How do you control your emotions at work

At work this morning I was waiting outside the nurses office for my flu jab. I saw the doctor at the door talking to a woman who was just give the flu jab and knew that I would be next. In the meantime our occupational nurse popped her head around the door. She is a lovely woman and she asked me how I was. I said "I'm fine thanks" and then all of a sudden I burst into tears. I felt like such an idiot and I still do. She asked me into her office and we chatted for a while, (she chatted actually). She said if I ever needed to chat not to hesitate and that if I wanted more councelling, that it was no problem.She was lovely but I just wish she didnt ask me how I was. Then the doctor knocked on the door and she said come back into me after the jab but I didn't. I went back to work, kept my head down with my big red watery eyes.It upset me all day and I am actually still upset. One minute I am thinking about jumping off a cliff and the next I am a blubbering fool. How do you control your emotions at work? How do I keep a lid on it.

I know you're looking for practical advice on how to contain your emotions so as not to make a fool of yourself at work, but my advice is not to contain them, but instead to get better acquainted with them during your time off. Make an appointment with a therapist so they can help you figure out why you have so much bottled up that a simple "how are you?" can set you off like that.

Good luck!

I pretty much have problems at work too but not as emotional, mine are more paranoia, anger, irritability, and confining rage. I do ok. Occasionally I slip and catch myself in time before I get to a full blown rage. If I perceive people are laughing at me instead of with me that triggers me like you would not believe. So that's the issue for me. How I deal with it besides meds which do help is I try to remember that usually my perception is wrong, true not always but if I was a betting man I'd bet against my perception. Giving them the benefit of the doubt helps some times, not always. Then I rely on plan B, catching myself in time before I fly off the deep end. I'm usually successful with plan B. I don't know if that will help you or not, I'm sure we all have different ways of handling work.

Hi
some things that worked for me: not to be all day at home during weekends, exercise early in the morning, try to sleep well the night before going to work, not to watch a lot of tv after work, but music, discipline myself cutting off bad thoughts about I am ridiculous, I will not able to handle things, etc

This is a tricky one. Before I went to get help, I was finding it very hard to contain my emotions... though rather than tears, mine was more 'fight' rather than 'flight'. CBT helped me to keep my expressed emotions in check more... if someone said something that triggered me I would just breathe and I would combat the intrusive thoughts. The therapist told me to imagine such thoughts as an annoying parrot sitting on your shoulder and that you had the choice to either listen to it or tell it to shut up.

This still works pretty well in relation to triggers brought on by others... not so much with just plain old negative thoughts... with those I just try to focus on the job at hand or if it becomes unbearable I go and walk around the warehouse then head to the loo and splash my face with water. The change of scenery helps I guess.

I've gotten so used to faking it, I don't even know how I feel anymore.

If I start feeling irritable, I take L-Theanine and valerian root. They do a good job of calming me down.

If I get irritable with a co-worker, I try to find someplace where I could be alone--I isolate myself physically for a short time (for example, the restroom) think about the situation, and find a reasonable method to resolve the conflict.

It's generally not a good idea for a man to be overly emotional at work--makes him look bad.