Shed a tear, Tim Hunt: crying at work is a good idea
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Version 0 of 1. I will never forget the first time I needed to cry at work. But crying is looked down upon in the workplace as oversensitive, immature and unprofessional – the most recent example of male disdain came this week, when Nobel laureate Tim Hunt suggested that female scientists can’t take criticism without crying. So I held in my distress, and it built until, unable to conceal it anymore, I ran to the bathroom, threw up my breakfast and cried until I could return to my desk. As someone dealing with an anxiety disorder, feeling that I couldn’t show emotion at the office just exacerbated my emotional and physical reaction to the situation. As an advocate for a good, cathartic sob, I say that the persisting prejudice against crying doesn’t fit in today’s work environment. I’m far from the only employee who suffers from hiding emotion. Almost a fifth of US adults (and a quarter of the British) suffer from mental illness. And if they are like me or my friends who also have anxiety, crying can help dissipate emotion before it builds into a full-blown panic attack. Anxiety disorder or no, emotional tears contain hormones that help reduce stress, while repressed emotions cause escalating stress levels that can weaken your immune system. (Exercising, meditating and deep breathing are also helpful, but they are obviously difficult to do while sweating at a desk, trying to look as unsuspicious as possible while your heart is picking up speed.) And beyond mental illness sufferers is a vast pool of workers who used to be able to keep home-life stress outside the office but no longer can. According to Anne Kreamer, the author of It’s Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace, the most common reason people of both genders give for crying at work is stress from home spilling over into the office. Since we’re never really off the clock anymore, compartmentalizing emotion from people’s home life no longer makes sense. As today’s workers raise tomorrow’s “let it go” generation of girls, it’s time to officially decree that crying is okay in the workplace. Being unemotional and hyper-masculine has done no one any favors, perpetuating a corporate hierarchy where men still have the most prestigious jobs, even though women are good for business. Instead of rewarding stoicism, more employers should look to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. She writes in Lean In that crying at work is a good thing, because “sharing emotions builds deeper relationships”. And those authentic relationships, she says, will result in more compassionate and natural leaders. By allowing employees to be human beings and encouraging discussion on issues affecting their ability to work, without judgement, those of us managing mental illness symptoms would have an easier time staying productive instead of wasting work hours trying to hide what we feel. And everyone else, already working more than ever, wouldn’t be stuck picking up our responsibilities or hiding their own emotional hardships. When I’m a boss one day, I’ll encourage my workers to cry when they are suffering, not drown their distress in in their keyboards. |