Under Pressure
Meetings, emails, phone calls, deadlines, dinner, parties—when office and social pressures are pushing down on you, sometimes all you want to do is press pause. And that’s OK.
At the end of last year, Huffpost polled therapists for the most common issues they were seeing in their offices. Not surprisingly, anxiety made the list. You likely won’t be surprised by another common concern on the list: work-life balance. Women are still struggling to manage the competing demands of work, family, home and social commitments.
Maintaining that precarious balance is tough enough without the impingement of technology—the steady pings of a smartphone indicating yet another text message, tweet or Instagram post; yet another draining demand on our time and attention. When the pinging of the phone begins to sound less like a happy chirp and more like a death knell, you know the balance is off.
And here’s the thing—we know it! The women who come into my office aren’t surprised when I tell them they’re so overburdened that gratitude has been buried beneath the crushing weight of resentment—antipathy at the regular grocery store run, late night at work or party invite. So what’s the problem? The mistaken beliefs (stinky thinking, as my friend says) that underpin this pressing need to say yes to everything and make it so hard to say no to anything. Thoughts aren’t facts; they’re fictions—which means we can change them. Here are some of the common fictions we tell ourselves to justify our refusal to get off that hamster wheel.
If I don’t (go to that party/reply to that group text/say yes to volunteering), people will get mad at me. They’ll be displeased with me and my place in the group won’t be secure.
If I don’t (stay late and finish the report/organize the family vacation/go over the family accounting), I’ll lose control. Things may go wrong and it will end up backfiring—mostly on me.
If I don’t (post on Instagram regularly/keep my nail appointment/hit the gym), I’ll lose status and significance. Facing imperfection is more daunting than juggling all of these balls.