Many of the feelings and emotions that people often want to avoid or ignore, are healthy reactions to an uncompromising dysfunctional world.
By learning to tune into our body's wisdom, we can reconnect to our nature and our own needs, and become higher functioning empowered people.
Many of the clients that I work with are professionals who have experienced anxiety and depression in their place of work as well as in their personal lives.
Though this can be distressing at first, the good news is that many of those who come to my practice for counselling and coaching around mental health, often have symptoms similar to those associated with work/life imbalance, including symptoms like anxiety and depression. This is often misunderstood and addressed incorrectly by employers.
This can be a combination of a lack of self-care in our personal lives mixed with a lack of boundaries around our professional challenges and colleagues.
Research shows that 300,000 people lose their jobs every year because of long-term mental health problems, including experiencing unpleasant symptoms including anxiety and depression. Four out of ten (39%) employees say work has contributed to their mental health problems over the last 12 months.
https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/a-z-topics/work-life-balance
https://uk.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/work-life-imbalance
I believe that many of these unfortunate outcomes can be avoided.
Here are a few of the most common issues I have come across linked to work life imbalance, and depression and anxiety more specifically.
What leads to poor mental health at work?
Counselling and coaching clients I have treated have often told me about some of the ways that anxiety and depression show up in their lives, they can show up when our work life is imbalanced, which can lead to feeling unable to cope and manage anxiety and depression.
Repressing our feelings and needs
The Covid lockdowns didn't help with this tendency, which is arguably synonymous with British culture.
This is sometimes seen as 'being strong' but is often really 'people pleasing' in disguise
This behaviour is often linked to workplace stress which can lead to depression and anxiety. This is because as we accommodate more of what others want from us, we have less and less sense of our own unique values and needs. This will often lead to a less authentic self 'faking it'.
Carl Jung coined the phrase; the 'Shadow self'
I've written more about this in my free pdf course content.
We all feel we need to put on a smile at times, but being agreeable to please others and constantly feeling like we have to suppress our own needs and desires isn't healthy. And it often leads to work-life imbalance, anxiety, depression and burnout.
Feeding a need to be liked or popular can be a learned behaviour from childhood which can contribute to work life imbalance, exhaustion and burnout.
As we lose our sense of our own needs we become dependent on external gratification. Often we won't realise what our own needs are until we choose to take the time to tune in and pay closer attention, which is one of the areas we will work on.
Through counselling and coaching, we can improve our self-awareness in this area and make positive changes.
Many people working in the rat race have spoken to me about their symptoms surrounding workplace stress, anxiety and depression. They often also struggle with the challenge of getting their needs met over people-pleasing.
Lacking boundaries between work and personal life
A common example that contributes to workplace stress is checking work email or answering work calls outside of work hours.
Why is this?
Because it stops us from fully relaxing and letting go of the day.
At times we can be so used to living this way, that we can become desensitised to its effects. So much so that we are not even aware of the effect it has on our mental health or how it contributes to workplace stress as well as anxiety and depression in our personal lives.
If you'd like to know more about how to cultivate better boundaries and balance between your work and personal life, please read on.
Getting to know our less familiar side, the parts of us that appear out of our control. Sometimes this is known as the shadow side, and this can be a useful process through counselling and coaching work. It can help to build higher self-esteem so we have the opportunity to make better choices for ourselves in future, as well as giving us a better understanding of how to manage our anxiety and depression and improve our mental health.
I can help you to develop and learn to integrate new and more useful self-awareness, practice new communication skills and set healthy boundaries that recognise your own needs .
In addition, enjoying working more productively and efficiently, bringing meaning and purpose into your professional and personal life, and reduce symptoms of workplace stress, as well as anxiety and depression. Leading to improved mental health.
