I notice that you are experiencing a pattern of working with people who seem to be hurtful and you find yourself attacked and hurt. Perhaps detachment might be a tool that can help you.

Years ago I had an employee that would come to me on a regular basis about the disrespectful ways she had been treated. I started to realize that she was very sensitive and was unable to let things go. People are human. And they are often unskilled in their communications and interactions. But that is not a comment on how worthy you are or how worthy my employee was.

As I watched her struggle I realized that I too would take things too personally and committed to not focus on how others behaved but rather on how I was behaving. Was I respectful? Was I willing to let things go and just move on? Was I being clear in my communications?

Shifting my focus and energy from “them” to me made me feel empowered and I liked the way I interacted. I would at times when I picked up the body language that there was a problem – would ask, “is everything OK?” But a lot of the time I just let people go through what they were going through.

When you asked him if he was still angry – I wondered why you did that? Things had cooled down. What did you hope to accomplish? Sometimes we need to let things go.

Also – the fact that you feel you must defend yourself sounds a lot like you want validation from your manager or others – you want acknowledgment – that you were right. Needing acknowledgement and validation – even when you are right will tend to cause conflict in relationships. I try hard to be self-validating and then I don’t have to have others think I am OK to be OK. Good luck.

Over-thinking can feel like one is on a mental tread mill. I know my busy brain can exhaust me. I do somethings that help me. One is “stream of consciousness” writing. I noticed you said you felt better writing it out. When I am in the midst of my manic brain tread mill extravaganza – I write. I sit down with my computer and either set a time limit or a page limit and then I write whatever pops into my head. I just write out my stream of consciousness – even if it makes no sense, even if it is off topic.

As my manic thinking gets put on paper (metaphorical paper) I feel better. I am not sure why but I do. I have made stream of consciousness writing part of my personal emotional health practice and do it most days for either 15 minutes or one page (typed).

The other I do is to write out a root cause analysis that I created combining the quality improvement tool “5 whys” with David Burns work on cognitive behavioral therapy. Basically I pick anything that is bothering me or I am obsessing over and ask “Why is this bothering me?” I write the answer and then ask the same question about what I just wrote. I do it five times and this gives me plenty of material to see how I am thinking. I then identify my thinking errors – like personalizing, black or white thinking, generalizing, http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions/0002153 – this site lists them -and then I write out a more healthy way to interpret what I am thinking.

All of this helps me to develop better thinking habits and calm down. For me, I have to do this on a regular basis or I start to revert back to my manic thinking.

Good luck. tj