A good friend and colleague sent this little news item to me. It is something I’ve always believed, since I’ve always had a hard time just shutting up and smiling. I never thought it was fair (to me or the idiot yelling at me) nor very productive to just suck it up. Being courteous and sincere is very, very important. But not being to share one’s opinions or feelings (good or bad) seemed unhealthy to me. From UPI:
A German scientist has proved that people forced to smile and take on-the-job insults suffer more and longer-lasting stress that may harm their health.
Dieter Zapf of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt studied 4,000 volunteers working in a fake call center. Half were allowed to respond in kind to abuse on the other end of the line while the other half had to suck it up, The Telegraph reports.
He found that those able to answer back had a brief increase in heart rate. Those who could not had stress symptoms that lasted much longer.
“Every time a person is forced to repress his true feelings there are negative consequences,” Zapf said. “We are all able to rein in our emotions but it becomes difficult to do this over a protracted period.”
In an interview with the German healthcare magazine Apotheken Umschau, Zapf suggested that people who must keep smiling on the job should get regular breaks to let it out.
Just remember there’s a time and place for everything, so don’t read this, walk into your boss’s office and explode. But don’t just shut up and take it either. It’s for your own good.
