HK's story

During the past few years as a Project Manager working on various assignments for large global multinationals has been exciting and exhilarating and full of personal achievements. There have been a few challenging times and situations as one can imagine but there was always one thing that I seemed to have overlooked - my mental well-being in this fast paced and often hectic way of working.

As a consultant one comes across many new people, challenging situations and sometimes across situations which drag you down and seem to demotivate you. One also comes across certain people working with whom can be quite a challenging / daunting task. Particularly situations which require excessive time being spent on projects resulting in little or no time for one’s own well-being or for family / near and loved ones which sometimes results in health issues and in particular it seems that one’s mental health needs attention.

To all my colleagues, friends and family it seems a hard story to tell but ones mental health is very important and being able to cope with the rigours of project management in highly stressed environments one needs to consider therapy to help with managing the stress, pitfalls and anxiety that one faces in this role. Most of the times many a PM shirks away from facing the problems hoping that they will go away, therein lies the problems - because it starts seeping into your personal life and affects your relationships with family, friends and co-workers.

You may ask 'Therapy for me? Nah... not really.... why?' Firstly therapy is not only for the mentally ill (as I see it), it is in my opinion for everyone who wants to maintain a healthy work life balance. Therapy in my experience allows us to focus on key matters, isolate troubling issues and understand them better. Therapy is not a solution to your problems but goes a long way in enabling you to understand yourself better and helping you cope with varying situations be at work or home.

I have tried different types of therapy and found the Psychodynamic / Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy approach the best for my needs and situation. I however, found it quite difficult to engage with initially but now that I am seeing some benefits after about 12 months of therapy I am keen to take this all the way.