Ask HN: How to not bring emotion from work back home?

> Having been raised Catholic and now a practitioner of meditation for many years my experience is that meditation is nothing like prayer nor does prayer confer the same benefits as meditation. I

Having been raised Catholic, and still being Catholic, having been taught various meditative practices outside the Church and seen some of those practices taught within the Church (and broader Christian community) as means of prayer (both explicitly, by name, as the meditative technique and other times simply teaching the same technique without reference to meditation), I would have to say that Christian prayer overlaps with meditation.

There are forms of prayer that are not meditative, and I have no doubt that even for similar techniques simply the presence or absence of religious loading in the intent makes a difference (in what direction differing between individuals) in practical effect for many people, but they certainly are not categorically disjoint domains.

OTOH, I don't think the suggestion upthread of reading and reflecting on the Bible as an alternative to meditation for the same purpose is a particularly good one,especially for those not already Christian. Reading and reflecting on the Bible—or the Quran, Tao Te Ching, etc., can certainly have value, even for non-Christians (-Muslims, -Taoists). But generally that will be distinct from the value derived from meditative techniques, unless the "reflection" itself uses those techniques. And even then, the use of the religious source material as the basis is more likely to be distracting than helpful in the meditative sense for those not already at least positively inclined to the religious content.

I think getting to emotional at work is its own problem. If you could just control your emotions after work, you could probably temper them enough during work to not have this be an issue.

For emotional health, it seems rather arbitrary to draw a line between 'at work' and 'at home'. The only real difference may be in what those environments consider acceptable, but you can't just switch between intensity levels. Emotion is, kind of by definition, not fully within your control.

100%. I remember talking to my 14 year old niece about her seeing a therapist. She comes from a very old-fashioned area and I told her that some people would judge her for doing it. My next words were "Fuck. Them." She's never heard me swear before or since and I think she'll remember what I said for that reason.

I've seen a therapist, again for anger issues, for an extended period of time. Have never regretted it. A couple of points that I'd make in general that may or may not be useful:

First off, there's things you have a right to be angry about and things you don't. In the latter category, it's okay to feel angry, but it might be worth delving deeper into why that is. In the former, again it's okay to be angry but you want to think about what you can do to get yourself out of it. My wife just switched jobs for this reason.

Second, society pulls a real number on men's mental health. Plenty of emotions are considered weak and not appropriate for men. This gets re-routed to the acceptable emotions, notably anger. It's worth thinking about how this effects you.

Third, sometimes you're not angry about what you think you're angry about. Therapy really helps in these situations.

Fourth: it's ok to be angry. It's not okay to take the anger out on people. It's also really hard not to if you're constantly angry like I was. Apologise, a lot. The apologies will start to sound thin pretty quick unless you're taking concrete steps to do something about it, but in any event, always be sorry.

There are a lot of great deep, reflective answers in here. My advice is more tactical so take that for what it's worth.

1) Make sure there's a buffer before you get home from work, or if you work from home, create a buffer. During that time (could be as short as a half hour), do something that's not super stressful and not related to work that gets you thinking about stuff you're interested in. For awhile this was listening to audio books on the train ride home or doing crossword puzzles - as long as it decompresses you a bit.

2) Make sure you're sleeping enough. Fuses get short when you don't sleep and this fixes a lot of things.

3) If you're not working out or moving around, find something that you can do. If it's competitive maybe that helps. Squash, tennis, soccer league? Something that makes you run like crazy and gets your heart rate up.

4) Start work on that thing that's screaming at you from the inside because you're not doing whatever "it" is. Maybe something there - an idea, a project, a thing. What's been keeping you from working on it? Maybe life or your job seems to be preventing you from doing it? Start small. Talk to a few people and keep the fire burning. Learn more about it so you can start to think more strategically about approaches (or rule it out)