June 6, 2001	Volume 1, Issue 23
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You Remind Me of Helen Hunt

by Rick Brenner

At a dinner party I attended recently, Kris said to Suzanne, "You remind me of Helen Hunt." I looked at Suzanne, and sure enough, she did look like Helen Hunt. Later, I noticed that I was seeing Suzanne a little differently. These are the effects of hat hanging. At work, it can damage careers and even businesses.

t a dinner party I attended recently, Kris said to Suzanne, "You remind me of Helen Hunt." I looked at Suzanne, and sure enough, she did look like Helen Hunt. Later, I noticed that I was seeing Suzanne a little differently. These are the effects of hat hanging. At work, it can damage careers and even businesses.

Hat hanging is a phenomenon identified by Virginia Satir, a pioneer of family therapy. The name comes from the idea that we hang the hat of someone from our past on someone in our present. Back at the dinner party, I was probably seeing Suzanne through the characters I've seen Helen Hunt play — perhaps the "you" Paul Reiser's character was so mad about. That evening ended harmlessly, but in important relationships, hat hanging can lead to serious trouble, especially when we're unaware of it, because it distorts our perceptions.

At work, we tend to hang the parental hat on the supervisor. Supervisors are usually older, and they have the power to give us the toys we want, or to take them away. With our perceptions so distorted, we have difficulty seeing our supervisors as colleagues, working with them as colleagues, or understanding them as colleagues. Since they are colleagues, trouble is inevitable when we see them as parents.

How can we detect hat hanging? And what can we do about it?

Sometimes it's obvious

When someone closely resembles someone else you knew well — especially someone who was important in your life — be alert to hat hanging. The resemblance needn't be physical. It can be in age, size, profession...almost anything.

Tune in to strong feelings With our perceptions distorted
by mistaken identification,
we have difficulty seeing
things as they are

When you're angry or when you have strong feelings about some issue at work, ask yourself: "If this were someone else's story, would I be so upset?" If not, your feelings might be connected to the there-and-then, rather than the here-and-now, and you might be hanging a hat.

Focus on differences

If you think you might have hung a hat on someone, notice the differences between that person and the hat's owner. If you've hung a hat, shifting your focus is often enough to bring you back to the here and now.

Keep a Hat Journal

When you notice yourself hanging a hat, enter the incident in one of those pocket notebooks — your Hat Journal. After a few months, scan the journal for patterns. Knowing your own patterns can help you find pathways around them.

You probably can't see others hanging hats

Others might hang hats, but you don't know enough about their inner processes to decide. Suggesting that someone else might be hat hanging is therefore risky. It can seem blaming or defensive, especially when you haven't been asked for your insight.

Take care, though. Saying to your boss, "You remind me of Helen Hunt" isn't hat hanging if your boss really is Helen Hunt.  Top    Next Issue

For more on the relationship between hat hanging and how we make meaning out of our observations, see "Making Meaning," Point Lookout for January 16, 2008.

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More articles on Emotions at Work:

The Tweaking CC

When did you last receive an email message with a "tweaking CC"? Probably yesterday. A tweaking CC is usually a CC to your boss or possibly the entire known universe, designed to create pressure by exposing embarrassing information.

Think in Living Color

Feeling trapped, with no clear way out, often leads to anger. One way to defuse your anger is to notice false traps, particularly the false dichotomy. When you notice that you're the target of a false dichotomy, you can control your anger more easily — and then the trap often disappears.

Demanding Forgiveness

Working together under stress, we do sometimes hurt each other. Delivering apologies is a skill critical to repairing those hurts and maintaining our relationships.

When You Need a Lift

When we depend on praise, positive support or consumption to feel good, we're giving other people or things power over us. Finding within ourselves whatever we need to feel good about ourselves is one path to autonomy and freedom.

The Fundamental Attribution Error

When we try to understand the behavior of others, we often make a particularly human mistake. We tend to attribute too much to character and disposition and too little to situation and context. When we seek a better balance, we can adopt a more accepting view of events around us.

See also Emotions at Work and Critical Thinking for more related articles.

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