Therapy for work-related stress & other work concerns

Work-related concerns

Therapy is a place where you can talk about and consider:

• Toxic workplaces: A workplace may become toxic because of poor personal relationships, a dysfunctional structure, managers who don’t manage in a way that’s compatible with your work style, a lack of trust among coworkers, or any other number of factors. When you’re experiencing conflictual relationships with colleagues or supervisors, examining relationship patterns–like how you communicate and what boundaries you set–could lead to improvement.

• Discrimination, harassment, and microaggressions: If you believe you’ve experienced some type of discrimination or harassment, it’s really hard to continue to show up and do your work. You probably think no one is treating you fairly and may worry about taking action for fear of retaliation. Conversely, if you already took action, you might believe everyone wants to cover up what’s happened in your workplace. These are tough issues, and it’s hard to know how best to respond, particularly if you need to keep your job. With microaggressions, you probably feel exhausted from having to explain to your colleagues how they’re stereotyping you, how their implicit biases are impacting their comments, and how they haven’t properly educated themselves: all things that ultimately harm you. This shouldn’t be your job–and yet no one else seems to step in on your behalf. 

• Changing careers: Whether it’s because your job is a natural extension of the college major you picked when you were 18 or whether you thought your job would be fulfilling and add purpose to your life (one of those things many of us millennials were led to believe about a job), you may be thinking about changing careers but uncertain where to start. In therapy, you can consider what you want from a job and in a job, consider the job you have, and outline potential options (including benefits and costs) if you were to change careers.

• Work-life balance: For some of us, it’s hard to know where to draw the line between work and the rest of life. (The phrase “work-life balance” strikes me as somewhat odd because work is a part of life.) It might be difficult to know what’s appropriate or what boundary to draw because many of us strive to make a good impression on others. Some of us want to be conscientious employees; some of us are people pleasers (whether or not we’re willing to admit it to ourselves); some of us want promotions or more pay; some of us are invested in our work allowing it to provide a greater sense of self-worth than may be healthy or desirable. Therapy may help you understand the role work plays in your life and help you establish ways to have time outside work hours to yourself.

• Morale issues: Low morale in your workplace may be linked to many of these other work issues, such as a toxic workplace, the absence of a healthy balance between personal and career boundaries, burnout, or otherwise. Often low morale is the product of feeling undervalued, specifically not being paid well. Therapy can help identify potential solutions both in- and outside the workplace to overcoming this problem.

• Imposter syndrome: Many of us don’t feel particularly ready or well-equipped to perform work responsibilities that we intellectually know we’re able to do based on our education and experience. Feeling like a fraud or like you may be found out could be due to how you’ve been socialized or perceived in our culture, raised in your family, and/or your concept of self-esteem. Talking about the roles success, perfectionism, and accomplishments have played in your life may help you understand this feeling, its origins, and how to overcome it.

• Burnout: This is one of my other specialities! Burnout isn’t isolated to the workplace, and it’s often the stress at work that burns one out in all areas of their life. You may have lost any sense of purpose or passion in your work; you might feel really cynical about what you’re doing.