Do You Have Intrusive Thoughts at Work?
Me, too. But take 5 minutes to heal your spirit with this story of a goose attack.
Let’s talk about intrusive thoughts in the workplace. The topic comes to mind, because I’m on a writing retreat, where such thoughts are a perpetual predicament. Unwanted thoughts are, in fact, a phenomenon so pervasive that statistics are pointless: 94% of humans experience intrusive thoughts.
If you want truly reliable information, search for #intrusivethoughts on TikTok, while you still can. Or you take a few minutes to consider my bike accident yesterday.
My ride home takes me by a pond, a quiet spot on the planet where a few geese families have set up the good life. There, they enjoy a suburban Eden, complete with well-appointed nests and a big sunny yard where their 6.5 kids can grow strong and learn how to poop on the sidewalk beneath my REI tires.
Most days, the geese seem to mind their own bird business. Some days, they crank and bob their necks and show me their teeth. I dislike geese teeth.
But yesterday, the geese decided that my daily ride-by was unsustainable. Early in the day, apparently, they called a community meeting to which I was not invited, nominated a defender, and set up a lookout for my ride home. Their trap worked perfectly. I came gliding down the path, admiring the goslings, which had been positioned for maximal cuteness right alongside the path. But then, as if my front tire had tripped a wire, a goose burst upon me, rearing up to the height of my head, spreading his wings in fighter-jet proportions. He charged, his teeth missing my shoulder by inches.
With my customary courage, I rode my bike into some nearby shrubs.
Actually, what happened was, I yelled, “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Because clearly, this crisis required nothing more than de-escalation and dialogue.
I tell this story as a parable of intrusive thoughts, which are a larger factor in workplace culture than we give them credit. It’s very possible that a coworker just a cubicle down from you suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder, a condition that’s sometimes accompanied by intense images or repulsive vignettes that refuse to leave the brain.
But whatever our diagnosable condition, everyone endures some unwanted thoughts.
You think about slamming the office door on your boss’s nose.
You think about smashing your laptop screen.
You think about pouring coffee on your coworker’s head.
And I haven’t even gotten to the sexual stuff. Or the blasphemous stuff. Let’s just say, everybody has within them an aggressive, hissing honker.
The contemplative writer Martin Laird compares intrusive thoughts to being stuck in a phone booth with a bumble bee. For me, such mental events are more like being in a phone booth with a Canadian goose.
Did you know that these birds can break bones, give concussions, and cause emotional distress? So says my new favorite website Geese Relief.
What to Do about Intrusive Thoughts with Massive Wingspans
If we could read each other’s minds, we’d suffer social disaster. Or so says the communication theorist John Durham Peters. Which is ironic, because we often celebrate absolute transparency, as if it would make our workplaces sane and safe.
So, if utter, raw honesty about intrusive mental events is not a good idea, what should we do about the weird, shameful, grotesque, honking thoughts? Here are a few ideas.
Don’t try to combat the thoughts directly. Yesterday, I must have looked ridiculous veering off the path to avoid that goose. But it would have been even more ludicrous to engage the goose in mortal combat. (Plus, that goose would have shattered my bike helmet.) Same thing goes for intrusive thoughts. Sometimes when I have intrusive thought, I try to lob an obscenity at it. Got something grotesque in my head? Well, I’ll just say something even more grotesque! But you probably know that you can’t fight what’s in your head, um, head-on.
Don’t worry that you’ll act on the thoughts. There’s a widespread myth that intrusive mental images are predictors of future actions. That’s frightening. Fortunately, it’s not true that when something occurs to you, the thought reveals what you truly desire. It’s not impossible, of course. Given the inevitable shadow sides of our upbringing, given the realities of implicit bias, given the Uncanny Desire Factory of late capitalism—it’s not impossible that you, at some level, want what comes into your head. But in many, if not most, cases, intrusive thoughts are simply random mental events.
Do allow daily conversation to shape your inner life. In her book Making Our Way through the World, the theorist Margaret Archer says we’re always talking to ourselves. More precisely, we’re always holding an inner conversation like close-captioning for our souls. Most of us disguise the presence of such internal conversation: we walk around making little “oop” sounds when we meet others in the hall. But some folks have learned to shape their inner conversation by entering determinedly into everyday interaction with others. They experience what Archer calls communicative reflexivity, which allows external dialogue to shape internal conversation. You might lessen the power of an intrusive inner monologues by increasing the energy of everyday conversation.
Maybe the most important thing to remember is that your thoughts aren’t you. Your thoughts are things that happen to you, like a bird attack on a bike ride.
So, that’s it for the Mode/Switch this week. I’m keeping it simple, so I can get back to the writing retreat and keep ahead of my inner geese. The Mode/Switch Pod’s on summer break this week, too. So, look for the Mode/Switchers to be back a week from this Friday.