So you lost your sh*t. Now what?

Hannah Keal 3 min

Your boss is chasing you about a project you thought you’d agreed to deprioritise.

You’re trying to devote as much time as possible to onboarding a new team member but you haven’t managed to check in with them today and it’s nearly lunchtime.

The CEO just put an off-schedule managers meeting in the diary.

Your family chat is blowing up trying to plan a surprise party for your mum’s birthday.

You just got interrupted in a meeting for the fourth time by the same person.

You’re trying to keep your cool. But what happens when you don’t?

In this article, we’ll explore what to do if you lose your temper at work. We’ll also touch on some pointers for building emotional resilience to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Do: understand what’s happening on a physical level

Losing your temper happens when there’s an emotional ‘snap’, meaning that you can no longer cope with the stress you’re feeling and lash out or get upset.

As human beings, we all have different capacities for stress. Our resilience changes over time, but is impacted by a range of factors, such as our genetics, upbringing and exposure to trauma. On a more day to day level, everything from how much sleep we’re getting, to whether we’re hungry or feeling sensory overwhelm can impact our ability to cope.

Do: understand what’s happening on a physical level

When we experience emotional snapping in front of others, it’s not a personal failing just means our capacity to deal with stress has reached its limit, activating our brain’s threat response and triggering a strong reaction.

Do: something to re-regulate

If you’ve lost your temper, you need to take some time to reset your nervous system. You probably already have some ideas for what might help here. Maybe you have a go-to grounding exercise or a journaling practice. Different things work for different people, so it’s important to lean into what feels intuitively right for you.

If you don’t know where to start, then you could take some inspiration from Dialectical Behaviour Therapy and try the TIPP technique, which provides options to help quickly reduce distress and overwhelm.

Let’s break it down:

Temperature - change your body temperature by splashing some cold water over your face or opening the freezer door. When we feel overwhelmed, our bodies often literally heat up, so this can help us to take things down a notch.
Intense exercise - to get rid of physical tension in the body, try literally shaking it off. You could go for a short run, do some jumping jacks, dance or whatever movement feels accessible to you for 20 minutes or so. If you don’t have 20 minutes, just squeeze in what you can.
Paced breathing - take deep, diaphragmatic breaths and try counting to help you focus. Start by breathing in for four counts, holding for four, breathing out for four, then holding your breath out for, you guessed it, four.

Progressive muscle relaxation - try tensing and releasing specific parts of your body. You could start by tensing your shoulders or any other area of your body that holds physical tension.

Do: reflect on what your anger is telling you

Emotions can provide us with powerful insight. Anger rarely comes out of the clear blue sky, so one of the most important next steps after losing your sh*t at work is reflecting on what happened to bring you to that point.

Anger is a secondary emotion, meaning that it happens in response to or after other feelings, such as shame, guilt or frustration. When we get angry, it’s usually because a boundary has been crossed, a need we have is not being met or we feel we’re not being respected.

Anger can also happen when our brain recognises and unconsciously responds to an old script, when the present reminds us of previous times when we’ve felt overwhelmed.

Try asking yourself these questions to reflect on what happened:

What’s the emotion behind the emotion? Try to identify what other feelings are present and what’s driving them.
What was at stake for me here? Maybe there’s a personal value you feel is being compromised, or you feel your position is under threat.
Does this situation remind me of anything? Here we can reflect on whether we might be repeating an old pattern that no longer serves us.

Do: own it

Once you’ve calmed down, it’s important to speak to the people who were present when you lost your temper as quickly as possible and apologise unreservedly.

Even if there is a part of you that feels your actions were proportionate, intimidating behaviour has no place in a work context. As a manager, it’s important to realise that your actions have weight. So if you don’t feel you can be sincere, wait until you can.

When apologising, you should acknowledge how shocking, scary and even unsafe it might have felt to be on the other side of your outburst. You may want to explain some of the context behind your behaviour, but don’t try and excuse or minimise it. You should also explain any next steps you’re taking to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Speaking of…

Do: take steps to address the root causes

Reflecting on what your anger is telling you should help you deal with the stressors that contributed to losing your temper more effectively.

However, solving your immediate issues is just one part of the puzzle. You also need to strengthen your ability to self-regulate before you become unable to control your emotions.

To do this you might think about what happened just before things got heated. Where in your body did you feel anger building first? What were you thinking about? Note down these signals and think about what you can do to create a personal off-ramp for yourself. You may want to have a few phrases to hand for when you need to take a break and collect your thoughts. Even something as simple as ‘I want to make sure I give this conversation my full attention, but I need to take 5 to grab some water’ can help buy you some time.

Do: Recognise that it might take time to rebuild trust

Everyone has their own history and personal relationship with anger. So it’s important to recognise that it may take more time to rebuild trust with some team members than others.

Whilst showing vulnerability and expressing genuine regret goes a long way to repairing harm, it’s just one step. If you notice that your 1:1’s with a team member feel different, try asking them ‘is there anything else about how my actions impacted you that I should know?’.

Bringing it all together

Being a good leader of people requires a high degree of emotional regulation, as well as strong boundaries to avoid absorbing and carrying the emotions of others. Yet this crucial skill is seldom talked about in most spaces designed to support managers. We hope today’s article has given you some tools to soothe your nervous system and build your emotional resilience. We’d like to leave you with a reminder to give yourself some grace. One moment does not define you as a leader or as a person. It’s what you do next that counts.

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