My client’s house is driving her round the bend. She lives and works with stacks of boxes, papers, things strewn around her beautiful space. We Skype. I see it! It’s at the point that the beauty of her home has disappeared; the peace and tranquility has been lost; and her mind is spinning in circles.
Her untidiness (chaos) is because she doesn’t think of herself first. Doesn’t put herself at the centre of her picture. This realisation means a shift in thinking–her approach to work and home life needs to change.
Until now, she only thought of her commitments and responsibilities to other:
-what does she need to accomplish in any particular day
-what does she need to prioritize for herself in any particular day
-what meeting does she need to attend
-what child does she need to work with and assess
-what report does she need to write
There’s a pattern that you can probably recognize if you’re a busy woman as well right? She is responsible with all her duties as a business owner and therapist, there is no doubt about that. But, there are times she wants to hide away from it all and just chill out: recoup and recharge herself. She gets tired, drained, exhausted and spent…is it a wonder?!
Her solution? Take a vacation at home to catch up on all her backlog of work, to purge her workspace of all the piles of papers, magazines, articles she’s been hoarding ‘just in case I can use them’. They all add up to mess, pressure and piles of stuff she feels overwhelmed by. By the end of her vacation (staycation) she is not rested, nor organized as she had hoped, because it WAS too overwhelming, so she caught up with friends instead thinking that would relax her. After all it’s a vacation and some of it should be fun?!
Now she goes back to work more drained than ever, still in somewhat of a mess, and upset with herself that she didn’t ‘buckle down to it’ and get it sorted once and for all. Arrgghhh!
Recognize this if you are a professional. You bet. It is purely because the pace she is creating at work misses including herself, her energy, her health, her needs as a factor in her daily output. So the burnout cycle continues and grows deeper.
We are working on a new approach. Desperate to get a handle on her work AND her life and health. She is reminding herself to put herself front & centre first and foremost and holding the belief that the rest of the chips will fall into place. It’s a grand start!