Wellness & Fitness

Here is how to deal with boastful minds

ego

Portrait of a proud businessman pointing himself at office. PHOTO | FOTOSEARCH

Q: What is the best way to handle individuals with super egos in the work place without affecting their performance?

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The English language has many words that end up meaning different things to different people at different times.

Used in the way that you have suggested today, one assumes that in an office setting, everybody in the office will know what you mean by the term “an individual with a super ego”. The same term in a mental health situation would cause many hours of debate because such a term does not exist anymore. (The terms id, ego, and super-ego were first used by Sigmund Freud).

In a very similar way, the sentence “I feel anxious” used in the context of a student before an examination does not call for any further explanation. To the mental health expert, anxiety is not just an English word used by the bride on her wedding day. It is a medical condition with clear definitions of causes, symptoms, diagnostic criteria, treatment and outcomes. Anxiety therefore is both a feeling and a clinical entity.

Social anxiety in this regard, is different from specific anxiety. In the former, one becomes anxious and is unable to talk in a social setting if he has this condition, a priest might be able to pray with a bereaved family but be unable to preach in church. Put differently, the priest might be comfortable praying for two or three people but be unable to address a congregation because of extreme social anxiety. Some people get extremely anxious about specific situations. Some are unable to fly in aeroplanes while others cannot enter a lift. Still others panic when exposed to plains or open spaces!

A doctor with anxiety about the sight of blood or injections is as disabled as a veterinary doctor who has anxiety about animals! All these are real anxiety situations that can cause great discomfort and disability.

Another word that has both lay and medical meaning is depression. May people talk of Monday blues meaning that on Mondays they feel rather depressed. Other people speak of feeling depressed because the end of the month (pay day) seems so far away. Both people say they feel depressed, but neither will see a doctor to get him to change Monday to Friday or pull the end of the month closer!

Another person will confess to the doctor that he feels depressed. In this extent, the person would be tearful, sad, feel hopeless, and with insomnia. In some cases, he would be feeling so depressed that he would be contemplating suicide. Some depressed people (one every 40 seconds in the world) end up killing themselves! Such people are clearly depressed but in a context that is different from the young man on a Monday or his mother in the middle of the month and without a sight of a salary!

Obsessional, paranoia and stress are other words that have both lay and technical meanings.

The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a well circumscribed clinical entity that is defined clearly by experts. For one to be diagnosed with PTSD, a major life threatening event has to precede the symptoms. One must experience other symptoms including the recurrence of images of the event, tendency to avoid the place or memory of the event and one has to experience the stress associated with the traumatic event. If one was in a road accident, then the memories of the accident keep coming back and cause stress. If it was an armed robbery, the gun shots of the day and images of the event keep coming back.

In contrast, a 12 year old told to go to church by his parents against his will could say that the priest causes him stress by the long sermons. Such a boy with stress will not be suffering from a clinical entity such as the one involved in a robbery.

In your question, I assume you mean to ask how one deals with boastful people who are full of themselves and who clearly know nothing of what goes on at the work place. I would suggest that you start off by giving them the sympathy that they clearly deserve and see if you can teach them a thing or two! Good luck!