Counselling

Workplace Stress and Anxiety

Stress | Counselling Perth

Are you experiencing any of the following work-related stressors?

  • Heavy work load, time pressure, deadlines
  • Bad management practices
  • Role conflict
  • Lack of support
  • Organisation culture
  • Low control (with low autonomy and authority)
  • Low rewards (money, esteem, career or promotional opportunities)
  • Long hours
  • Management change
  • Physical work environment
  • Work relationships (poor relationships with colleagues or bosses)
  • Harassment
  • Crisis incidents, such as workplace death or armed holdups
  • Duty changes
  • Over supervision
  • Insufficient skills for the job
  • Job insecurity
  • Discrimination

Life places demands on all of us that stretch our personal psychological resources. A manageable degree of stress makes us stronger and generally matures us. A level of stress that is at the limit of, or beyond, one’s resources to cope with can lead to such a degree of anxiety that physical and emotional health is threatened or damaged. The workplace is an arena where there can be stressful dynamics and situations. This stress can lead to serious levels of anxiety that can become chronic and feel overwhelming.

What one person may perceive as stressful, another may view as challenging. Whether a person experiences work related stress depends on factors such as the job, the person’s psychological make-up, general health and personal life.

Some of the more common symptoms of workplace anxiety include:

  • Avoidance of tasks relating to giving presentations, contributing verbally at meetings, returning phone calls. Also, avoidance can be behind not completing tasks, missing deadlines, procrastination, distraction, loss of interest in work, not attending work social events, taking an increasing number of days off.
  • Physical and psychological symptoms including sleep problems, excessive fatigue, mood swings, trouble concentrating, social withdrawal, experiencing shortness of breath and racing heart when thinking of work, headaches and muscle tension, stomach problems, feeling unusually emotional –tearful, angry, or irritable, pessimistic, depressed, feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope, using alcohol or drugs in order to cope.
  • Obsessing and worrying that your mind will go blank or you will fail in some way when, for example, talking with the boss, giving presentations, or during performance appraisals. One may obsess about blushing, sweating, stammering, or appearing noticeably nervous. One may start obsessing about a particular task, trying to get it just right to the point that the task gets more attention than it deserves.

Anxiety is a fear-based response that may be triggered when we feel confronted with situations in life that threaten us in some way. A threat, (real or imagined) which is not resolved quickly, can lead to a chronic state of anxiety. A chronic anxiety state will inevitably take its toll on one’s happiness, productivity, energy level, rationality, and capability. One becomes controlled by anxiety and stress. Sometimes such stress causes perceptions to become distorted and a form of mild paranoia with feelings of persecution can develop.

Workplace stress and anxiety often carries over into a person’s personal life, and can affect relationships outside the workplace.

Avoidance is a common response to anxiety. Anxiety leading to avoidance behaviours in the workplace though, can have consequences both on a personal level and for the organisation.

The loss to the individual may include, missed opportunities for professional advancement, financial loss, decreased personal wellbeing and self-esteem, and deteriorated professional relationships. For the organisation, a stressed and anxious workforce usually means lower productivity.

If you are feeling overwhelmed, and concerned about the level of anxiety you are experiencing in your work life, talking through the issues with someone supportive and empathetic can be a first step toward dealing with the anxiety. If you would like to chat further about workplace stress and anxiety please feel free to contact me.

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Counselling

The Fly In Fly Out Lifestyle

FIFO Lifestyle | Counselling Perth

Since the end of the 1980’s, Australia has experienced a resources boom that has seen thousands of families impacted by fly in fly out (FIFO) work. The FIFO lifestyle involves workers flying to non-residential based gas, oil and mining operations to work ten to fourteen hour shifts for two to six weeks at a time. Whilst the financial gains from this type of work are substantial, the undesirable impact this type of work is having on individuals, couples, and family units is becoming hard to ignore.

The FIFO lifestyle often sees workers flying out to stay in remote locations with hundreds of other men and women in basic, but fully serviced accommodation, working long hours with the opportunity to wind down after a long shift at the “wet mess” with other co-workers. This lifestyle is often far removed from the life they lead at home with partners and children.

Ways FIFO Work Impacts Families

  • Relationships become strained due to the distance between the couple
  • One parent often takes on the role of single parent
  • Children are impacted emotionally spending time looking forward to Mum or Dad’s return and then having to say good bye again. This is especially hard during the early transition period of
  • FIFO when they may not have been separated from a parent for an extended period of time.
  • FIFO workers find it difficult to adjust from single life to family life
  • Both partners need down time, time with each other, and time with their children. This can be very difficult to juggle as the parent who stays at home with the children needs some time out from being a single parent and the FIFO worker needs time to wind down after working such long hours.

Ways You Can Stay Connected in Couple Relationships

Prior to starting FIFO work couples need to be realistic about the impact this type of work is going to have on the family. For this lifestyle to be managed successfully it is beneficial for couples to discuss how they will approach things such as social life, parenting, contact with each other (and children) during the period away. It is also important to discuss the expectations that the whole family has about how life is going to be when the partner who works away returns home. For example who will transport children to and from school? How much time will be allocated to friends and extended family? Will there be nights for just the two of you to go to dinner or have time out together? If these expectations are discussed in a logical and practical way, it could reduce the level of stress and disappointment. It is also important that these discussions continue to ensure the arrangements are still working for the both of you.

Tips for the partner who is working away

  • Provide your partner with your roster so they know when you will be available to talk.
  • Provide your partner with an emergency number where they can reach you if required.
  • Organise times that you will call your family to ensure they are home and able to speak for undisturbed periods of time.
  • Do not take on additional shifts or a change of roster without first discussing this with your partner to ensure they will be able to cope with the changes.
  • Allow ‘date nights’ or ‘couple time’ when both partners are home to reconnect with each other (away from the children if you have them).
  • Discuss what you need from your time off from work with your partner. For example: FIFO workers need plenty of sleep and recuperation time.

If you have children

Recognise that your partner has established boundaries and rules with the children while you are away. It is important that these rules and boundaries remain in place when you are home. Be clear on what they are and provide support to your partner by ensuring that you remain a parent and have fun with your children while not let the rules go.
Recognise that your stay-at-home partner will be taking on a single parent role while you are away and that they may need time out. Discuss possible social activities that your partner could engage in while you are away. This can assist in reducing insecurities. Also recognise that the stay-at-home parent will need some down time when you are home, so make time to take the children out in order to provide your partner with this opportunity.

  • Spend plenty of time with your children. FIFO work can take a toll on them emotionally, and they will, in most circumstances, look forward to your return for weeks on end.
  • Make an effort to speak to your children (especially if they are young) as often as possible, preferably before their sleeping times.

Ways FIFO Work Impacts Individuals

  • Working away can cause a sense of isolation that can lead to depression.
  • This isolation and time away from partner can lead to fantasies about partner being unfaithful or not interested leading to insecurities.
  • Difficulties forming new relationships if single. Meeting someone and then having to fly out for several weeks makes it difficult for romantic relationships to form.
  • Binge drinking and/or recreational drug use is a feature of FIFO lifestyles.
  • FIFO workers often experience changes in mood. This mood can be low at the end of the work block and can remain low for a couple of days on returning home until the worker is rested and settled in again. It is not unusual for some workers to begin to feel low again a few days before heading back to work. Usually this will settle, but sometimes for some workers the low mood will remain until they are home again.
  • Fatigue is often experienced during work hours due to very long shifts. This leads to the need for extended recovery time once home.
  • Missing significant events such as birthdays and weddings can result in feelings of exclusion and increase feelings of isolation or depression.
  • Often high levels of stress whilst on the job with little means of support can result in increased drinking at the “wet mess” and a build-up of emotions.
  • Struggling to feel part of the community due to long stretches away.
  • A sense of not ‘belonging’ anymore, including family, friends and environment. This can be especially so for those workers spending six weeks away and much less time back home.

Ways for Individuals to Stay Connected and Make the most of FIFO

  • Stay in touch with friends and family while away, including skype, phone and email.
  • Make plans before leaving or while you are away to catch up with people on your return and commit to these plans where possible.
  • Talk with a trusted friend or family member about your concerns or any difficulties you are experiencing whilst working in a FIFO position, or seek professional support.
  • Continue activities that you are able to pick up again when back home such as fishing, golfing, boating, movies, concerts, etc. Part time study online can often fill time while on site, can provide you with an interesting new challenge, or add to your career prospects.
  • Draw on the experience of other FIFO workers who understand the challenges that go with the job both onsite and offsite.
  • Maintain as healthy a lifestyle as possible. This can be beneficial to you both physically and emotionally.
  • Putting some goals in place can often be helpful in maintaining a sense of purpose. For example, use this period of your life to become financially secure in order to finance any dreams you may have, such as owning your own home, setting yourself up into a new business, or planning for a comfortable retirement. Assume FIFO is not necessarily viable in the long run.
  • Don’t over commit yourself on returning from work, especially if already exhausted; take time to recover in order to fully enjoy the events and time off you have been looking forward to.

If you are feeling overwhelmed and concerned about how a fly-in fly-out career is effecting your lifestyle, talking through the issues with someone supportive and empathetic can be a first step towards positive change. If you would like to chat further about mechanism and solutions to dealing with this issue, please feel free to contact me.

 

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Counselling

Family Estrangement

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Estrangement refers to the process of treating someone known as if they were a stranger. It means to turn off feelings of affection, to keep at a distance, to alienate. In families it refers to the termination of connection with someone who is too difficult or hurtful. Generally, someone is cut off because they are recognised as offering nothing of relational value. Estrangement comes out of unmet expectations or other disruptions in a relationship.

Factors that can lead to family estrangement, or act as a catalyst, include disputes in the areas of trust, safety, chronic conflict, various forms of abuse, betrayal, divorce, remarriage, addictions, mental illness, criminal behaviour, and disapproval/intolerance of the way another lives. Estrangement within the family can be between any of the members, partner from partner, parent from child, sibling from sibling, grandparent from child, aunt/uncle from niece/nephew etc.

Relationships should be both easy and difficult. It is easy if there is mutual respect, good-will, trust (reality-based), feelings of attraction such as liking or loving. That is, an appreciation of self and other. These are prerequisites for a relationship. The difficult part of a relationship involves the movement towards increasing intimacy and honesty and caring. Central to this is a willingness to allow one’s vulnerability and recognise and respect the other’s vulnerability. When basics are missing rifts can easily develop, especially where the relationships are not chosen, such as between family members. Even in the best circumstances being in a family can be demanding and challenging.

Estranged from ‘loved ones’ can occur following a fight or important disagreement, or, more likely, a series of ongoing fights or disagreements. Personal difficulties with attachment to others can be expressed in many ways. For example, a family member finding conflict or differences intolerable, feels the need to fix or resolve conflicts in order not to fell overwhelming anxiety. Other people are sensitive to feeling misunderstood, or disapproved of, or kept at a distance they don’t feel ok with (too close or too far).

Estrangement causes a particular form of grief, in that hope is often held out for a reparation in the relationship, thus keeping the pain and grief active and ongoing. A repeating pattern of interaction in which expectations followed by disappointment and frustration when those expectations are unmet, maintain a running sore of grief.

Family estrangement is usually painful for everyone involved, including people involved from outside the family. The reasons for estrangement are, at one level, understandable. Understandable if the view of only one party is listened too. One side can usually present a coherent picture as to why then have cut off the other party. But when the views of both sides are considered, irreconcilible differences emerge. Very different versions of what is happening are presented. Both sides are, of course, self-evidently right to the one holding a position or view, and the other is self-evidently wrong or bad. The views of the other seem incomprehensible to those on the other side of the estrangement divide.

In a situation where a group of family members cut off another family member, such as when children refuse to have contact with a parent, these family members have been, or feel they have been, emotionally mistreated by the member they are rejecting. Often the manifest causes of people going off speaking terms are not even discussed, or if they are, they are usually still inexplicable to the person who is dismissed from the relationship.

Most people want to have a family to which they feel close attachment and feel supported and nourished by. The person initiating estrangement within a family feels the lose in this breakup, even as they experience the relief of not having to deal with one causing them pain.

Once hurtful things are said (no matter how truthfully, sensitively, or sincerely put) and positions harden, repairing of breaches can be difficult. Usually the ostrasized family member, will want desparately to repair the family as the pain of family isolation is painful. Guilt, shame, sadness, and loneliness drive the need for reconciliation.

If you are considering trying to reconcile with a family member you are estranged from , it is prudent to consider why you are doing so. Remember why you withdrew from the relationship in the first place. Has anything changed that leads you to think that relations can be better in the future? Did you really ‘just make a mistake’? Is forgiveness relevant if the one you separated from is likely to commit the same offences that drove you away in the first place? It may be that you need to carefully weigh up if it is worth re-starting the relationship. Ask yourself, why it is that you want reconnect now, and what it is that you might be hoping for should you reconnect.

If you are the apparently rejected one, do you trust the reasons why the rejector wishes to repair the relationship? Did that person have good reasons for rejecting you in the first place? Are you even interested in reconnecting? Is there anything in it for you? Sometimes people who cut us off aren’t the best people to continue to have in our lives, in other words, they may have done you a favour.

It can be overwhelming and scary to consider repairing an estranged relationship, and is usually more difficult than the cutting of ties was. Fear is a major hurdle for estranged people; fear presents as reluctance, anger, shame, avoidance, confused and uncertain boundaries, reactivity, defensiveness, running away. It is difficult to move forward with estrangement until we can stay present with fear. When we are able to sit with fear (and other feelings) and ride it safely to the other side, we learn that we can survive our worst fears; we learn we can change. Often estranged people have an uneasy relationship with change, change is usually difficult, and therefore resolving estrangement feels out of their control.

It is a platitude that we don’t get to choose our family, but as adults we can decide who is in our lives. Therefore family relationships occupy a unique position in everyone’s lives. On the one hand there is a challenge in coping with who I have been allocated in the same way that there is a challenge in dealing with the genes that I have been born with. On the other I can take the view that I can chose who is in my life. However, family membership is more complex than that, and is less chosen than we might like to think. Estrangement does not automatically end the connection and produce happiness. It leaves a vacancy, a space, a shadow, which can be ignored, but is not forgotten.

If you are feeling estranged, talking through the issues with someone supportive and empathetic can be a great first step towards building strong family ties. If you would like to chat further about family estrangement please feel free to contact me.

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