In our culture, building a successful and rewarding career is a big deal.
We face a lot of pressure to make the most of ourselves professionally: to get the big promotion, to make enough money, and to keep up with the proverbial Joneses down the street.
And within ourselves, there are other demands: Studies show that it is very hard to be happy if you hate your job — and that you’ll likely even begin to exhibit physical symptoms related to the stress and misery of the work that you don’t enjoy.
But there are ways to make sense of your career and your mental health — ways to push forward and get the things you want after gaining a better understanding of what, exactly, those things that you want are.
Let’s talk about your career and your mental health.
What to do when you hate your job
If you’re unhappy with your current job, it’s time to consider your options. And it’s also time to consider what the status quo is doing to your mental health.
For starters, find ways to cope with your current job. You can find strategies online and in books, but there’s a better place to look: in a therapist’s office.
A therapist or counsellor can help you tackle your stress and learn how to set boundaries.
And when you’re caring for your mental health, you’ll be addressing other variables that could be raising your stress levels and making you think that you hate your job more than you do.
Assuming you’re still focused on getting rid of the job you hate, your next stop should be the offices of your local career counselors, explain the experts at Therapy Group of DC.
A career counsellor can help you get your career trajectory back on track, show you ways to move up the ranks or push you to discover that you want to be in a different line of work entirely.
Managing your work-life balance
Work is important, and doing fulfilling work can be really good for our mental health. But other times (and all too often), work is bad for our mental health.
It stresses us out and keeps us awake at night, and it encourages bad habits that harm our mental health in other ways.
The key to keeping work’s impact on your mental health at bay is a strong work-life balance.
Work-life balance is a term that refers to the ways you manage your time and space between work and your personal life.
If you’re working all of the time and completing work assignments in bed or while on vacation, then you have terrible work-life balance — and that will raise your stress levels and put you at risk of burnout.
Setting boundaries and taking breaks is vital to your mental health and to your career because studies show that a proper work-life balance can make you more productive and more effective during your working hours.
So make decisions to cut work from certain hours or from certain spaces: don’t work from your bed, and don’t work after 8 PM.
Take regular vacations and days off to recharge, and commit yourself fully to work when you’re on the clock.
Achieving a better work-life balance is another thing that’s made easier when you rely on mental health professionals.
Your mental health treatments and habits are all interconnected, so your best bet is to approach things holistically.
Remember, you don’t have any kind of mental health issues to go to therapy (and stress is a mental health issue, so you probably do have at least one thing to address).
Care for your mind and build your career, because the two go hand in hand.
