The Multicultural Environment

San Diego is becoming a multicultural city more and more. The Asian and Hispanic populations are growing at a faster rate than the white. When I gave the commencement speech at the University of California, San Diego a few years ago, I was impressed with the large percentage of Asian students receiving awards. As the workforce reflects this diversity, it is often difficult for the white, middle-class people—especially those coming here from the Midwest who see themselves as “hot dog, apple pie, and Chevrolet” Americans—to know exactly how to relate to people of very different backgrounds, history, cultures, and norms. It is doubly difficult for managers who need to know and understand what motivates and what rewards the people reporting to them.

Most people have not grown up with very diverse populations, but with people largely like their families and themselves. There is great comfort in being with those who share one’s values, interests, and way of life. Awareness of this is the first and most important step in being able to relate to people very different from oneself. Most of us make sexist and racist remarks, not even aware that they may be offensive. Look at all the ethnic jokes going around. They could be upsetting to that segment of the population that is being denigrated.

This short article cannot give a rundown of the major value systems operating for various groups in work settings. However, I can give a glimpse of the conventional United States cultural value system, which may help in not viewing it as the one and only standard to which all others must adhere. These are the values many of us have grown up with. Objectivity about one’s own value system helps in realizing that alternate systems have validity. Some of these are held as personal values and not official in a workplace setting but permeate it none the less.

Also, it is important to realize that as I write this down, some are in the process of changing.

* We believe in rugged individualism; the individual is the primary unit.
* We believe in the Protestant work ethic: Hard work brings success.
* We are competitive; we strive to be number one. Winning is everything.
* We focus on the future versus the present (becoming versus being). We are supposed to save for a rainy day and value continuous improvement.
* We are action-oriented. We must always “do” something about situations. Our need is to master, control, harness, and exploit both nature and the environment.
* We would rather schedule our lives than be spontaneous.
* We emphasize the scientific method. We want to be objective and rational. We believe in cause and effect.
* We believe in dualism, either/or, the polarities.
* Numbers are meaningful to us; how old we are, how tall, how many children, how much money we earn, how many phones/TVs in our homes.
* We make political decisions by majority rule, but our corporate organizations are based on a hierarchical chain of command.
* We believe in one (Judeo-Christian) God, and that this is superior to other religious systems or even that this is the only valid choice.
* Our goal is to bring other groups up to our “standards.”
* We value direct eye contact.
* We limit physical contact. We shake hands, rather than hug or kiss.
* We control our emotions.
* We each need our own space; we are territorial.
* We adhere to schedules. Time is viewed as a commodity and is considered precious; “time is money.” Hours, minutes, and seconds count.
* We believe in romantic love, marriage, and children. The nuclear family is the primary social unit.
* We assume that the man, most often, is the primary breadwinner, head of the house, and strong. We also assume that the woman has more of the homemaking responsibilities, taking care of the children and elderly parents and nurturing. Our organizations are structured on these sex roles. To wit, no daycare in our places of work, no flexibility for taking care of family matters, because in the workplace, men’s needs and priorities are accommodated, but women’s aren’t. Many men, especially those who are single parents, face the same issues that women traditionally have.
* Women (stereotypically blond and blue-eyed) compete around attractiveness. Men (stereotypically tall, dark, and handsome) compete around athletic prowess, financial success, and leadership.
* Status is achieved by what one owns, money, credentials, titles, positions, roles, and displays of power over others.

Most of these above values are not necessarily shared by other cultures, yet we assume they are and act accordingly.

It is not only the insensitive things we may do, but also the sensitive things we do not do. I wrote the following poem:

Sins of Omission

It is not only what I say
for I am seldom prejudiced
in any obvious way
It is what I don’t say:
the forgetting, the not noticing
the disregarding, the overlooking
it is not only the support not given
it is not knowing when it is needed
I do not sin by commission anymore
I sin by omission

So take a moment and think through what differing value systems may exist that you could examine as possibly also valid.

Grief Akin to Drug Withdrawal

Although I have written about this topic before, I have some further thoughts that I would like to now share.

After my husband died, I had a very hard time adjusting to singlehood. Although living in a retirement community helped me survive those awful first months, I was still lonely and bereft.

The way I helped myself was by trying to understand what is happening to me. So I started talking to recent widows and widowers and found that they very often experienced the same thing. So I asked myself, what does “loneliness” mean? It is the lack of a companion, the lack of a witness to your life—someone who knows what you think, read, eat, and where you go and who cares. My witness was a caring husband. In a good relationship, one gives and receives constant validation. By this I mean, a knowing look across a room, a hand squeeze, a good conversation, a compliment—whatever makes one feel recognized. We need to feel cared for and care in return.

And where does that good feeling come from? The brain secretes chemicals such as dopamine (which helps regulate movement and emotion and is essential to the normal functioning of the central nervous system), oxytocin (the bonding hormone), and endorphins (which reduce the sensation of pain and affect emotions) flooding the body with happy feelings. So being in a relationship where there is mutual support creates pulses of feel-good neurotransmitters and hormones. We get accustomed to these, need them to maintain our brain chemistry, they become a normal part of our being, and we get addicted to them. Yes, we become habituated to feel-good substances. When a loved one is away from us for a short time we use phone calls or e-mails to stay connected, because they give us small doses to keep us going until we can be with the person again.

Now what happens when that loved one dies? Not only do we mourn, we are also deprived of the endorphins, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and other feel-good substances. We are in drug withdrawal!

If this is correct, it could explain the physiological symptoms experienced by a surviving spouse which are akin to drug deprivation: loss of appetite and thus not eating enough—which impacts the release of serotonin, a neurotransmitter—trouble sleeping; memory problems; feeling disoriented, listless, and unable to engage in an activity; short attention span; depression; crying spells; feeling weak; physical pain; and what seem like psychosomatic symptoms but are actually physiological withdrawal symptoms.

Until we are deprived of them, we are seldom aware of how much we interact with our loved ones and how often our brain chemistry is activated to make us feel good. Parents and children give each other this validation, so do siblings, close friends, co-workers, and even pets. People who don’t have animals can’t understand why the death of one can be so terribly upsetting. Every time your dog makes you smile, every time you pet him, you get a small dose of dopamine to which you become accustomed. When the dog dies, you are deprived of that fix and go into withdrawal.

Every time we have a lifestyle change—be it going off to college, moving to a new neighborhood or leaving a job—we lose some of the reliable ways of feeling good, and we can experience that loss as homesickness.

I am a great believer that, by giving a label to our feelings and making the unconscious conscious, we can then exert some control by understanding our feelings and behaviors. Becoming conscious of one’s needs can help to identify what one must do to better meet them. In other words, knowing that you are in need of some dopamine, what can you do to stimulate its production? Is it by calling up a friend, going to a uplifting movie, listening to music, eating an ice-cream cone, joining a grief group which validates your feelings, going to a fun event, getting involved in an interesting project, doing volunteer work, or whatever else activates the reward centers of the brain. For some people, fond memories can trigger feelings strong enough to release the chemicals.

What helped me were long phone conversations with my children. Also I threw myself into volunteer work and found that helping others provided me with dopamine and therefore helped me in the process.

Because what stimulates those reward centers is different for each one of us, the task for individuals is to figure out what particular thoughts or behaviors seem to trigger an emotional high. Some friends of mine have children who call everyday—and sometimes several times a day—this helps. Others have plunged themselves into non-stop activities, which may or may not affect brain chemistry, but do at least decrease cortisol, which is the stress hormone. Time spent with friends seems to be a universally helpful activity.

Isolating oneself seldom works and can lead to depression. In other words, it may be important to push oneself out of the house, to accept invitations, to initiate contact with people, and not to indulge in the at-times-overwhelming desire to give up all interactions and just stay in bed.

So the task at hand is to find the activity that will provide some dopamine and other feel good hormones that may help you to cope better.