For the past two weeks I have had a rising sense of dread. Last night it spilled over. Listening to the government announcements of ‘support’ for self-employed people I started crying and couldn’t stop. Their measures have meant next to nothing for me and my work so far, meanwhile everyone has been so scared and so fearful that spending on all but essentials has stopped.
I realised this morning why that has me so fearful.
Because so many people think mental health, stress, resilience, is a nice to have, rather than realising how vital it is.
I’ve known this for a long time. When I started offering corporate training work back in October, a number of friends turned to me and asked ‘are you concerned that the companies that are booking you are doing so to tick a box?’
My answer was simple: I don’t care.
I don’t care why they have booked me or whether they are ticking a box or genuinely engaged with mental health; what matters is being able to do the work with the people who need it most. As it turned out, I have been lucky enough to work with so many companies that really have meant it. They have wanted their staff to thrive. Even that language is wrong though.
Instinctively I have known all along that there is a division in the way that individuals see mental health from companies.
For individuals, we know that it is vital. After all, we are the ones living inside of it. We are the ones exhausted by fear, overwhelmed by uncertainty and doubt. My clients are the ones who bargain and barter with themselves, putting off their struggles for another day until eventually they fold and ask for help.
For companies though? Well it’s all a bit more objective, isn’t it? There are plenty of managers who still believe that mental health issues, stress, overwhelm, that they are weakness. That you’ve just got to pull your socks up and get on with it. Mental health and social support are the first budgets to get slashed when the chips are down, and often long before the Friday afternoon beers or the Christmas party budget goes (I’m not saying that lawyers prefer booze to mental health am I…? Probably.).
More workers than ever before are working with unprecedented vulnerabilities; from the private client lawyers who are risking their health and/or their professional indemnity insurance by trying to figure out how to get wills witnessed without exposing themselves or their clients to a potentially deadly virus, to the people working at home trying to run litigation whilst their kids are off from school, trying to spin more plates at once than ever before.
Typically my corporate clients come to me because they have noticed a change in morale or behaviour at work… how are you going to do that now, when everyone is dialling in on a Zoom call and switching their microphone and camera off briefly to wipe their tears and blow their nose? Will you even have the bandwidth to notice, so busy trying to keep your own plates spinning and trying to make sure your companies floats amount the economic downturn?
Of course I’m terrified for myself; I’m acutely aware of the financial implications of being a self-employed person right now (and no, deferring my tax payment to January didn’t help me sleep better last night, much as I appreciate the gesture). I’m also rediarising events left right and centre, seeing phone calls no longer get returned because everyone is down to level 1 of that hierarchy of needs model. Everyone is currently consumed with safety, security, keeping a roof over their heads, bread in the kitchen and toilet paper fucking everywhere.
(In case you haven’t seen it before, I’ve added an image I’ve borrowed from simplypsychology.org We work our way up the pyramid towards self-actualisation).
But I’m not just scared for my own safety and well-being. I know that I’ll be ok because I’m resourceful and I’ve been through worse. When the bars re-open, buy me a drink and I’ll tell you about it sometime.
I’m crushed because we had just started turning the corner on mental health.
It was becoming understood.
Even the people who could never understand why other people struggled had begun to understand that they did and that it wasn’t just the individual’s responsibility to sort it out.
Individuals and businesses were beginning to realise that stress, resilience, tenacity, burnout, exhaustion weren’t self-actualisation needs to be attended to when everyone else was ok. They were beginning to realise that they were absolutely basic physiological needs.
Want to tell me that stress and resilience is purely psychological?
Ok, you ever had a panic attack? Ever been on the floor unable to breathe whilst your body screamed that you were dying? Ever been rushed to the hospital with a suspected heart attack to discover that the chest pains were caused by chronic, unremitting stress?
Tell me again that it’s purely psychological.
I could dive into all the facts and figures, about the impact stress has on our immune systems, on our physical health, on how long we hold on to this pain and fear and it fucks up our choices, but that’s a blog for another day.
I’m heartbroken because we are now in a situation where no-one cares about stress, whilst stressed out of their goddamn minds, making irrational choices and behaving like absolute idiots because they don’t understand why they are doing what they are doing.
And because there are more companies than ever that will focus purely on the bottom line, on keeping going, no matter what the cost. There are more individuals than ever who are terrified to spend money on what they perceive to be a luxury; their mental health.
Toilet paper, pasta or mental health.
Is that the choice we have now?
PS On Monday evening I am leading a workshop that was designed precisely for my clients who struggle with giving too much of themselves at their own expense. It’s called Stress Management for People Pleasers and damn if it isn’t something I’m hearing that my clients need right now.
Problem fixers are people pleasers because we are required to look into other people, to understand their beliefs and motivations and often, we lose ourselves somewhere in the middle. Their motivations become our motivations, their beliefs our beliefs. And then we compromise ourselves in order to achieve outcomes for others.
Like my clients right now who are being asked to work longer and longer hours to keep up with client demand, and are sometimes struggling to say no.
It’s so important that we make sure that we are strong, healthy, safe, in order to help others. But people pleasers and problem fixers will go above and beyond again and again for others, compromising their health, happiness and sanity in order to achieve someone else’s objective. Classic stress management then doesn’t work because they’ve forgotten self-preservation almost entirely.
If this sounds like you, then I would love to have you join me on Monday night. You’ll join me for the live workshop and receive a copy of the recording for life. It’s just £25 but you can even split the cost over 2 months if that’s where you are right now.