The Emotional Rollercoaster: Why Managing Your Feelings at Work Isn't Just About Being "Professional"

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Here's something nobody told me when I started my career 18 years ago: emotions aren't unprofessional. They're human. And pretending they don't exist in the workplace is probably the most counterproductive piece of advice ever handed down by the corporate world.

I learnt this the hard way during a particularly brutal budget meeting in 2018. Picture this: three hours of PowerPoint presentations, stale coffee, and increasingly passive-aggressive comments about "efficiency improvements." When our CFO suggested cutting the training budget by 40%, I felt my jaw clench so hard I thought I might crack a molar.

The old me would have sat there, nodded politely, maybe made a diplomatic comment about "exploring alternatives." Instead, I took a breath and said exactly what I was thinking: "That's the worst idea I've heard all quarter, and here's why."

Best. Decision. Ever.

The Myth of Emotional Detachment

We've been sold this ridiculous idea that good employees check their emotions at the door like some kind of coat room attendment. Rubbish. Complete and utter rubbish.

Emotions provide crucial information. When you're frustrated with a process, that's data. When you're excited about a project, that's motivation fuel. When you're anxious about a deadline, that's your brain telling you to pay attention to risk factors.

The trick isn't eliminating emotions—it's understanding them. And more importantly, expressing them in ways that actually get things done rather than just making you feel temporarily better.

Most people get this backwards. They think emotional management means suppression. Wrong answer.

The Queensland Mining Lesson

About five years ago, I was consulting for a mining company up in Queensland. Their safety meetings were disasters—not because people didn't care about safety, but because nobody was allowed to express genuine concern without being labelled "negative" or "resistant to change."

The breakthrough came when their site supervisor, a bloke named Dave, finally exploded during one particularly sanitised presentation. "This is bloody insane," he said. "We're talking about procedures like they're suggestions, and people are going to get hurt."

Was Dave's outburst perfectly professional? Probably not. Was it exactly what that room needed to hear? Absolutely.

The company changed their entire approach to safety communications after that. Sometimes emotions cut through bureaucratic nonsense better than any carefully worded memo ever could.

The Science Bit (Sort Of)

Research shows that people who acknowledge and work with their emotions perform better at work. They're more creative, better at problem-solving, and significantly less likely to burn out.

I'm not talking about emotional intelligence in that touchy-feely way that makes everyone uncomfortable. I'm talking about practical emotional management that actually improves your work output.

When you're angry about a system that doesn't work, that anger contains information about what needs fixing. When you're worried about a client relationship, that worry is highlighting potential issues before they become disasters.

The goal isn't to become an emotionless robot. The goal is to become someone who can say, "I'm frustrated with this process because X, Y, and Z, and here's what I think we should do about it."

The Three-Step Reality Check

Here's what actually works, based on nearly two decades of watching people succeed and fail in Australian workplaces:

First, acknowledge what you're feeling without immediately judging it. Your emotions exist whether you admit them or not. Might as well work with reality.

Second, figure out what information your emotion is providing. Frustration often points to inefficiency. Anxiety usually highlights genuine risks. Excitement typically identifies opportunities worth pursuing.

Third, choose your expression strategy based on your goal, not your immediate impulse. Sometimes that means a direct conversation. Sometimes it means writing a proposal. Sometimes it means waiting until you can articulate your point more clearly.

This isn't rocket science, but it does require practice. Most of us learned workplace behaviour from people who had no clue about emotional management themselves.

The Adelaide Call Centre Story

I once worked with a call centre in Adelaide where customer service reps were getting absolutely hammered by increasingly frustrated customers. Management's solution? Mandatory smile training. I'm not joking.

The real problem wasn't that employees weren't smiling enough—it was that they were absorbing customer frustration all day without any healthy way to process or release it. By the end of each shift, they were emotionally wrung out and starting to take customer anger personally.

We implemented what I called "emotional reset breaks"—structured five-minute breaks where employees could acknowledge how they were feeling and remind themselves that customer frustration wasn't about them personally. Customer satisfaction scores improved by 23% within two months.

The lesson? Emotional management isn't about pretending feelings don't exist. It's about developing better ways to process them.

The Authenticity Trap

Now here's where I might lose some of you: being "authentic" at work doesn't mean expressing every emotion exactly as you feel it, exactly when you feel it.

I see too many people confuse emotional management with emotional dumping. They think authenticity means never filtering anything, never considering timing or context. That's not authenticity—that's just poor communication skills with a trendy label.

Real emotional authenticity means being honest about what you're experiencing while taking responsibility for how you express it. There's a massive difference between saying "This deadline is making me anxious, can we discuss realistic timelines?" and "I'm stressed and everyone's being unreasonable!"

Same emotion, completely different impact.

The Melbourne Finance Firm Disaster

A few years back, I watched a finance firm in Melbourne completely implode because their senior partner confused "emotional honesty" with "saying whatever popped into his head during meetings."

The guy would interrupt presentations to announce his boredom. He'd critique people's ideas by sharing his immediate emotional reactions rather than actual feedback. He thought he was being refreshingly direct.

What he actually was being was a workplace terrorist.

His emotions were valid—boredom, frustration, disappointment. His expression of those emotions was destructive, self-indulgent, and ultimately cost the firm three of their best analysts.

The point isn't that he should have suppressed his feelings. The point is that emotional management requires thinking about impact, not just release.

What Actually Works in Practice

After working with hundreds of Australian businesses, here's what I've seen consistently work:

Name your emotions specifically rather than generally. Instead of "I'm upset," try "I'm frustrated with this process because it's creating unnecessary delays." Specific emotions provide more useful information than vague ones.

Create space between feeling and expressing. This doesn't mean waiting days—sometimes it means taking thirty seconds to breathe before responding to an email, sometimes it means scheduling a conversation for later in the day when you can think more clearly.

Focus on the business impact of your emotions rather than just the personal experience. "I'm concerned about this timeline because it increases our risk of missing the client deadline" hits differently than "This timeline makes me anxious."

Develop emotional vocabulary beyond "good" and "bad." The more precisely you can identify what you're feeling, the more useful information you're working with. Frustration, disappointment, concern, excitement, enthusiasm, scepticism—they're all different emotions with different implications.

The Unexpected Benefits

One thing that surprised me about implementing better emotional management practices: it actually made work more enjoyable, not less.

When you stop pretending emotions don't exist, you also stop carrying around the exhaustion that comes from constant suppression. When you can express concern or frustration constructively, you become part of the solution rather than just another source of problems.

And when you can genuinely celebrate successes and express enthusiasm about projects, work becomes energising rather than draining.

I'm not suggesting you turn your workplace into a therapy session. I'm suggesting you stop pretending that the human beings in your office aren't actually human beings.

The Bottom Line

Managing emotions at work isn't about becoming more "professional"—it's about becoming more effective. Your feelings contain information. Learn to extract that information and use it constructively, and you'll find yourself contributing more meaningfully to every project, meeting, and workplace relationship.

The alternative is continuing to pretend that emotions don't affect work performance, which is roughly as effective as pretending that weather doesn't affect farming.

Stop checking your humanity at the door. The best workplaces are made up of people who know how to be both professional and human simultaneously.

And if your workplace can't handle that level of authenticity, maybe it's time to find one that can.