How to manage feelings and emotions in a pandemic? the importance of affective containment

Abstract

In this short reflective piece, we first outline how feelings and emotions (or ‘affections’) are understood in psychodynamic approaches, and briefly discuss how these may be controlled or ‘contained’ in organisational contexts. We then reflect on the recent experiences of one of us (Rachael) as a school leader seeking to contain feelings and emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Psychodynamic approaches to feelings and emotions

The central idea of the psychodynamic literature in organisation studies is that the unconscious is a ‘part of our mind…beyond our direct knowledge and control’ (Gabriel, 1999: 311) which influences our behaviour at work. Our feelings and emotions (which can be understood as feelings we display) are partly shaped by our unconscious desires and fears. At times of considerable change, such as during the recent COVID pandemic, we may experience considerable anxiety which allows all kinds of unwanted feelings to surface from the unconscious. This may then lead to heightened emotions and unexpected consequences.

James suggests that educational organisations are places of considerable ‘affective intensity’ (James 2010: 48). A wide range of feelings and emotions may be experienced by teachers and school leaders in any working week, not least as a result of their interactions with children, parents and colleagues. There may be considerable joy, sorrow, anger and disappointment, and specific events may provoke the contents of our unconscious to surface and cause us discomfort and anguish. After all, education is a ‘people business’ and we can all expect to spend much of our time with other people. Schools play an important role in local communities, and the impact of events within those communities can be felt very strongly – with teachers and school leaders constantly aware of pressures that families may be experiencing through conversations with parents and children.

The psychodynamic approach suggests that we seek to manage our unconscious through social defences. These include: rituals and routines, projection and introjection, regression, repression, resistance and splitting. Rituals and routines are commonplace in schools and often embedded into the structure of the school day (e.g. assemblies). They may play an important stabilising and reassuring role for the school community. Projection is the process through which we move feeling to others, and introjection the process by which a feeling is ‘taken in’ from other people. When we ‘regress’ we revert back to a state of helplessness and childlike dependency on others, while repression is an attempt to consign feelings to the unconscious. Resistance is a refusal to accept a situation or defiance of an attempted change, while splitting is the tendency to divide our feelings about something (e.g. perhaps a school leadership team) into ‘idealised good parts’ and ‘villifed bad parts’ (Gabriel, 1999: 308). James (2010) makes the point that all these social defences are often found in schools in times of change, and thus school leaders may need to take account of them as they navigate critical incidents.

Affective control and affective containment

If we acknowledge that school leaders need to be aware of the motivating power of feelings and emotions, then we must ask what strategies should be put in place to manage them, particularly if feelings and emotions are somehow diverting the school from its main focus, or ‘primary task’. Two contrasting approaches can be identified, affective control and affective containment.

If leaders opt for a strategy of affective control then they aim to reduce outward displays of emotion that might, in their view, disrupt the smooth running of the school. Strategies of affective control might include the reinforcement of rituals and routines even when these are proving problematic in practice, suggesting that staff repress unwanted feelings and emotions, and the isolation of colleagues who seem unable to control their emotions. Certain emotions and feelings (e.g. anxiety about a change) may be dismissed as unjustified or identified as signs of weakness. Colleagues may be encouraged to ‘toughen up’ and ‘get with the programme’! There is, of course, no guarantee that such an approach will have the desired effect, and emotions may instead be discharged in unexpected and unwelcome ways.

The alternative strategy of affective containment accepts that change situations will cause anxiety and that feelings arise that need to be contained, rather than controlled (Dale and James, 2015). Instead of seeking to repress, affective containment encourages the acknowledgement and expression of feelings through a ‘talking culture’, ‘providing forums for debate’, ‘clear and open communication’ and ‘continual discussion’ of the task at hand. But we also need to acknowledge that sometimes emotions need to be released, and so we need to try to find ways to put emotional energy to use in productive ways, while fostering a ‘shared understanding of each individual's strengths’ and ‘mutual trust’ (Dale and James, 2015: 97–98).

As a Headteacher in a State Secondary School in England, Rachael gathered information and reflections from her leadership team through a series of unstructured interviews held in July 2020, in order to explore and evaluate the workings of affective containment in her own context. The reflections below relate to the period of time following the announcement of a national lockdown in March 2020.

Responding to the pandemic

Hearing on the Wednesday that the school would close on the Friday indefinitely was the biggest shock to the school system that we could possibly have endured. We were being broken up, quite literally. There was a deep sense of loss and separation when staff realised they would have to stay home. No school, no community, disconnected. It hit hard. I realised from day one that I must do something. The loss of regular communication would impact negatively on staff welfare leading to them feeling ‘cut off’ very quickly.

I immediately established a ‘Head's Daily Email’: a new ritual or routine that worked as a form of social defence. School news was a counterpoint to the ‘national’ daily briefing. By recounting the events of each day, pulling out examples of the school's ethos in action, where staff were ‘going above and beyond’ for the students and each other, meant there was a clarity and continual discussion about the core purpose of school. The regular jokes and the ‘banter’ were maintained, providing emotional release and keeping the forward momentum. As Gabriel (1999: 92) said of jokes: ‘a few magic words will move the boulder’.

Our senior leaders were constantly seeking new lines of defence to deal with the surfacing of unconscious emotions arising out of the crisis situation. A blurring of home and school caused some conscious and unconscious feelings of guilt and fear of ‘not doing a good job in either’ and for some, a sense of being emotionally disconnected with their families.

A few protective measures for home working such as mail always going through the main office, no ‘live lessons’ from home, and work set using school online platforms provided boundaries to protect. Yet many staff, especially those who were shielding needed the opportunity to have open communication with their managers to discuss these feelings and be reassured that they were still part of the ‘whole’. The continuation of the ‘virtual’, but still formal, faculty and year team meetings served that function as a place for reflection. Swiftly followed by the informal virtual tea breaks!

The use of a published rota for the ‘in-school’ days was another important mechanism for managing feelings of guilt, fear and anxiety. Every member of staff was on the rota, so would ‘do their bit’. Every day followed an established pattern and the clarity of the routine was seen as protective. Many staff commented that they forgot their fear and enjoyed themselves. A ‘mutual trust’ emerged, with the talking culture coupled with the ‘clarity of authority structures, systems and processes’ (Dale and James, 2015: 98). Both of these were important for the process of affective containment.

One useful example of mutual trust working well was where a skilled teacher shared their inner conflict between their anxiety about coming into the building and their feelings of guilt. The solution that they would teach via a video link, meant technology provided an opportunity to recognise the strengths of the teacher and enabled them to make their unique contribution. Sometimes the provision of the conditions for affective containment meant specific obstacles could be identified, difficult emotions could be reshaped and an outcome which was acceptable both to the individual and the organisation could be achieved.

Dale and James (2015) contend that suppression of feelings is likely to lead to defensive behaviours that are damaging to the individual and the organisation, but there were moments where suppression was necessary, such as in the week running up to the lockdown, or in an emergency, for example when a positive case was identified. Staff appeared to be able to manage this as a temporary state, a holding moment, where there can be a release of emotion at some later date.

Interestingly however, for a large group of staff, there never seemed to be a huge amount of negative emotion to ‘contain’ or ‘release’. This phenomenon can be likened to a wartime spirit that seemed to pervade. With the absence of an object (or person) to blame, scapegoating was difficult and many had the sense that emotions were ‘irrelevant’, perhaps denying they felt them and definitely not spending any time expressing them. A typical phrase would be ‘got to get on with it’. On reflection, this was a process of repression and perhaps given what we have learnt, we might better ‘contain’ the negative emotions that these people began to have towards those they felt were not contributing fully.

A further phenomenon observable was a sense of fatalism. Freud uses the term ‘fate’ to describe ‘the elements, which seem to mock all human control’ and identifies the way in which the ego may seek solace in ‘illusions’ which ‘promise to make it independent of fate, including religious beliefs’ (Gabriel, 1999: 285). It is entirely possible that many staff members had well-rehearsed strategies for containing their own emotions through the creation of illusions, through religious faith, or a belief that order will eventually be restored. It may be that they surrendered to the fatalistic nature of the situation.

Negative views about government and their communications did cause emotional intensity, particularly amongst senior leaders. Creating a safe space for these emotions was crucial and this became a primary function of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) meetings. Leaders got their frustration off their chest, they vented anger but what came out of the meetings was order: maps, bullet points, guidance and a handbook for staff. Feelings were thus ‘fully experienced and used productively’ (Dale and James, 2015: 93).

In conclusion, by using affective containment and redirecting emotion into something productive, a leadership team is able to process the bad fortune and seek to mitigate the damage caused to an organisation by a sudden and disruptive incident like the pandemic. The resulting improvements in relationships could mean that the shock and the change can make the organisation stronger and even more resilient to future threats to its ethos and values.