Live to work / work to live
Like it or not, we spend more of our waking hours working. Ultimately we need money to stay alive, and we have to work for it.
What we do, where we work, and what we come away with every month can have a big impact on our mental health.
Some people throw everything they have into a job and the role is how they see themselves and how they present themselves to the world, and other people focus more on their loved ones and their own life.
The classic sit-com Red Dwarf is a great example of the two extremes; the career obsessed Arnold Rimmer and the more laid back Dave Lister both doing essentially the same low level job (and driving each other up the wall).
Where are you on the scale? Do you have a healthy relationship with work?
If we’re more focused on our workplace, are we doing it for the right reasons? Are we making compromises that favours our workplace’s needs over what’s best for us?
If we’re more career driven, it can hit hard if the organisation’s goals suddenly don’t align with our plans. Redundancy or redeployment are stressful enough to navigate, but if we’ve thrown everything into a role to suddenly find that we are expendable, it can feel like a betrayal. It can have us questioning who we are, the decisions we’ve made, and even our own self-worth.
If we’ve not been investing in life outside of the workplace, we can lack vital support that can help us weather career challenges.
This sort of situation comes up quite regularly in counselling and not just when there are redundancies or there’s restructuring in an organisation.
As employees, we are the resources in Human Resources, and that doesn’t always mean that our employers will do what’s right for us. Extra work and responsibilities don’t always lead to the development and promotion we were promised. Our managers aren’t always going to be nice people, never mind our friends. Doing more with less and less isn’t going away, causing more stress and challenges in workplaces everywhere. Do the organisations values match our own (What do they stand for? How do they treat their employees?)
Ultimately our relationship with the world of work is compromise. Is the level of compromise something we’re happy with or are we losing important parts of ourselves? Is there still enough of us left for the weekend?
If you’d like to work with a BACP accredited counsellor on your mental health, you can get in touch with me via the website or directly at mckellar.scott@gmail.com
