Psychotherapy and balance in life
Life and Relationships
in Balance
A space to dream and create a more harmonious, authentic, and meaningful life and relationships.
work, family, friendships, finances…there is so much to think about every day.
Many people feel the drain and difficulty with balancing every day life. It may be at work, with a feeling of boredom or dullness in vocational or career choice, difficulties with relationships, staying in touch with friends and loved ones, or significant changes in a sense of the meaning of life that can come with life transitions or losses.
This page touches on a some of those areas that clients often want to talk about in therapy, and how a psychoanalytic psychotherapy approach can help address those concerns.
“LOVE AND WORK, WORK AND LOVE…THAT’S All there is.”
—Sigmund Freud
Work/Life Balance
Have you had a sense that each day feels like shear drudgery? The daily routine is roll over, shut off the alarm after three or four snoozes, or maybe get up late. Shower, a quick coffee or donut, then off to work, but only to confront too many problems, feel overwhelmed and sometimes resentful of others, feel like you’re shouldering decisions alone. Exhaustion sets in before noon. You go home, eat a quick dinner, and crash in front of the TV, or maybe fall asleep, only to get up and go to bed then have trouble sleeping. Lather/rinse/repeat, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday….
By the weekend, all you want to do escape somewhere. Nothing gets done at home. There’s just so much to do. You wonder, “Did I choose the right job? Am I in the right place? What am I on this earth for? Life has to get better, but how?”
Now picture a week where problems seem few and far between. Customers are pleasant, your staff are satisfied and productive. You could actually take a week off…or two, or three…and your team or your business could hum along. Others could manage the operations, and you could have fun. Your family and partner get to see more of you. Vacations are scheduled and kept.
Life feels good!
A psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy can help clients to better define what work/life balance means for them, and to better understand what might stand in the way of achieving it. There are often patterns that people fall into in their lives. For example, a pattern may have been established when they were very young, or roles may have been passed on to them without fully understanding how those roles came into being, or a sense of responsibility was developed but separated from how that sense was formed. Through exploring the origins of these patterns, clients can come to make more informed choices about how life would be better lived, in more authentic and meaningful ways.
Work/Career Burnout
Disillusion and disappointments may seem to define your days. You may feel irritable, fed up, neglected or taken advantage of by supervisors or managers. On the other hand, friends or family may tell you what a great life or job you have, or how lucky you are to be where you are, but somehow you just feel empty and sad.
Burnout comes to your mind. You wonder if that’s what this is. Why do others seem to be passionate and fulfilled in their work and their lives? How did they find that life path, or learn who they are and what they are meant to do in life? Your thoughts turn to fantasies of escape, starting over. But you feel like that won’t solve the problems. And what if a new decision is wrong? Would that feel like another failure? So many questions, they turn in your mind each week with no clear decision about which way to go.
Imagine living a life you love. You feel fulfilled, have purpose, and look forward to what’s around the corner. You have good friends, meaningful activities, and optimistic thoughts about the future. You feel connected to the world around you, and you see opportunities that you never thought possible.
But how to get from “here” to “there”?
For people who seek help because they feel stuck in their work, careers or other facets of their lives, continuity and change exist in uneasy tension with each other. Thinking about leaving the security of a job or career after having spent several years developing it can feel wasteful and anxiety-provoking.
However, the thought of staying in the same job or career field for the rest of your life can be absolutely depressing and hopeless. Helping individuals who struggle with this tension to learn to navigate change and still recognize their core selves is central to the therapy around work and career issues.
It is possible to build a work life or a career that you’ve yearned to have. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy provides a space and time to better understand and repair bumps that have deterred your road to success.
Love and Relationships
Another argument, hurt feelings, and a sleepless night. The next day, the whole thing is ignored for fear of starting the argument again.
You find that after so many years together, there is a thought of leaving this relationship. But as soon as that thought arises, you’re filled with sadness, indecision, and guilt. Another year goes by, and it feels nothing has changed.
There may be a dawning awareness that your partner has withdrawn from the relationship. Sex is not what it used to be, or perhaps nonexistent. You have concern about whether or not there is another person in your partner’s life. But how can you bring that up without risking damage to a relationship that already feels so fragile and tentative?
The day you brought up the idea of couples therapy, your partner laughed and blamed you for “blowing things out of proportion.” Suddenly, you feel a mix of loneliness, anger, guilt, and dread.
Most people face similar types of challenges in relationships. We can become stuck in negative patterns with our partners but finding the courage to discuss it fills us with a mix of emotions. Ignoring the issues, and our own wishes and desires, can lead to anxiety, depression, and further relationship problems.
While couples therapy is often the best solution to relationship problems, individual psychotherapy can help to clarify needs and desires in relationships. Gaining a stronger sense of ourselves, what we want in life, who we are, and what we are willing to give in order to get can help to clarify our own roles in our closest relationships.
If you are experiencing stress about work and love, or loving your work, contact me today.
Talking it over can help.
“Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.”
—Martha Beck
Life Transitions
You just settled into your work, and now there is the excitement of a new baby. Or the kids may be off to school in the fall, and your oldest is graduating from college. Your friends and neighbors gave you a great going away party, and now you’ve moved to a new town. Perhaps you have dreamed all of your life about things you want to do in your “golden years” and now the day has come for your retirement party.
How did all of this happen so fast? And why does it come with such complex emotions: Happiness, hope and promise one moment; anxiety, sadness, indecision, irritability, guilt, uncertainty, or even a sense of loss or dread the next? Aren’t these supposed to be the good times of life?
Life transitions, despite the hype in media and popular culture articles, can be filled with mixed emotions and a sense of confusion. A popular phrase is, “Aging is not for the faint of heart.” While this phrase often is used to describe the transition to older ages, it is an apt saying for the sense of courage needed to face any transition challenge, and the unknowns, that all of us experience throughout our lives.
Life transitions do not have to be faced alone. Having someone to talk to can help.
Bereavement
You may have experienced a death of someone close. There may be that sense that one day feels like the next since your loved one has gone. The pain comes and goes, but seems always to be there in some way, every day. You feel lonely, sad, fatigued. You’ve thought about reaching out to others, but don’t have the energy to face another discussion about “what happened”, or the deep loss you feel. But you know that you need to talk—to someone who can listen and understand.
Much like anxiety and depression described on other pages, bereavement is typically never experienced exactly the same between individuals, or even by one individual who experiences several losses. It is this very uniqueness of the grieving experience that can leave the individual feeling alone, adrift in life, or sometimes feeling a burden or disconnected from others.
Many individuals find that talking through what the loved one meant, what place they held in their life, and the meaning and depth of the loss experience can bring a sense of peace. Honoring the place of the lost loved on in our personal and emotional lives can lead to a renewed interest in living.
Psychotherapy—sharing thoughts and emotions in a safe and private environment—can help with understanding life transitions.