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You are listening to Making Sense of Work with Jean Balfour. Hi and welcome to Making Sense of Work. Life is difficult. Those are the opening words of the Road Less Travelled by M Scott Peck. It was first published in 1978 and I read those words in 1984 and I devoured that book. It was the first self-help book I ever read. It was one that changed my life and I can still remember where I was sitting when I was reading it.

Speaker 1: 0:41

When I read those words, I was in the middle of what I see now as a period of depression. I was 21 and a new teacher. I was too young to be solely in charge of 37-year-olds and I was struggling and slowly going downhill, both mentally and emotionally downhill both mentally and emotionally. Looking back, I think the stress of that my first ever job broke me open and it exposed me to my psychological and my emotional vulnerabilities, many of which I'm still working through today.

Speaker 1: 1:21

I'm releasing this podcast on October, the 10th 2024, world Mental Health Day, and I'm taking this opportunity to share with you my own struggles with mental and emotional wellbeing, hoping that in sharing my story, others who are struggling at times will feel seen and know that they, that you, are not alone, feel seen and know that they, that you, are not alone. I've never been diagnosed with a mental health condition. However, I have struggled with my mental and emotional well-being all my life and I've had to work very hard to stay well well enough to live a fulfilling life, which I believe I do. I've had a therapist for much of my adult life and I've been so grateful to all the help I've received, and you know I'm well. Mostly it's when I really struggle with myself that life and work becomes hard. I'm imagining that some of you listening who know me will be a bit surprised that I struggle as much as I do, but others know, they know, that this is very true for me.

Speaker 1: 2:33

This podcast is about work. It's about making sense of work, and I want to share the connection between my own story and my working life, because I see that this is true for many of us. I'm really curious about us in our working lives and I see that we essentially bring ourselves to work. I believe strongly in the link between our own emotional intelligence and well-being and our happiness and effectiveness at work and our happiness and effectiveness at work. But let me start with one of the problems for me, and that is that I am deeply ambitious and driven to my core. I'm not ambitious to rule the world, just to do really good work and to be the best coach, leader, teacher I can be. I love work when I'm well and I'm curious about too many things and I'm on a continual learning quest.

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But unfortunately, my emotional resilience hasn't always matched my ambition and, as I've suggested in previous podcasts, I've ended up with bouts of burnout and long periods of battling, feeling very low and emotional. This hasn't stopped me. Instead, in some ways, I think it's been part of my drive. Part of my ambition was to also work on that, to continually and gently build my emotional and mental strength through any means possible and, trust me, I've tried them all in order for me to be the best leader, coach, teacher and guide I can be.

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However, for most of my life I have struggled with being deeply emotional. I have periods of deep sadness and sometimes depression, periods of deep sadness and sometimes depression, and I go from boom to bust with my energy and I cry at the drop of a hat. In fact, some of my dearest friends describe crying as called doing a gene. Gene equals crying. They say it lovingly and it's given them permission to talk about crying in a different way. I've also been described as emotionally demanding at work, which was the worst ever feedback to give somebody who is emotional in a 360 feedback, and you can imagine how much I cried after that. It's also often said that running a small business is one of the greatest personal development challenges, alongside having children, and so a small business has also exposed many of my struggles, and here I want to share a bit more of my story and, of course, what's helped me. After all, as I've said, I'm doing quite well. I have a job I love, and when I'm not burnt out, I really find a lot of joy in that. I work with an amazing team. I have a wonderful partner, family and friends. It's just sometimes I really struggle, so I will also share what we could do to support others at work, many of whom may be struggling and not telling anyone, quietly getting up, showing up to work while their inner world is in turmoil.

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As I said, I knew all was not well in my early 20s. I'd started teaching, and about halfway through the first year I was signed off sick with exhaustion and depression. I took time off then, but I was reasonably quickly bounced back from that. I remember that those early years of teaching were really, really hard, but I guess you know I was 20. So I came back from there and thankfully I had read the Road Less Travelled and began to see that there were ways towards healing. No one comes out of their childhood unscathed and I came out of it with a few more scars than I would have liked. Coupled with this, as I said, I'm such an emotional person and I really had some work to do Over those next few years. I was mostly okay, but with periods where I was overly emotional and as an extrovert this happened loudly. I would cry a lot mostly still do. I moved from New Zealand to London. I taught in some really challenging locations in London and still was mostly doing okay. Of course there were times that were hard, but I was mostly okay.

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And then it came to a head when I was about 27. My roommate got really sick of me being so unhappy and sat me down in the living room with a list of counselors and therapists and suggested I go and talk to someone, and that started my journey of seeking ways to be more well in my mental and emotional life, and I'm very grateful to the person who gave me that list and for the next seven years, I met with my therapist, jill, and for four of those years I saw her twice a week. Nothing about that process was easy. I had to and did face into who I was and how I worked. I saw what had happened when I was growing up and I saw how I was living with this now. I do believe that we aren't responsible for what happens to us in our childhood, but I think we are responsible for how we live and deal with this as adults, and I was prepared to find more ways to be well, to be more adult.

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Sometimes, though, I hated going to therapy. The first few years of that therapy, I didn't have a car, and I had to get a bus or a train from work and then walk up dark, wet London streets and then do the same in reverse to go home. It cost me a lot of money and energy, but I kept going because I could see that I was getting better and, alongside that, I could see my I was getting better and, alongside that, I could see my career was taking off. There was really a direct connection between my emotional well-being and my ability to show up well at work. It was during this time and with that therapist that I finally began to see myself as ambitious, and it really helped me dig into both my drive and my potential. I left teaching and I moved into the public sector, into learning and development roles and eventually into leadership roles in healthcare, and I wouldn't have been able to do that if I hadn't done that work on myself. I remember at the end of those seven years of therapy thinking, great, that's it, I'm well now I won't have to do any more personal work for the rest of my life. Bring it on. I was 35 and clearly a bit naive, because that really wasn't the end of the story. I was okay for a while and then a personal crisis, along with a very intense master's degree, undid me again and there I was back in therapy Different therapist, thankfully on the phone, so no dark travel, but seeking the help of someone to help me to function well in the world. Again, at the end of that time I thought, great, I'm here. But sure enough, a few years later, back I went.

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I've had to work on very low self-esteem and have learned good strategies now to be able to see my worth in the world. I've had to overcome my strong people-pleasing nature which I have and can sometimes mean I don't take care of myself. So that is still a work in progress. I've struggled with shame and self-criticism, particularly around my emotional nature, and wondering why I'm not a person who's stronger than I am. Then I've had to work on that shame and approach myself with compassion. I've learned that I'm someone who needs some form of emotional and psychological support to be well, and I continue now to see my wonderful therapist about once a month and more often when I feel the wheels coming off. She helps me to take a step back, to see who I am and to find my strength again.

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This journey has been one of amazing personal growth. I am changed because of all this work I've done and I continue to do the work and grow, and so many things alongside therapy have helped me in this growth. Mindfulness and meditation have played a big part. Journaling, which I talk about a lot here, is powerful. The love and connection and empathy of friends and colleagues. And I've learned many practical tools which I use daily and I often share with coaching clients, tools that can help us when our human mind is causing us problems or in those times when we're feeling overly emotional. I've come to believe that deepening our self-awareness and understanding our stories about ourselves is key to containing and helping us be strong and grow.

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I love the words of Randas I am loving awareness. I am loving awareness and so I work hard on bringing to the surface, with loving awareness, any fears, self-doubt, worry and hurt as I continue on my healing journey. And I won't stop. I won't stop seeking healing in those hurt places. I won't give up because I believe there's two things I'm doing with it. One is I'm working on being better and well myself, and I'm also working on being able to help others to be well in their work and in their life.

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The work that I do in myself equips me to be able to sit with people who are struggling, to be able to say I see you, I've been there. The more I learn about myself, the better I am to help others to learn about themselves, and I see that because I've had to struggle, I am a better leader, coach, teacher and guide. Part of what makes me a good coach, for example, is that I'm not frightened of other people's pain or hurt or worry or even anxiety or whatever's going on, I've had enough of my own. I've learned to sit with my own pain through it and to find a way to be okay. And because I've learned and applied so many tools and strategies, I have those in my toolkit. I can share them with others on their journey to being whole and well, particularly at work, because that's really where my interest is. So when someone shares a part of themselves they're not happy with, I can sit, too, with loving awareness and compassion, as I've learned to do with myself, and I strongly see this connection between who we are and how we work.

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In my role as a coach, I've seen that most of us, at some stage in our career, will have a period that is emotionally and psychologically challenging. We may have a period of burnout or we're made redundant, which can be really painful, even if we know it's coming and we are choosing it. We experience things in our personal lives which deeply impact our working lives, and we work with people who trigger us and remind us of our parents or bullies who take us back to a childhood bullying experience. I think every promotion, every new bit of pressure that comes to us tests our mental health and requires us to be more aware. When we get a promotion, the additional responsibility and exposure can throw up all sorts of things about ourselves that we hadn't seen until then. And suddenly we are struggling, and maybe this is why everybody, every time you get a promotion or move into a more senior role or take on more responsibility, should build a support network for that transition period or get a coach, find people to help you to be aware of where you might derail and how to take care of yourself. We need others to help us look at all the possible buttons that could be pressed and to manage the transitions well.

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I've seen in the past clients who are holding the tension of a very difficult personal situation in their lives and they're showing up at work and not telling anybody because they feel it's not acceptable. They feel it's not acceptable to be seen to be not resilient, not tough, not to be able to cope. And when this happens to us, we're worried that if we say I'm struggling, we will be judged or will be seen to be not good at our job, and so we hold it in, probably making it harder to cope, pushing down all that is going on, and this is is so hard. Research shows that repressing our emotions is really unhelpful. They really just bottle up. You could argue that the reason I can keep going is because I cry so often. Maybe we should put crying at work on the curriculum. Certainly, finding places to talk to people about the hard times is going to help. And, as M Scott Peck said, life is difficult, and I would add, working life is difficult. At the moment it's especially hard. Workloads are ever increasing, fare is ever present. The global context is generating so much anxiety. Context is generating so much anxiety. Therefore, more than ever before, we have to be able to talk about how we feel about our lives and our work. At work. We should be able to say I'm finding this really hard. I believe we need this now more than ever. So what can we do to help others and ourselves, to create an environment where it's okay for us and for others to say today, I'm not okay.

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My last teaching job in Auckland before I left for London was in a school where the children were in great need. This was hard teaching. Kids were coming to school from homes in extreme poverty and distress and our role was much bigger than teaching. But I was never signed off sick from that school because we talked about it. It was perfectly acceptable within reason to say I'm taking a mental health day tomorrow or next week, I just need one more day to recover. The rest of us would cover for that teacher, knowing that they would do the same for us. We checked in on each other all the time and if we were having a hard day, we would come together, get our guitars out and let the music ease things for all of us, children and teachers. We worked as a team and we took care of each other.

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So how can we do this for others at work? We can start by role modelling feeling brave enough to share when things are not easy. We can normalise talking about emotions and struggles at work. This doesn't mean we have to bear all and all the time, but we can gently say what's going on for us. We can talk about our own self-care practices and encourage others to identify the self-care that works best for them. We can do a team check-in before a meeting, just simply inviting each person to answer how are you today? If we know someone is struggling, we can ask them that question. How are you today? If we know someone is struggling, we can ask them that question how are you today? We all have good days and bad days, and asking the question about just today allows the person to say where they are right now. It doesn't put any pressure on them to be well tomorrow.

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As leaders, there are specific things we can do. We can look at job scope and see what might be causing burnout and mental health problems that are work-related. Simply running well-being programs without resolving the root causes won't help. We need the well-being programs. We also need to work on job scope. We can have regular confidential one-to-ones with our teams, creating this safe environment where people can talk about what's working and what's not working, where their pressures are, but also to share any personal struggles that may be impacting their working life. As individuals, go for coffee with people and check in on each other, ask open questions and be prepared to listen deeply. Most organisations have some form of employee assistance programmes where people can access confidential psychological help. Make that easy to find and make sure people know that it is truly confidential. And you can provide training and coaching skills, because equipping people with the ability to listen deeply and with empathy is a great way of supporting people through mental health struggles.

Speaker 1: 19:44

And what can we do for ourselves? Well, the first thing that we can do is actually find work that is good for us. Do work that feeds us. Even on a really bad day for me, I'm still a good coach. I have the ability to park whatever is happening for me and be fully present with my client, and then I come out of coaching sessions feeling better about the world and I feel fed. I also love creating, designing courses, writing, and if I do some of that it really feeds my soul. I am clearly a big fan of therapy and coaching. Talking to someone makes a huge difference in our ability to be well. You can set up peer listening partnerships or thinking partnerships where you can support each other. Be open to raising your awareness of what's causing your inner struggles. Bringing things to the surface often takes some of their power away, so be prepared to share and say I am struggling.

Speaker 1: 20:46

Today, I read self-help extensively. The book I most often recommend is the Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. It's based on acceptance and commitment therapy. It's underpinned by self-compassion and mindfulness, and it is packed full with practical and immediately helpful ideas. With all self-help, though, I encourage you not to feel you have to do anything. It can feel a bit blamey sometimes, but find something that works for you.

Speaker 1: 21:18

Journaling is an amazing form of self-therapy. A client recently said this to me that actually writing in their journal felt like therapy. You can choose what to write about, just what's going on in your day. One client wrote about everything that was going wrong or that they were struggling with. Another is writing a daily gratitude practice. I just write whatever's coming up for me at the moment and I do try and find some form of gratitude every day, no matter how hard I is at that moment. Of course, we can talk to people in our team. Maybe it's good to find somebody in the team that you trust and know that they are your go-to person if you're having a bad day and you can practice self-compassion. Part of our human condition is experiencing psychological struggles. The more we're open to acknowledging that we're all struggling, it's easier for us to be compassionate towards ourselves, to show loving awareness and compassion towards ourselves, removing any self-blame.

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Before I finish, I want to say just a little bit here about resilience. I once got feedback that I wasn't resilient and I really took it to heart and in many ways it's actually quite true. Sometimes, when things are tough, I keel over emotionally. However, in many ways, I think I've got extraordinary resilience because I do keep going. Actually, I pick myself up and I keep going, even when it's really hard.

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I do the work, I do the inner work, I work out how to be well, and so I wish we could find a different way or a different word for resilience, a different way of describing how we can be whole and be open about the times that we're struggling at work to not make resilience, about being tough and pushing through and trying harder and being strong, but also about being those times where we are experiencing things to be a little bit difficult and where maybe compassion is required and not resilience.

Speaker 1: 23:28

This has been a little sharing of my own story. I really believe that we're all at some level struggling sometimes, and it's in sharing our struggles with each other that we're all at some level struggling sometimes, and it's in sharing our struggles with each other that we can live a working life that is fulfilling and enjoyable, even when things are hard and life is difficult. I hope today you can have one small conversation with a person sharing how you are and inviting them to share, and I wish you well are, and inviting them to share and I wish you well.