feels relief and calm. But then she starts to feel increasingly uneasy, as she waiting for the next emergency to land on her desk. She constantly thinks about might be coming around the corner, and hoping that it won't "catch her out". Again, it was clear that the undermining colleague's actions were having an impact on my client.

In essence, my client was describing an emotional rollercoaster. And it wasn't a surprise that this was having an effect on her personal life.

We discussed how great it was when she was at the peak of the experience: an exhilarating happiness. But this state did not last, and the feeling of anxiety would take over. We went to discuss what it meant to feel an enduring sense of contentment (as opposed to alternating highs and lows): Those who experience the extreme happiness are also more likely to feel the depths of despair and unhappiness. Those who are generally content are able to celebrate their successes and cry when they have reasons to; they express their emotions within a moderate range that leads to demonstrates good mental health. My client felt that a strategy that would lead her to achieve contentment was worth defining.

We identified that the two key reasons for her current emotional state: the unpredictabiity of her work; and her colleague who undermines her. My client believed that she could achieve emotional stability by removing one of these factors and we worked through this in our session.

As my client was heading out the door, she turned to me and said: "Although I believe that working towards being emotional contentment will make me a better mother & wife; I just can't imagine a life without drama....." An intestesting observation, and one that we'll tackle in our next session. But how many people are willing to give up the drama in their lives? Could you?