Why does the same incident affect us differently?
There are many possible answers to this question. What I want to explore here is one explanation I have seen repeatedly in my own career and in my work with coaching clients.
We are all completely different people. I know it might seem obvious but I promise it’s not always. We have different experiences, priorities, careers, educations, families, communities, and things that matter to us. Something can affect you deeply while barely registering with someone else. That’s great… that answers how something can affect each of us differently.
Sometimes, though, you want to understand why this particular incident hit you so hard.
One of the first places I look is whether a value has been stepped on or violated. Was something unfair? Were you denied a choice that mattered to you? Did someone ask you to participate in something that went against what you stand for?
In my coaching work, when clients and I have explored the kinds of upsetting situations I’m describing here, we have consistently been able to identify a value that felt violated. Often, the strongest reactions have connections to something especially central to them.
That is an observation from my personal experience and working with others, not a rule that explains every single possible reaction. But it gives us a useful question to ask: What about this situation touched something important to me?
When a work problem becomes a judgment about you
There can be a second layer to the experience.
You get upset, become defensive, shut down, or lash out. Someone else sees your reaction as much bigger than the situation warrants. They might call you sensitive, touchy, or unable to control your emotions.
Suddenly, the conversation has moved away from what happened at work altogether. Now it is about your personality, your emotional intelligence, or whether you can handle the job. The conversation and entire situation is about you.
That shift can happen so quickly too. You started with a concern about a decision or an interaction, and you end up defending who you are.
And sure, there absolutely may be something about your behavior that you need to take responsibility for. I have certainly had those moments. Just because a value got violated by someone else doesn’t give us the right to lash out. But taking responsibility for how you responded does not require pretending that the original concern disappeared.
Why I reacted so strongly to an approval process
I was once involved in a project where another team had the final say over the output, but I was required to approve it in writing.
I could recommend changes, but I could not require those changes or make the final decisions. Even if I disagreed with the result, I was still expected to put my name on it as having approved it. If the project went well that team could take the credit, and if it went poorly, they could blame me since my name was listed as “final approval” even though I wasn’t allowed to make changes or withhold approval.
Fairness and justice are central values for me. That arrangement felt profoundly unfair, and I was angry. I lashed out a little.
Some people around me agreed that it wasn’t fair but couldn’t understand why it bothered me so much. Their response was essentially: just put your name on it… Of all the difficult things you stay calm about at work, why is this the thing getting to you? You’re overreacting…
I knew which value was being stepped on. That helped me acknowledge my reaction, take accountability for lashing out, and work on repairing it. It also helped me remain clear about the underlying issue.
I refused to approve an output I wasn’t allowed to make decisions about… I took a very firm stance on that and my refusal was escalated (keeping in mind, I was in a privileged place in my career that I could risk my job for this value). The issue reached the executives, who agreed, and the process changed. I no longer had to put my name down as approving it.
I was in a position where I could take that stand. That is a really important distinction… Not everyone can afford the potential consequences of refusing, and my outcome is not a promise of what will happen for someone else.
Knowing your values doesn’t obligate you to take a risk you cannot afford. I explored that tension in Does compromising at work mean I am betraying myself?.
And if you aren’t sure what your own values are, a values card sort is one place to begin. My article on what a values card sort is and why it matters explains the exercise and how I think about core, proximity, and perimeter values.
What changes when your career becomes your identity?
A value being stepped on is one part of this. Another is how tightly your sense of self has become connected to your career.
For a long time, well over a decade, mine was deeply connected. How good I was at my career became a measure of how valuable I was as a person. My title, salary, progression, employers, projects, and results all became ways to measure my worth and how other people saw me.
When those things are tangled together, feedback about work can feel like a judgment about who you are. A rejected idea or a denied promotion can become evidence in a much larger story about your value.
That can happen even when you cannot identify a particular value being violated.
This career & identity fusion is reinforced in the very system of work itself.
Consider the difference between:
“Did you meet expectations?”
And:
“Did your work meet expectations?”
Those may sound like the same question. To me, they place the attention in extremely different places. The first can feel like an assessment of the person. The second gives us something more specific to examine: the work and the expectations attached to it.
I make a similar distinction between “I am a product manager” and “I am somebody who does product management.” One makes the profession the description of who I am, while the other places the work among the things I do.
Changing the wording alone won’t untangle your identity from your career, obviously. But noticing the difference can help you see how much of yourself you have placed inside your work.
How can I understand my reaction without judging myself?
Start by writing down the incident. Give yourself something you can look at outside your own head.
Separate what happened from your reaction and the story you are telling yourself about it.
In my approval example, the situation was that another team controlled the final decisions while I was required to record my approval. My reaction included anger. The meaning it carried for me was that I was being asked to accept an arrangement that violated my sense of fairness.
Those are connected, but separating them helped me understand what needed attention. I could take action against the process (the stand I took) while I could process my reaction with my therapist, while acknowledging that my lashing out was something that needed accountability and repair. We’re only human after all.
You can explore your own incident with three questions:
- What happened? Describe the specific words, actions, or requirements. Keep what you know separate from what you assume about someone’s intentions.
- What did it bring up for me? Name the feelings and the conclusions you drew about yourself or the situation.
- What important value might have been stepped on? Look at what felt unfair, threatened, dismissed, or compromised.
Then consider what is within your control and what is outside it. You may be able to clarify a requirement, explain a concern, seek support, or repair something you said. You cannot guarantee another person’s response or decide how they should feel.
Understanding why you reacted can help you choose what to do next. It doesn’t excuse every behavior, and it doesn’t make your feelings a personal failure. This is the complexity of the human condition, but it’s also the beauty in it too.
What does this look like over time?
The longer-term work is learning who you are beyond your profession and creating more separation between your career and your worth. That is central to what I teach inside Innervates.
Your work can matter deeply to you. You can care about doing it well, take feedback seriously, and address the impact of your actions while still existing as a whole person beyond the job.
Someone else’s ability to shrug off an incident doesn’t explain what it touched in you. When you understand that for yourself, you have a clearer place to begin: addressing the concern, taking responsibility for your response where needed, and deciding what is possible next.
Because trust me… there are way more possibilities than you realize right now.
