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9/4/2024 0 Comments The Cost of ConformityRonald Gittins died in 2019 leaving behind a home filled with his art. Five years on, his flat in Birkenhead, walls covered in his work, rooms crammed with sculptures and murals, has been Grade II listed. He lived there for three decades, left largely alone by landlords and agents, letting in only a handful of visitors. Enough of the right people came through at the right time to see that something extraordinary had been created, and to act so that his work would not be lost. We don’t really know how Gittins lived, how he paid the rent, what his days looked like. What we do know is familiar: people like Ronald often find it hard even to live with themselves. They are compelled to make, driven more by necessity than choice. Very few ever produce work the market wants, but that's rarely their concern. For many, art is not about money at all. He was of a generation that could find some support from the State. From the 1960s to the mid-90s, the benefits system in Britain acted as a basic income for many creative people. Writers, musicians, and artists who had little money but abundant time could develop their skills. Some went on to become successful; others simply kept producing in their own way. Now, no one is permitted that freedom. Families demand respectability, schools shape expectations, cultures ridicule the urge to create unless it is monetised. Banksy was a vandal until his work began selling for millions. The lesson is clear: what you make has no value unless it sells, and if you need to feed your children that message is particularly maddening. The consequences of forcing people into lives that don’t fit them are evident all around us. Some numb themselves, some break down, some end up in contact with the courts or psychiatric services. Many, many more live lives of bitterness and frustration, resenting others, abusing the smallest amounts of power, unable to tolerate those who remind them of what they cannot bear in themselves. Psychotherapy calls this projective identification: the parts of us that are disowned, are perceived and punished in others. None of us are immune. You don’t need to be an artist to feel this. Anyone who senses that their life does not truly belong to them will feel the strain. Sometimes it’s obvious: the genius mathematician having to schmooze investors, the barrister whose real gift lies in care. Sometimes it is harder to recognise, buried under histories where attention was conditional on being constantly brilliant, caring for a parent, being unwell, or causing trouble. People can succeed outwardly and still feel inwardly thwarted, and that dissonance leaves its mark on relationships, including with their children. There are no simple solutions. Ronald Gittins had a convergence of circumstances that allowed him to keep going in his own way. He was prolific in solitude. For most of us, conformity is necessary. We learn our trade, earn a living, secure some stability. If we're fortunate, we can create enough space to pause, to ask why we are doing what we are doing, to wonder which pieces of our lives really belong to us. Psychotherapy offers one of the rare places where that is still possible. A space to look at what compels us, what constrains us, and what might allow a life to feel more like our own.
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5/4/2024 0 Comments What Does 'Processing' Mean?We’re often encouraged to “process” our feelings, and to seek help if we can’t do it alone. But what does processing actually involve? More Than Just Understanding Processing is sometimes thought of as understanding. That makes sense when investigating a policy failure or a broken system: gather the facts, fit them together, draw a conclusion. But emotional experiences don’t work that way. When you’re left feeling confused, unsettled or “not yourself,” logic alone rarely helps. Something more is needed. The Warehouse of Memory Neuroscience suggests that ordinary events become memories we store easily, ready to use when needed. Opening your front door to the smell of good food can remind you that you can relax, while the skill of brushing your teeth doesn't interrupt your ability to drive. But unusual or difficult events don’t slot in so neatly. Imagine a warehouse carousel: Regular boxes → ordinary memories → stack easily and stay stable. Irregular boxes → fragile or unusual experiences → take more effort to store. If too many arrive at once, they bash into each other, spill, or circle endlessly. That's what it feels like when experiences remain unprocessed: intrusive, unstable, overwhelming, difficult to put down. What We’ve Lost Across cultures, rituals once helped to contain life’s irregular boxes. Bereavement, birth, coming of age, accidents . . . each was marked by shared practices that gave shape and meaning to experience. Many of those rituals came with an unspoken cost, and in the (often proper) rejection of those costs we also rejected the purpose of rituals, reducing them to empty financial outlay and performances. Without meaningful symbolic events, we're left unsure how to respond to events, with fewer containers for memory and fewer opportunities to process unusual experiences. What Processing Involves Processing isn’t limited to extreme or traumatic events. Everyday strains, sometimes genuinely pleasant events, can create their own backlog. Processing can look like: Taking time to reflect on events. Talking it through to find language that fits. Becoming curious about how it might connect to other experiences. Expressing it through writing, painting, etc Processing is a way of understanding events so that they can be understood more deeply and carried more lightly. Where Psychotherapy Helps An inquiry gathers evidence but does not attend to its visceral impact. Psychotherapy does both. Psychotherapy offers a space where events can be spoken about and remembered with care, feelings can be expressed and symbolised, and where meaning can begin to form. It is not about “getting over” events or returning to a pristine, untouched version of yourself. That is neither possible nor desirable. Instead, psychotherapy helps you make deeper sense of what has happened. It allows you to create containers that fit more comfortably, so that memories no longer rattle around or circle endlessly. The Work of Growth Processing isn’t a quick fix. It takes time. But when experiences are attended to in psychotherapy - without judgement or blame, with careful attention - they can inform new choices, different boundaries, and sometimes altered opinions. They stop destabilising the whole system and instead become part of who you are, not as burdens to be carried but as sources of perspective. Processing, in this sense, is not simply repair. It is the slow work of growth, the making of wisdom. If This Speaks to You If you recognise something of your own experience in this, psychotherapy can provide a steady place to begin working with it. Together we can begin to make sense of what truly feels unsettled, so that it can be processed, integrated and carried with greater ease. Burnout has become ordinary.
What used to be a pretty niche diagnosis, perhaps exemplified by the cliché of a male executive rearing out of his office chair, punching a wall and having to be led from the office, is now being seen in large numbers of people. It’s worth making a few distinctions. The World Health Organization defines burnout as "a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed." It is “an occupational phenomenon.” “Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.” This is important. Burnout is linked to poor management in the workplace. Not to an individual failing to manage their own stress. Forbes says: We often think of burnout as an individual problem, solvable with simple-fix techniques like “learning to say no”, more yoga, better breathing, practicing resilience. Yet, evidence is mounting that personal, band-aid solutions are not enough to combat an epic and rapidly evolving workplace phenomenon. In fact, they might be harming, not helping the battle. With “burnout” now officially recognized by the World Health Organization, the responsibility for managing it has shifted away from employees and toward employers. The top 5 causes of burnout are
WHO emphasises the need for organisations to address systemic issues related to workplace stress, support employees in managing their workload and maintaining their mental health. By contrast, workplace stress:
There are periods when everyone’s employment becomes or at least feels dull and purposeless and it is absolutely fine to accept that. It might be the impetus to go for promotion, it might be the realisation that things are not as they should be: listen to those feelings, they exist for a reason. Take early responsibility to act on them. If a project is dull or even pretty brutal but you know it’ll end, put things in place that will support you. Tell friends that you love them but won’t have the time to be as social as you’d like to be for a while. Ask them and others who might want to, for help. It’s logical to realise that when a workplace requires a 50+ hour week and so many people are living alone, support is necessary, it’s something we can offer each other and request in return. It’s bizarre that I find myself writing ‘Try to get enough sleep’ but there we are. Balancing sleep, rest, decent food, water, daylight, physical movement, human contact and work (all this before thinking about anyone else in your household) has become difficult for huge numbers of people. Please recognise that this is outlandish and that you’re not alone. If your feelings aren’t attached to a particular project but have become routine, visit your GP, describe how you're feeling and ask about taking routine blood tests of red blood cell count, white blood cell count, thyroid function and blood sugar. When very basic physical things are not as they should be they can manifest as anxiety, depression, tiredness or becoming unproductive, and all the therapy in the world will not change that anywhere near as effectively as addressing them will. Ask for support. Pay careful attention to how you feel when you imagine negotiating a change in workload. And think about what you need to do in order to move on from this situation. I’m biased of course, but I believe that therapy can help in both cases, not least because I meet with people experiencing both. Why we do what we do, why we endure things that others might not, how to rectify things that have gone out of balance, are worthy questions at any time. Management There are multiple, global causes of the increase in workplace stress and burnout. Poor management and poor leadership are two of them. The UK has a reputation for both. No one in their school careers interview says, “When I grow up I’d really like to make people’s lives a misery.” Few 5 year plans include taking no responsibility for maliciously harming people. Yet if you’ve watched even the smallest part of any public inquiry or read any report about any scandal, its clear that this is routine behaviour. Policies and procedures serve to remove accountability out which is why the phrase, “Lessons will be learned” sounds so hollow. There’s no easy answer to this one. The UK simply does not invest in management training, if we remain in a profession long enough we're very likely to end up being a manager whether we want to or not. Meaningful structural, professional, strategic and cultural changes require time, expertise and enthusiasm, but there’s little motivation to invest in any of them. Accepting that, since so many people are poor managers and leaders, there might just be a chance that we too could be mildly suboptimal is a start. Therapy - and I mean more than 6 sessions of goal focused CBT - offers the space and time to build an environment of trust so that you can safely consider what might be going on. Jerks, not all of whom are talented, seldom come to therapy. Take workplace stress seriously, take burnout very seriously. By definition, a lot of it is out of your control, but some of it is in your hands, even - perhaps especially - when it can feel as if it really is not. |
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