Work/Life Balance and Stress Management
“People in New York love to tell you how exhausted they are. Then they fall apart when someone says, “Yeah, you look pretty tired.”
– David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day
Are you missing something – like a personal life?
Think of someone you know who is not tired, stressed, or struggling with work/life balance. Go ahead; we’ll wait. If you come up with a single name, congratulations, you know the one person out of the 10 million who live in New York who fits this description.
There’s no shame in admitting that balancing your work and personal lives is a struggle. It’s a struggle you share with millions of others. We have become masters at organizing, prioritizing, and rearranging until not every second of our day is unaccounted for. Even then, we’re still fighting an uphill battle. The new job, business, yoga class, and hundreds of changes we’ve tried to get relief from overwhelming stress have not given us the long-term relief we were looking for.
We reach a breaking point where something needs to change. Ariana Huffington wrote about how her breaking point came when she got a concussion from passing out after a particularly long day and fell and hit her head. Hopefully, we can step in before you have a similar experience.
Maybe it’s different for you. Perhaps you have been “on” for so long, relentlessly tackling every project and errand that comes your way, attending every birthday party or baby shower, that when the opportunity comes to self-regulate or even take a break, you don’t know how.
Enough of the fortune cookie wisdom.
“Just slow down.” “Stop and smell the roses.” “Carve out time for yourself.” You have heard so many cliché platitudes that you’re ready to tell the next person who advises you to “be mindful” to shove it.
If fortune cookie wisdom could fix your problem, you wouldn’t be reading this in the first place. Therapy done right means that it is tailored specifically for you – addressing your concerns and your needs using strategies that work for you and leveraging resources that you already possess. We won’t be climbing a mountain or watching a sunrise holding hands. We will get down to work and find an approach that fits you.
First and foremost, this means we will not insult you by telling you to “slow down” or “work less.” We know that these are not realistic options for you. If they were, you probably would have already tried them.
Our careers are not just occupations. They are often integral parts of our identities. And as stretched as we know you are, we will ask you to start therapy by doing one more thing – teach us about you. Let us know who you are. Tell us your story. Tell us how you got to where you are, what aspects of your life are unsatisfying, and where you would like to be. We will work with you to set goals based on what you want and chart a path to reach those goals that reflect the reality of your life.
Therapy is often portrayed in the media as someone lying on a couch talking about their childhood. We have a lovely couch, and you’re free to talk about your childhood as much as you want. But is that what you want? Is that what you need? Our sessions will be about cutting to the chase – what you need and want and how to get those things.
Stop mourning your childhood goldfish.
To learn who you are, we may ask about your childhood, family, upbringing, and goldfish who died when you were eight. But we won’t stay there.
The purpose of therapy is not to remain in the past but rather to find ways to improve the present. Your past shaped you, and we must understand how you got to where you are, but only so we can identify how to help you get to where you want to go.
Let’s try a little exercise right now. Think of something you’re struggling with right now. Imagine you wake up tomorrow morning, and the struggle is gone. Your problem has been solved. How would you know? In what ways would your life be better for it?
Get going – now, not later.
Let’s sit down and discuss what you came up with, get to know each other, and talk about it.
Call today to set up your first session. We can’t wait to get started!