You Can't Control Colleagues, But You Can Reframe

There's a difficult colleague in almost every practice, department, or shift rotation, someone whose choices don't line up with everyone else's, whose complaints feel constant, whose behavior reads as a lack of respect. The frustration that comes with that is legitimate. It's not a character flaw to feel it. But there's a real distinction worth making between the emotion itself and the story attached to it, and that story is often where there's more room to work than it first appears.

The Difference Between a Reaction and a Story

Frustration with a colleague's behavior is a genuine response to a genuine situation, it deserves to be taken seriously, not dismissed. What's worth examining isn't whether the frustration is valid, but what interpretation is fueling it. "He's disrespecting my authority" and "something in his life might be making this a hard season for him" are both stories that could explain the exact same behavior, and each one leads somewhere very different.

This is closer to what psychologists call cognitive reappraisal: not manufacturing a feeling out of nowhere, but recognizing that the same set of facts can support more than one interpretation, and that the interpretation you land on has real influence over what you feel next.

A Case in Point

One physician in a leadership role described a recurring conflict with a senior colleague, someone who set his own terms for which meetings to attend, which shifts to take, which policies to follow. For a long stretch, the pattern got interpreted through a single lens: disrespect for the role, disregard for the systems put in place for consistent patient care. That interpretation fed a steady undercurrent of frustration every time the colleague was on shift.

At some point, the interpretation shifted, not because the behavior changed, but because a different explanation got considered. Maybe age and proximity to retirement were part of it. Maybe there was a health concern, a family situation, financial stress about the transition ahead, that had nothing to do with the current workplace at all. None of this was confirmed, it was simply a more generous possibility, held alongside the original one.

That shift in interpretation didn't fix the colleague's behavior. It did change the day-to-day experience of working alongside him, replacing a low-grade dread with something closer to curiosity, and reducing the emotional cost of every shift they shared.

What This Isn't

This isn't a suggestion to talk yourself into feeling fine about something that's genuinely unfair, or to treat every difficult interaction as something you're responsible for feeling good about. Some situations warrant addressing directly, a real conversation, a boundary, an actual change in the dynamic, and reframing isn't a substitute for that when it's needed.

What reframing does offer is a way to separate what you can influence (the story you tell yourself about someone else's behavior) from what you can't (the behavior itself). You don't get to control a colleague's choices. You do have some say in which explanation you extend them the benefit of, and that choice tends to shape how much the situation costs you emotionally, shift after shift.

Where This Applies Beyond One Colleague

The same principle shows up anywhere a difficult interaction gets interpreted automatically as personal, a curt message from a colleague, a patient's frustration, a family member's short temper. The behavior is real. But the meaning attached to it, "they don't respect me" versus "something else is going on for them", is a layer you have more influence over than it usually feels like in the moment.

That influence isn't infinite, and it isn't instant. But noticing that there's a choice of interpretation at all is often the first step toward not carrying every difficult interaction home at the end of a shift.

FAQ

Isn't "choosing how you feel" just another way of blaming yourself for negative emotions? Not in the way it's meant here. The point isn't that negative emotions are a personal failing or that you should be able to will yourself into feeling good regardless of circumstances. It's that the interpretation attached to a situation, not just the situation itself, shapes the emotional response, and that interpretation is something you have some influence over.

What is cognitive reappraisal? It's a well-studied technique where you deliberately consider an alternative explanation for someone's behavior or a situation, rather than automatically defaulting to the first interpretation. It doesn't change what happened, but it can change the emotional weight it carries.

Does this mean I should just excuse a colleague's difficult behavior? No. Reframing is about managing your own emotional experience, not a substitute for addressing behavior that genuinely needs to change. Some situations still call for a direct conversation or boundary, reframing works alongside that, not instead of it.

Can this actually reduce burnout-related exhaustion? Chronic frustration with colleagues or systems is a real contributor to emotional exhaustion over time. Reframing won't eliminate a genuinely difficult work environment, but it can reduce the day-to-day emotional cost of specific interactions that would otherwise compound.