How Attachment Hooks Us Into Suffering at Work
Welcome Back!
At The People Side, we’re looking closely at the main causes of suffering within people at work. Previously, we discovered how an unconscious mind generates inner suffering, and how a conscious mind can generate relief from it. Now, we turn the focus towards another powerful source of suffering that’s trending in the research: Attachment.
In this article, we will explore:
how attachments form, and what form they often take
how attachment shows up in the workplace
how to recognize attachments in the moment and course-correct
what alleviates the negative impact of suffering from attachment
This system of attachment takes center-stage as one of The Four Truths we have outlined here.
Understanding the Power of Attachment
Evidence of attachment exists everywhere inside and outside the working world. In fact, attachment is so pervasive in our society it is hard to find pockets where it doesn’t exist. To be attached, is to be human.
Attachment means we “have skin in the game” and it feels like being invested in an outcome. Attachment becomes a problem when it reduces our world to a set of must-have conditions we can’t live without. It may sound extreme, but it exists on a spectrum – even the most casual attachments, it seems, can influence our peace and perspective.
Consider this simple example - Imagine you are someone who likes to feel a sense of accomplishment. Now imagine you are doing the laundry. If you have ever done the laundry, than you know it is nearly impossible to finish that task. Laundry is an inherently disappointing chore for the "Achievement" oriented person because there will always be more dirty clothes in the hamper by the end of the day. Adjusting our expectation to our reality can provide a certain sense of relief as we become unattached to the expectation of feeling accomplishment when doing that task.
We have learned that attachment is a primary producer of our suffering at work too. The mind can become easily ensnared in a trap that freezes our perspective. Our attachment to believing “how things must be” results in us getting hooked (or stuck) as human beings. These hooks create internal tension and deny us from seeing the wider playing field of possibilities.
Let’s dive in together to learn more…
Attachment to Outcomes
As people, we get attached to outcomes.
The more we care about the outcome, the more likely it is that we will swing to the extremes. For example, if you are the Sales Leader for a company, and your compensation is directly tied to sales revenue…
When your firm wins “the big deal” you don’t just feel happy, you are overjoyed, elated, exhilarated!
If you lose “the big deal” however, your disappointment can intensify into feeling morose, crestfallen, or devastated.
If you are an accountant in the company, you might just feel happy or sad to learn that you won or lost more business.
Building on what we know about how the mind works, it’s easy to trace how this happens. We carry biases that blind us to our reality (“of course we’ll win the bid – we are the clear choice!”). Biases breed expectations, and we often can’t see through them until it’s too late. It’s such a tight relationship between patterned thinking and expectation that we get hooked on the outcome before we can even consider alternatives.
If bias breeds expectations, then expectations breed suffering. You may be wondering, “How can my bias for an outcome escalate into suffering?”
Let’s consider the following cycle:
Before moving on from this graphic, we invite you to spend a couple more minutes here. Look it over again. Run through some scenarios from your work week to see how it might apply to you. “Events” may include someone commenting on the quality of your work, someone giving you advice on how to do your work, or offering you more work. What is your interpretation of that event? How does it make you feel? What conclusions did you reach? How did you react? How fast does this chain of events happen in your mind?
This is how people are wired. This is how we work. But why should we care?
Sources of Attachment
Practically speaking, what we get attached to can become core to our identity – we begin to believe “If I am not ______, then I won’t have what I NEED to function.” So what do people NEED when they are at work? The Leadership Circle Profile™ assessment, a popular tool we use at The People Side, offers us a meta view into some of the most common tendencies for attachment in leaders. Our team of coaches have debriefed the results of this assessment with thousands of leaders in order to skillfully address their attachments and offer new possibilities. Here’s a quick look at some of the patterns we see:
Feeling the Hook
It may come as no surprise that the most ardent students of attachment are Buddhist scholars. One of the foremost and most published, Pema Chödrön, articulately writes about the moment we know we’re attached – it feels like getting hung up on something sticky. She calls it “being hooked,” and it is key to understanding and undoing the effects of suffering in leadership and in life.
She invites us to think of attachment like a fishing hook - being attached, therefore, is the consequence of swallowing the hook. It’s a sense of tightness, a constriction, a closing down, and it leads us straight into suffering. She goes on to explain:
“That tight feeling has the power to hook us into self-denigration, blame, anger, jealousy, and other emotions which lead to words and actions that end up poisoning us and others.”
At work, the opportunity to get “hooked” are endless. A tersely-worded email or a cancelled meeting may hook us for hours or days. Being hooked is a test of our sanity and peace of mind. Once hooked, we may feel hijacked. It feels terrible. Reflexively, the next thing to do is to seek relief – ignore, rationalize, minimize, numb, or bury.
The emotional experience of seeing the hook, biting the hook, and flailing around on the hook is contained into a single word in Buddhist teachings. They call it:
We have all experienced Shenpa, but it is probably not the term we have used to describe it. To understand it, we must first admit that we want things to be different than the way they are. Chödrön says the root cause of our discomfort when we bite these hooks is our resistance to reality. Our values, beliefs, norms, and culture help us rationalize the way things should be, but it doesn’t change the way things just are.
Freedom from the “hook” is within our reach. Chödrön offers this useful guidance to help:
“Rather than get caught in a story line about how right you are or how wrong you are, take it as an opportunity to be present with the hooked quality. Use it as an opportunity to stay with the tightness without acting upon it.”
Outsmarting the Hooks of Attachment
Building on this advice, some core truths emerge that would alleviate the all-around effects of attachment in our daily experience.
The first is the notion of Radical Acceptance. This means we try to take everything exactly as it comes. It involves clear-sightedness and cuts straight through the delusions. When we experience the radical acceptance of our reality, any lingering attachments can dissolve: the hook straightens, and we slide right off into more open, free choice. This notion connects directly with the qualities of resilience, pragmatism, and steadiness – all valued in a good leader. Radical acceptance also helps us face disappointments, cope with loss and hardship, and escape our biases and self-deceptions. Before long “it is what it is” can become more than a sarcastic retort – it can be our whole worldview!
The second is the practice of Self Compassion. The reason for this is clear: being hooked by our attachments invites a wealth of inner tension and inner beratement. The invitation is to bring kindness to ourselves by radically accepting our humanity, limitations, and the limits of our control. In short: release ourselves from expectations. The benefits for those who are leading people are clear and countless. Neff writes:
“Perhaps most importantly, having compassion for yourself means that you honor and accept your humanness. Things will not always go the way you want them to. You will encounter frustrations, losses will occur, you will make mistakes, bump up against your limitations, fall short of your ideals. This is the human condition, a reality shared by all of us. The more you open your heart to this reality instead of constantly fighting against it, the more you will be able to feel compassion for yourself and all your fellow humans in the experience of life.”
Believe too that turning compassion inward is the precursor of turning it outward. If we tend to be “our own worst critic” this really matters. Freeing ourselves from inner shaming and blaming encourages us to do so for those we lead as well. Supplying ourselves with the human need for compassion is not only a genuine act of secure attachment, it’s a vote for the vitality we want in our people and us an investment in the culture we are actively cultivating.
For additional tools and resources about self-compassion, explore Neff’s website.
Beyond surrender and self-compassion, there is an invitation to challenge our firmly held beliefs by considering an alternate truth. One of our coaches, Claire Williams, eloquently describes this invitation. “There is an unconscious belief in some people that they are only safe if they don’t let people get too close to them, or they are only worthy if people like them. Choosing to entertain an opposite belief can open them up to growth in a way that perhaps surrender, and self-compassion don’t quite get at. For example, a new belief might be that you can get close to people and remain safe. Or know that you are worthy regardless of what other people think about you.”
We hope this article is inviting you to consider your own attachments and how you might practice radical acceptance, self-compassion, and the creation of alternate beliefs that challenge your current expectations.
Recap
Attachments form early, often, and automatically throughout the course of our life. People have needs, and we believe our attachments will help us get those needs met.
Using self-awareness, the experience of feeling attached to something (also known as “Shenpa”) can be converted from craving into an open-ended moment of choice.
Practicing self-compassion and other skills will equip us with a kinder way to see and handle the difficulties that attachment creates within us.
In much the same way, practicing radical acceptance eases us “off the hook” of our attachments into a no-holds-barred acceptance of whatever simply is.
Learning about the power of attachment, and helping leaders get “unhooked” from the tendencies that get in their way, is the focus of many coaching conversations at The People Side. Once “unhooked” we see leaders able to navigate the workplace with more creative capacity, develop deeper connections with their teammates, and increase their overall effectiveness at getting results through others. We have an impressive roster of certified coaches who are using the Leadership Circle Profile™ and other frameworks to liberate leaders from their unproductive attachments. Through this work, we are living into our mission of alleviating human suffering in the workplace.
We hope you remain intrigued by what’s coming up in our discovery of suffering. There is much more we want to share! If you want deeper insights dropped into your inbox once a month, sign up for our newsletter. Make sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and here on LinkedIn.
It’s our goal to put forward meaningful content that helps us all learn about, and lessen, our own tendencies for suffering at work.
About the Authors
Jenna Willingham is a Writer, Collaborator, and Program Manager for The People Side. She brings a wealth of personal experience and professional curiosity to her writing and client interactions. She strives to offer a fresh, elevated perspective on the unseen aspects of human dynamics at work.
Candyce Penteado is the Founder and Managing Director of The People Side. She is considered a thought-leader in experiential learning –masterfully weaving business acumen with creative facilitation techniques to inspire breakthrough thinking.Her passion and commitment to alleviate human suffering at work is echoed in the company’s bold mission.