“Anyway, by the time I get back to my office, there’ll prob-
ably be something else.”
He finishes his coffee and refills his mug. “The doctor says
I need to cut down on stress. My blood pressure is through the
roof.” Randy shrugs. “I told him to talk to Jim.”There are a lot of things you couldsay to a person like Randy. You
could start by asking him why, if he has so much to do, he’s sitting
around in the break room drinking coffee. Don’t bother. He’ll just say
that his doctor told him to take it easy to keep down his stress level. Gen-
erally, the only people who actually follow this kind of recommendation
are the ones who shouldn’t.
In an effort to help Randy, you could point out that caffeine, being
a generalized stimulant, is increasing, rather than decreasing, his sympa-
thetic arousal. Actually, there’s quite a bit of good advice you could give
him, but don’t waste your breath. He won’t listen.
Randy would rather you’d pull up a chair and commiserate with him,
and afterward go out and tell the world about his suffering. Maybe you
could even take on a few tasks to help him out. You know better, of course,
but you’re a kind person and you can see that his pain is real.
The best way to help is by asking: What are you going to do about it?
This is another one of those tiny interventions that can make a huge
difference. With one question you step outside the expected pattern, suggest
that the problem is Randy’s to solve, and propose, gently, that he reflect
on the ineffective strategies he’s already using. Not that he’ll do all these
things, but he will at least have to think about them.
Explosive people believe things shouldbe different, that jobs should
be reasonable, that panics should go away, or that people should do what
they’re supposed to do. Emotional explosions are often futile demands that
the world fix itself. Normal people recognize that if they don’t like the way
the world is, they either have to change it or change themselves. Griping
only makes it worse.
Randy thinks his job is too stressful because there’s a lot of it he’s
scared to do. He uses the popular conception of stress as danger to justify
avoiding what he fears. All of us do this to a certain extent. We call enjoy-
able stress excitementand actively pursue it. Dating, skiing down a slope,
130 ❧Explosions into Fear