【商业周刊 20120629】这是我的办公室，我想哭就哭
【中文标题】这是我的办公室，我想哭就哭
【原文标题】It's My Office and I'll Cry If I Want To
【登载媒体】商业周刊
【原文作者】Claire Suddath
【原文链接】http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-29/its-my-office-and-ill-cry-if-i-want-to#r=lr-fst
几年前，William Frey博士与一个由医生、科学家和医院管理者组成的团队合作，用他的话来说，讨论如何“领导一个新部门”。Frey现在是明尼苏达州圣保罗医院老年痴呆研究中心的主任，他知道庞大的医学项目需要详细的前期规划。他说：“我们在几周前就开始筹备这次会议，每个参会人员都同意做好一些准备工作。我负责准备X和Y，另一位医生说他会准备A、B、C。”但当会议开始的时候，有一位医生没有做好准备工作。他试图把责任推给他的下属，当着所有与会人员的面责备了她，尽管这不是她的过错。
Frey回忆道：“他冲这个女人大嚷，说你怎么没把这个和那个做好。我记得她坐在桌子旁边，戴着眼镜。在他大喊大叫的时候，她一句话也没有说，但是你可以看到眼泪从眼镜中滚落到脸颊上。”那位医生一看到眼泪，立即停止了叫喊。他道了歉，说应该是自己的责任。Frey对此颇为着迷：“很明显，眼泪在工作环境中起到了非常有效的沟通作用。”
Frey之所以对这个人的哭泣印象如此深刻，是因为她表现出的症状，正是他潜心研究多年的课题：我们为什么会哭。尽管Frey现在的工作主要以老年痴呆症为主，但他第一个正式研究的课题是人类眼泪的成份和作用。Frey在1985年出版的一本书《哭泣：眼泪的秘密》中发表了他的一些研究成果，在此之前，科学界对于哭泣现象所知甚少。如果一个人经常哭、哭起来没完，或者在不恰当的场合哭，这个人只会被认为是心理脆弱。对于很多计划进入职场的女性来说，这都是一个问题。
Anne Kreamer是前媒体高管，后来出版了一本书《私事：新工作环境中的情绪》。她说：“当我首次在一家银行做事的时候〔1977年〕，别人告诉我，别让他们看见你哭。我所认识的无数女人都收到过类似的劝诫，从实习期的医生到职场上的其他女性。你不能表现出自己的这一面，这会被认为是软弱。”那时候，Kreamer和她的同事所面临的职场升迁压力，比现在大很多。他们试图遵守已经矗立多年的男性主导的职场文化（例如垫肩这种短暂的流行服饰），但有时她们的确无法控制自己，她们会哭。
根据Frey的研究，成年女性哭泣的几率是男性的4倍。但这并不是因为我们懦弱，也不是因为我们能敏锐地感知人性的脆弱所在（或者至少我没那么敏感）。和其它所有的事情一样，这里边有科学上的原因。
男人和女人的泪腺在解剖学角度上完全不同。女人的荷尔蒙催乳激素浓度更高，这种物质会刺激乳汁的分泌，并且更容易导致哭泣。当一个女人来月经、怀孕，或者刚刚生育之后，催乳激素浓度都会上升。听起来不错吧。
同样，男性的睾丸激素含量更高，它有抑制哭泣的作用。不同的人，催乳激素和睾丸激素的含量不同，这可以在部分程度上解释为什么有的人说自己爱哭；为什么有的人看《父亲离家时》都会无动于衷（译者注：美国50年代描写人与狗感情的经典名片）；为什么我的朋友上星期在办公室看Buzzfeed网站上“21张让你重新相信人性的图片”时会掉眼泪。
我的朋友说：“这些图片总能触动我敏感的地方，我不得不离开办公桌走一走，才能平静下来。”她同意就这篇文章接受采访，但不愿意透露真实姓名，因为担心有人会用谷歌搜索她，并且发现她有多么多愁善感。所以我干脆用绰号称呼她好了——“哭脸”。开玩笑啦，还是叫她Mazz吧。
Mazz是曼哈顿时尚产业大军中的一员，她在工作中哭泣的次数多的数不清。她承认：“我每周至少哭一次。”通常，她的眼泪与她在互联网上看到的内容有关，从前最能刺激她泪腺的则是一些讲述生离死别和个人情感的连续剧。她说：“我悲伤的时候会哭，高兴的时候也会哭，基本上任何极端情绪都能让我哭。”有时候，她会在浴室里一待就是半天；有时候，她坐在办公室的座位上，希望不受别人的注意。她说：“是的，我会在办公室里自己对自己流眼泪，这没什么大不了的。”
尽管她有异常发达的泪腺，Mazz说在公司工作的六年时间里，她只为与工作有关的事哭过两次。一次，一个脾气暴躁的客户大声斥责她，她当着一位艺术总监的面哭起来。她说：“我觉得自己真像个傻瓜，他肯定觉得我内心软弱。但是用这种离奇的方式，我或许让他觉得自己有能力保护我。”
我采访过几个在工作中曾经哭过的女人，所有人都有与此相似的经历。Angela Rhodes在加利福尼亚一家医药研究实验室做技术员，她曾经为一个朋友的去世哭泣，另一次是她的项目失去了赞助资金让她流下眼泪。BlogHer.com的高级编辑Rita Arens因为害怕马上开始的外科手术而哭泣。1993年，Kreamer任尼克（译者注：美国知名的有线电视频道，为维亚康姆公司所有）的高级副总裁，她刚刚与索尼谈妥一个引人注目的家庭录像合作协议。她的老板，维亚康姆公司的Sumner Redstone当着员工的面冲她大吼。她哭了。后来她写了一本书讲述这个事情。
在所有这些事件中，眼泪都是突然、无法控制地出现，这是由高压带来的一种突然的感情宣泄。这种现象似乎在Frey的研究中还没有得到证实。在最初的研究中，Frey的理论是畅快地大哭一场可以帮助我们减轻压力。他还证实，因情绪变动而出现的眼泪，其化学成份与受外界刺激而出现的眼泪不同，比如当我们切洋葱时流的眼泪。
我们现在都知道，与压力有关的荷尔蒙存在于泪腺和因情绪而发的眼泪中。但是，Frey说：“还没有确切的证据表明，哭能带走身体中积累起来多余的化学物质。”
但即使还没有科学的证明，医药领域已经开始广泛采纳这种理论，而且这种解释看起来合情合理。大部分人在哭过之后都感到更冷静，以此来看，在办公室中哭泣似乎是个健康的活动。如果你压力巨大，通过哭来释放感情，似乎比你努力克服压力，或者下班后用酒精麻醉自己，来得更有效。至于在Frey的会议中哭泣的女下属，她用眼泪来沟通思想的方式，远胜过语言。
进入职场的女性越来越多，人们逐渐接受了一些类似焦虑和消沉等心理学症状的存在，这都让职场中给眼泪打上耻辱标记的想法逐渐淡化。在有些公司里，甚至已经完全消失了。但是，坐在办公桌前哭泣还是有些令人尴尬，还会经常让同事们不知所措。Michelle Zuiderweg是俄勒冈一家兽医院的经理，她记得，有一次她冲一个员工发火，结果那个女人哭起来没完。她说：“她哭的时间实在太长了。我不知道该怎么办，等了半天之后，我干脆把椅子转过来，开始在电脑上继续工作。”
原文：
Several years ago, Dr. William Frey met with a team of doctors, scientists, and hospital administrators about plans to “head up a new department,” as he put it. Frey, who is now the director of the Alzheimer’s Research Center at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., knew that the ambitious medical project required a lot of advance planning. “We’d scheduled this organizational meeting several weeks in advance and we each had agreed to do things to prepare for it,” he says. “I said I’d do X and Y, another physician said he’d do A, B, and C.” But when the group met, the second physician hadn’t done his homework. He tried to pass his unpreparedness off on a subordinate, and berated her in front of the entire committee even though she wasn’t to blame.
“He starts yelling at this woman administrator, saying how come you didn’t do this or that,” Frey recalls, “She was sitting at the table and she was wearing glasses, I remember. As he yelled at her, she didn’t say anything, but you could see these tears coming down her cheeks under her glasses.” As soon as the physician noticed the tears, he stopped. He apologized. He admitted the fault was his. Frey was fascinated. “Clearly these tears communicated something in that workplace situation very effectively,” he says.
Frey remembers the crying administrator so clearly because she was exhibiting something he’d spent years researching: why we cry. Although Frey is now known primarily for his Alzheimer’s work, his first high-profile research subject was the composition and purpose of human tears. Until the 1980s, when Frey published his findings on the topic—along with the 1985 book Crying: The Mystery of Tears, now out of print—scientists knew very little about our sobbing. If someone cried too much, too often, or in an inappropriate situation, he or she was just considered weak. This was a problem for many women who’d entered the workforce.
“When I started my first banking job , I was explicitly told, don’t let them see you cry,” says Anne Kreamer, a former top media executive who is now the author of It’s Always Personal: Emotion in the New Workplace. “Countless women I knew were told this, from doctors doing their internships to other women in business. You cannot show this side of yourself. It’ll be considered a weakness.” Back then, Kreamer and her peers were pushing against a glass ceiling significantly lower and thicker than the one today. They tried to conform to the dominant male-oriented work culture that had already been created (case in point: that brief but unfortunate fascination with shoulder pads), but sometimes they just couldn’t help it. They cried.
According to Frey’s research, adult women cry four times as often as men. But it’s not because we’re wimps or because we more clearly grasp the fragility of the human condition. (Or at least, I don’t.) The answer, as with everything, has to do with science.
Men’s and women’s tear ducts are anatomically different. Women also have higher levels of the hormone prolactin, which promotes lactation and has been associated with an increased tendency to cry. Prolactin levels also rise when a woman is menstruating, pregnant, or has recently given birth. Great.
Similarly, testosterone—of which men have more—has been associated with a decreased tendency to tear up. Different people have different prolactin and testosterone levels, which may partly explain why some people are self-described criers, why others can watch Old Yeller tear-free, and why my roommate cried at work last week over Buzzfeed’s “21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity” list.
“Those lists always get me, I have to keep walking away from my desk so I calm down,” my roommate told me. She agreed to be interviewed for this article but refused to let me print her full name in case someone Googles her and learns how sappy she is. So I’ll just call her by her nickname: Ol’ Weepy-Face. Just kidding, it’s Mazz.
Mazz works in the fashion industry in Manhattan and has cried so many times at work that she’s lost count. “It happens at least once a week,” she admits. Usually her tears are related to something she’s watched or read on the Internet, although breakups and personal drama have been past instigators as well. “I cry when I’m sad and I cry when I’m too happy—basically any emotional extreme and I’ll cry,” she explains. Sometimes she seeks privacy in the bathroom. Sometimes she’ll stay at her desk and hope no one notices. “Yeah, I silently weep to myself in the middle of the office,” she says. “No big deal.”
Despite her overactive tear ducts, Mazz says she’s only had two work-related cries in the six years she’s worked at her company. Once, after a testy client chewed her out, she cried in front of an art director. “I felt like such an idiot,” she says, “I thought he’d view me as weak. But in this weird way, I think it made him feel protective.”
I talked to several women who’ve cried at work, and all of them have stories similar to this. When Angela Rhodes worked as a technician at a medical research lab in California, she cried when a friend died and then later again when her program lost its funding. Rita Arens, senior editor of BlogHer.com, cried at work because she was scared of an upcoming surgical procedure. And in 1993, when Kreamer was working as a senior vice president at Nickelodeon, she had just solidified a high-profile home video deal with Sony when her boss, Viacom’s Sumner Redstone, screamed at her over the telephone in front of her employees. She cried. And then later wrote a book about it.
In all of these stories, the tears happened quickly and almost uncontrollably—a sudden release of emotion brought on by a high level of stress. As it turns out, this is one aspect of Frey’s work that still hasn’t been proven. In his original research, Frey theorized that a good cry helps us release stress, and he also proved that the chemical makeup of emotional tears differs from those caused by an irritation, such as when we chop onions.
We now know that stress-related hormones are present in tear ducts and in emotional tears, but, Frey says, “no one has conclusively proven that the act of crying is removing excess chemicals that have built up.”
But even if it hasn’t been scientifically proven, it’s still the dominant medical theory. And it just seems true. Most people feel calmer after they cry. In that sense, crying at the office can be a healthy thing. If you’re stressed, it may be a quicker and more effective release than if you try to suppress it or self-medicate with drinks after work. And for the administrator who cried in Frey’s meeting, her tears communicated her thoughts more effectively than words.
Thanks partly to the increased presence of women in the workforce and to a growing acceptance of psychological issues such as anxiety and depression, the social stigma against tears in the workplace has severely lessened over the years. At some companies, it’s disappeared completely. But crying at your desk is still a little embarrassing, and it often makes co-workers unsure how to react. Michelle Zuiderweg is a manager at a veterinary hospital in Oregon. She remembers a time when she fired an employee, and the woman just wouldn’t stop crying. “It went on for an uncomfortably long time,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do, so after a while I just turned my chair around and started working at my computer.”
女人的眼泪还好理解，男人的眼泪，特比是职场中的眼泪，怎么看呢？ 目测女权主义者会冲进来 莫斯科不相信眼泪 莫斯科不相信眼泪 抹大拉 发表于 2012-10-25 12:34 static/image/common/back.gif
目测女权主义者会冲进来
柔弱与情绪化有时也是一种力量
页:
[1]