A Blast From the Past

The boss picks you to draft a special report on the department's work. The bigger budget you've been lobbying for could be in the offing. But you're in a mega-fury: Not only have both of your colleagues been asked to turn over their notes to you, but you have to sacrifice the weekend as well. By the time you deliver the draft on Monday, you' re still fuming, you're sniping at your coworkers, and you're exhausted to boot.

Your outsize emotional response should serve as the big clue to what could really be going on, say Rick Weinberg, Ph.D., and Larry Mauksch, M.Ed. Feelings and experiences from your family of origin have contaminated your work relationships.

It's long been known that family dynamics get played out in our love lives. Now, the duo reports in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, they carry over into our work lives as well. They say the spillover of family interaction patterns into office conflicts is the source of a lot of job stress.

It's perfectly normal for family-of-origin relations to affect behavior in later times and places. After all, it's from our families that we learn specific ways to solve problems and handle interactions. But such patterns are problematic when they furtively limit our options or interfere with our abilities to react to life's many demands.

Weinberg, associate professor of psychology at the University of South Florida, and Mauksch, clinical assistant professor at the University of Washington Medical Center, advise three steps to avoid using old behavior patterns to tackle office problems:

1. Think of a recent upsetting situation at work. What were you being asked to do? Who else was involved? What was their relationship to you? What about your performance seemed ineffective?

2. Describe patterns of behavior from your family of origin. What were relations among family members like? How did you react when family members fought? What stresses did your family face? What roles were played by family members? How did you gain approval?

3. Compare the work situation to your family structure and dynamics.

For most people, the impact of what they discover comes home in a single word: "Aha!"