Why it can pay to bring work to therapy

How many hours have you spent working this week? How much additional time have you spent thinking – perhaps worrying – about work outside of your usual working hours? Perhaps the division between work life and personal life has blurred to such a degree that it’s difficult to answer these questions. Or perhaps it’s an absence of work that is concerning you.

Whether you feel you work too much, the right amount or not enough, many of us spend an awful lot of our weeks, months and years occupied with it. It’s natural, therefore, that we would bring our work-related challenges, issues and successes to therapy. 

This article looks at the sorts of work-related matters therapy can support, and how taking work to therapy can pay off. 

What work-related matters can therapy support?

There are specific issues arising from work, or the absence of work, which therapy may be able to support you with, including:

• Identifying and obtaining the right work-life balance for you, in your particular circumstances.
• Becoming aware of your own personal “tells” that you are struggling with stress, or that you’re on a path to burnout.
• Exploring changes in career paths, including what is driving the desire for change, what might be holding you back and the options open to you.
• The experiences of bullying, harassment and unequal treatment, including challenges around reporting this behaviour.
• Other interpersonal interactions at work, with colleagues, managers, direct reports, clients, buyers, sellers, even committees and professional bodies.
• Understanding impostor syndrome, including what it looks like for you and where it comes from.
• Exploring your relationship with money and/or a status afforded by your work.
• The absence, or threat of absence, of work, including unemployment, retirement, redundancy, dismissal, parental leave or other breaks/unavailability of work.
• Looking at your relationship with the work you do: do you like it? Is it a means to an end so you can enjoy the rest of your life? There aren’t any “right” answers to these questions, only what’s right for you.    

How taking work to therapy can pay

There are a variety of ways in which therapy can support work-related matters, three of which are outlined below:

Space and time for you

Work may be busy, and you might not get a chance to step back and reflect on where you are with it. Or perhaps you do get that opportunity, for example, during an appraisal, but don’t feel you’re able to be entirely honest with your manager about how you actually feel.

No matter the issue, a therapist will listen to you with empathy and without judgment. Unlike a manager, a therapist doesn’t have to balance what’s best for the workplace against what’s best for you: you and what you want for your life are your therapist’s priority.

They will be curious about you: your thoughts, your feelings, how you experience the world and the issue you’re talking about. Through this exploration, you may begin to see issues with fresh eyes. New responses or solutions may present themselves.  

Identify patterns being re-created at work

When we come to work, we may, unconsciously, bring our past experiences with us. If, for example, we felt our parents never properly listened to us, we may feel that our manager is also ignoring us. Or if we resented that our school friend was “the favourite” in childhood, we might similarly begin to resent the successes of the colleague who sits next to us in the office. These are very simple examples, but old dynamics, particularly from our childhoods, often get re-created in new scenarios over and over again, until we identify them.

Perhaps it’s particularly prevalent in the workplace because authority and competition are often built into work dynamics, recalling the authority of parents, teachers and other adults, and competition with siblings and friends. This re-creation of patterns in the workplace might not cause any issues for you at all. If it does, however, therapy can help you become aware that something is being re-created, explore where it came from, and, if it’s right for you, support you in finding a new approach that suits you better.

A testing ground for new approaches

Through working, we often gain new skills, learning and even expertise. But work can also be a place where we can develop personal qualities which we can then use in other areas of our lives. Perhaps you feel able to speak up for yourself at work, but struggle to do so with a friend. Therapy might explore what it is that allows you to use that quality in the workplace, and what gets in the way of your friendship.

Or perhaps you don’t feel able to speak up for yourself in any context. Sometimes the workplace can feel like a “safer” place to test out a new approach than our personal lives. Therapy can support this, exploring any fears or obstacles to trying a new approach and “rehearsing” what it might be like to act upon them. 

What next?

Work to live, or live to work, or something in between? It’s up to you. Ultimately, therapy can help you explore work-related issues, identify how you think and feel about them, and then support you in making informed choices about how you live your working life.