Thanks for your question. Yes, emotions and thoughts interact, and you can seriously jack yourself up into an emotion by ruminating and muttering to yourself all day.

But in the situation you describe, it looks as if the late co-worker who is shirking is truly causing troubles for the angry co-worker. The emotions are normal, and they are a response to the reality of the situation. Your co-worker isn’t managing her angers well, and it sounds like she’s stuck in them. But the anger and resentment for being dumped on are pretty normal emotional responses.

Work is an especially difficult place for proper emotional functioning, because there’s so much nonsense in the workplace about positive thinking — which of course doesn’t work when something needs to be addressed or changed. You have to read Barbara Ehrenreich’s book — she’s got a lot in there about the ways the workplace attempts to enforce positive thinking as a way to control employees.

Also, check out this post on Emotion Work, which is a related topic that dovetails nicely into the subject.

As to being positive. I always seem to think that oh, it could be worse. I could have x or y disease. If I’d get x or y disease I’d find another take on it.
I’d worry if I woke up every day and found nothing pleasurable in that day, but I can’t swoop reality under the rug, noone should be asked to do that. If I complained over the weather, the state of whatever, the news, the absence of news.

If I fear anything these days, it’s dying and what I leave behind. I’ve got an absolutely wonderful and beloved boyfriend. God knows I left him with enough options of leaving but after he spent a few weeks at my bedside during a particularly rough patch, I just quit.

@Leo, and others.
Another book on the power of positive thinking, as it being used to tell people that it is your own fault that you’re poor, unemployed etc., I’d recomment another of Barbara Ehrenreichs books, Bait and Switch. Also, the history of collective joy. The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby.

Thea:
you could look into anthropology and one of it’s many sub-fields. It shares much of it’s theories and philosophers studied (Bourdieu etc). If you’ve had a sociology major you can usually be accepted. The major difference between them is scientific approach to research which is field studies.

thanks

Leo, Barbara’s book was so useful, and I was surprised to discover that she has a graduate degree in cell biology. The depth with which she understands the nuances of the social world had me thinking she was a sociologist. After I read it, I thought, “Oh, I have GOT to get into grad school.” I’m looking at Sociology, but dangit if Social and Cognitive Psych haven’t taken over what was once called Microsociology (my favorite bit). I’m looking at the Psych dept. here at UC Santa Cruz while feeling rather grumpy that the Soc dept. is so tediously macro.

Thea, point well taken. Thoughts and emotions continually intertwine; they’re not separate at all. You can certainly jack yourself into any number of emotional states when your thoughts go loopy. But as you point out, the emotions have a purpose and something specific to do in your psyche. In my book, I give the neocortex something helpful to do when emotions come forward — that way, the emotions and the rational mind become less toxic to one another. Yay teamwork!

The stuff that comes from the outside world is ‘shaming’ and perhaps on further review it is more accurate to call it ‘blaming’.

I would love to see a posting dealing with how we untangle all the old stuff that has gone from “you are a horrible child” to somehow “I am a horrible person”

I hope not, but I suspect there are very few others like it. I’d like to see more of them.

I grew up in the new age/metaphysical culture, and I can’t count the number of people who were invited to see themselves as responsible for their illnesses, their difficulties, their poverty, or whatever else. What a travesty!

One of my best friends died last year of mesothelioma, which is a form of lung cancer she got from exposure to asbestos. She died thinking that she had failed in healing herself. I always made her laugh about such ignorant ideas, but I was one of the few people in her life who saw her disease as a disease, and not as a character flaw. She really couldn’t protect herself from the onslaught of unthinking cruelty her well-meaning friends dumped on her.

The positive psychology and positive affirmations people seem harmless, but Barbara’s right: when something is actually wrong, their advice is dangerous and injurious to others.

I’m glad you’ve been able to find some comfort, even though your illness is a total drag. Bless your heart!