Tag: psychology

  • Work-Life Balance – Why it’s so Important and How to Achieve it

    All work and no play can lead to burn out and serious health problems.

    Working too much can cause you to feel irritable and impact your mental, emotional and physical well being to say the least. Ever heard of under-promising and over-delivering? I bet a lot of people reading this do the exact opposite of this. Over-committing is one of the leading causes of stress and burn out in the workplace. This is why finding the perfect work-life balance is so important.

    When demands and expectations are too much for you – speak up. It’s hard to say no to your boss when she/he is asking for something to be done yesterday. Especially when there are 60 other people who would love to have your job. Competition might be fierce, and you might really want a raise or a promotion. The good news is:

    It is more than possible to find a work-life balance that allows you to set boundaries in the workplace while still advancing your career.

    Assertively Say No and Set Boundaries

    So how can you improve this skill? Find assertive ways to communicate your needs and set boundaries. Here are a few examples: If someone asks you at the end of the day to do something for them right away tell them you will work on it tomorrow during business hours. If your boss is piling on work and deadlines, ask them: “would you rather I complete project A or project B because it isn’t possible to do both in the given timeline”.

    If your peer asks you to take on an assignment as a favor for them but you can’t handle the additional workload: “I’d love to help you out but I’m swamped with task A, task B and task C and two of them are due tomorrow so I wouldn’t have time to work on that for you”. Or maybe you have a team assignment with members not pulling their weight: “Lets divide and conquer this project. Would you like to do task A or task B?”.

    There are a lot of great ways to kindly say no and set boundaries that help you achieve and maintain balance without jeopardizing your career or relationships with others. Learning assertiveness skills is key to work-life balance. A therapist or career coach can help you learn this essential skill.

    Unplug

    An easy way to help you find work-life balance is to just simply unplug. Checking emails or even thinking about checking them is a constant trigger for stress as it alerts us to any number of things that could have gone sideways and require our immediate attention. Always being connected to work increases our chances of worrying all night and weekend long.  Set specific times for when you will not work or engage in any other work-related activities. For example, after 6pm and on the weekends I will not check emails.

    You can also unplug mentally by not thinking about work. Distract yourself every time you start ruminating about work. Quiet and solitude allow us to be fully present and connected to ourselves and others. It allows our brain and bodies time to recuperate for the next day. It provides a time when our bodies can be free from cortisol and adrenaline that can be at high levels when we ruminate on workplace issues. Unplugging provides a break from rumination and will help you come back to work relaxed and recharged!

    Stay Organized

    Having a schedule, and/or a to-do list is a great way to stay organized and will reduce the amount of time you spend planning each day. Make sure you have an accessible overview of any due dates, meetings, or other events you may need to prepare for and set aside specific time to prepare. A very common mistake is overestimating how much can be done in one day.  It’s easy to lose motivation to continue your routine of scheduling and writing to do lists once you realize you can’t complete your to-do list. It’s much easier to create a smaller to-do this, and once you finish all the tasks, you can keep going and do more. This way, you feel like you’re overachieving, rather than underachieving.

    Make sure to schedule personal time as well and don’t let anything get in the way of it. Make “me time” your number one priority. Write set times to cook, shop, exercise, schedule, strategize, be creative, be social, read, be alone, plan what you will cook and shop for, time with friends, time for doing nothing. Try to take care of your mental health during your personal time.

    Prioritize

    So you’ve set up your calendar, made some to-do lists, and now you’re staring at this endless list of tasks that may feel impossible to complete. Take some time to decide what tasks need to be completed first, such as whatever presentation, meeting, or project that appears first in your calendar. A lot of highly productive people feel the need to do just about everything at once, but you need to set limits for yourself as well to avoid a burnout.

    Limit Your Distractions

    When you start a task, do you constantly check your phone, emails, or other unrelated content? These types of distractions will double the amount of time it takes you to complete your tasks. You’ve probably heard of study smarter not harder, try to work smarter not harder.

    If you can improve your efficiency at work by assertively saying no and setting boundaries, staying organized, prioritizing, and giving yourself time to unplug and unwind, you’ll have much more time for a personal life! Achieving this level of work-life balance will not only have an amazing positive impact on your mental and emotional well being, but will actually make you more productive and effective in both professional and personal pursuits.

    Original Content Created By Psych Company Team

  • Why are “they” acting this way? Psychological Tips in the “New Normal”

    The future isn’t predictable right now. We are living in a time of transition and many of us are reeling from the rapid changes occurring. In the roundtable forums I facilitate for business owners and executives, the participants talk about the various responses they observe from employees – some are in denial, others angry, still others depressed and some happy to be working virtually. 

    One CEO of a manufacturing operation expressed concern last week in our meeting because his once engaged workforce seems to be going through the motions and making “mindless” mistakes along the way. “They don’t want to be accountable,” he added. His view is that employees should feel fortunate they have a job when so many people don’t. When he asks some of his key managers what the pulse of the organization is, they report that some of the employees think he’s fortunate because they are showing up.

    Some things aren’t predictable. Human behavior often is. What is the psychology of people’s responses to the pandemic and its effects? How can understanding it help you be a better leader? Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ Stages of Grief offers us a good model to help better understand some of the internal changes that we and others may be experiencing. 

    Kubler-Ross was a Swiss psychiatrist that worked with many dying patients. She based her model on her observations of how the patients and their families responded to grief; she outlines five stages in her now classic book, On Death and Dying. These are:

    Stage 1: Denial of the situation – can involve avoidance, confusion, shock or fear

    Stage 2: Anger with what’s happening or those seen as responsible – can involve frustration, irritation, anxiety or insubordination

    Stage 3: Bargaining or struggling to find the meaning of what is occurring – can involve an urgency to make a deal to resolve things, regret, or guilt

    Stage 4: Depression – can involve feeling overwhelmed, helpless, hostility or isolated

    Stage 5: Acceptance – can involve calmness or feeling at peace, exploring options, curiosity about what might come next or increased comfort with the unknown.

    Although the stages appear linear, people don’t necessarily go through all of them or in the same order. Productivity tends to remain high when a person is in denial and begins to dip if anger sets in. In the bargaining stage, productivity goes down as the person attempts to make deals or exchanges to resolve things and get back to normal. Many organizations furloughing employees may witness the bargaining stage as employees plead to do x, y, and z in order to keep working. Depression is tough to address as it can range from mild and situational to severe and long-term. Depressed people aren’t productive and have a hard time concentrating. At the acceptance stage, people are more willing to accept the “new normal” and even participate in visioning the future.

    Take some time to be aware of your own internal response to the crisis. Is it clouding how you communicate and engage with others? If you identified the stage you are in and you are working with someone in a different one, how will you communicate differently? In my next blog, I will discuss some communication strategies to help you enhance your communication during this potentially stressful time.

    Written by Mary Key, Ph.D.

  • How Being Bullied Affects Your Adulthood

    One researcher who has interviewed hundreds of adults who were bullied as teens posits an interesting theory.

    In American schools, bullying is like the dark cousin to prom, student elections, or football practice: Maybe you weren’t involved, but you knew that someone, somewhere was. Five years ago, President Obama spoke against this inevitability at the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention. “With big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune. I didn’t emerge unscathed,” he said. “But because it’s something that happens a lot, and it’s something that’s always been around, sometimes we’ve turned a blind eye to the problem.”

    We know that we shouldn’t turn a blind eye: Research shows that bullying is corrosive to children’s mental health and well-being, with consequences ranging from trouble sleeping and skipping school to psychiatric problems, such as depression or psychosis, self-harm, and suicide.

    But the damage doesn’t stop there. You can’t just close the door on these experiences, says Ellen Walser deLara, a family therapist and professor of social work at Syracuse University, who has interviewed more than 800 people age 18 to 65 about the lasting effects of bullying. Over the years, deLara has seen a distinctive pattern emerge in adults who were intensely bullied. In her new book, Bullying Scars, she introduces a name for the set of symptoms she often encounters: adult post-bullying syndrome, or APBS.

    DeLara estimates that more than a third of the adults she’s spoken to who were bullied have this syndrome. She stresses that APBS is a description, not a diagnosis—she isn’t seeking to have APBS classified as a psychiatric disorder. “It needs considerably more research and other researchers to look at it to make sure that this is what we’re seeing,” deLara says.

    Roughly 1 in 3 students in the United States are bullied at school (figures on cyberbullying are less certain, because it is newer than other forms of bullying and the technology kids use to carry it out is constantly in flux). This abuse can span exclusion, rumors, name-calling, or physical harm. Some victims are isolated loners while others are bedeviled by their own friends or social rivals.

    Years after being mistreated, people with adult post-bullying syndrome commonly struggle with trust and self-esteem, and develop psychiatric problems, deLara’s research found. Some become people-pleasers, or rely on food, alcohol, or drugs to cope.

    In some respects, APBS is similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, in which people who have had terrifying experiences develop an impaired fight-or-flight response. Both APBS and PTSD can lead to lasting anger or anxiety, substance abuse, battered self-esteem, and relationship problems. One difference, though, is that people with APBS seem less prone to sudden flares of rage.

    “Those with PTSD have internalized their trauma such that it has affected their nervous system,” deLara says. “People with PTSD react immediately because their triggers are basically telling them they need to protect themselves against harm.” Those with APBS seem to have a longer fuse; the damage comes not in an outsized reaction but instead because they ruminate on what happened.

    DeLara observed another distinction between sufferers of PTSD and those with APBS: Sometimes, having been bullied seems to have positive outcomes.

    About 47 percent of deLara’s interviewees said they had mined something beneficial, like a sense of inner strength or self-reliance, from the experience. Others cultivated empathy or consciously decided to treat others well or make something of their lives. Everyone with APBS had at least one or more of these boons, deLara says.

    It’s unclear how much of this silver lining can be traced to genetics, and how much to a supportive family or community. “We don’t know the answer as to why some people who are bullied as children have what they consider to be a beneficial outcome as adults,” deLara says.

    She is planning to compare the recovery rates for people with PTSD and with APBS. One difference she saw in people with APBS is that they don’t see the world as a menacing place, as people with PTSD often do.

    Some people have an inborn sense of optimism, or ability to focus on how lucky they are to have left bullying behind them. These people might have a head start in bouncing back, but resilience can also be learned. For people with APBS, deLara recommends family and cognitive behavioral therapies, particularly those focused on trauma.

    Of course, the damage wrought by bullying handily outweighs any benefits. “Because people can make lemonade out of lemons, it doesn’t mean that bullying is a good thing,” deLara says. Even those who are able to see the positive side of having been bullied often had other negative ramifications.

    DeLara hopes that giving a name to these experiences will make it easier for people to find effective treatment. “In order to help someone you have to be able to clearly name what’s going on,” she says. Moreover, people who live with the symptoms of adult post-bullying syndrome don’t realize that they’re not the only ones to respond this way. One man told deLara that the idea of APBS helped him realize his reaction was normal and not another personality flaw.

    DeLara plans to continue studying the long-term consequences of bullying and which therapies can help people overcome them.

    Dieter Wolke, who has studied the psychiatric impacts of bullying in adults at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, agrees that bullying can leave devastating, long-lasting psychological damage. He’s hesitant, however, about using a new term for these symptoms based on their cause. “I see not much value in inventing a new name,” he says. It’s more important, he says, for doctors to be trained to broach the subject of bullying with their patients.

    What is clear is that while some adults have overcome the bullying they endured as kids, others continue to suffer. The research on what forms this suffering takes is still preliminary. Whether or not the label of APBS sticks around, people who live with its symptoms will benefit from any research into how to resolve them.

    Author: Kate Baggaley