Top Ten Pieces of Career Advice from a Therapist / Part Two
And we are back with part TWO of the lovely installment ‘Top Ten Pieces of Career Advice from a Therapist.’ I know that it can feel like Mom’s and Dad’s get all the attention in therapy, but I just want you to know that your workplace and all the nitty-gritty dynamics of said establishment sometimes need to take centerstage in therapy.
I want to normalize that some of the biggest wounds a person can experience in their life can come from bosses that have really, really harmed and abused them. If you are a person whose been harmed by a boss or someone at work, first, I just want to say how sorry I am. How you were treated is absolutely not okay and you deserve to work in an emotionally safe work environment. There is help available to you (looking at you therapy!!) and I just want you to know you aren’t alone and I truly do believe you when you say, “I had a really abusive boss.”
While I don’t go into the dynamics of workplace abuse, that will have to be another post, what you’ll find below are the rest of my points of career advice that I’ve distilled down in my years of being a therapist. If you happened to miss part one, you can find it here.
Let’s get back to it, shall we?!
Six. Companies function like family systems. Do not be shocked when you find yourself at a company that feels oddly familiar to your own family.
Oof. This is a challenging one. If you’ve never heard of the term “family system” that’s a-okay! Psychiatrist Murray Bowen developed the Family Systems Theory. In his theory, he shares that a family operates as an emotional system, where each family member’s behavior affects the other. There are certain roles and ways of being a relating with your family that you take on at an early age to keep the system going in a way that is predictable. Here’s a great article that discusses many parts of this theory in an easily digestible way.
For the sake of simplicity (and yes, I’m way oversimplifying to help illustrate a point!!), let’s say a person grew up in a family where they took on the role of caretaker. They had an overbearing Mom and an emotionally absent Father. This person is unusually perceptive at reading non-verbal cues, they tend over function and take on too many responsibilities to keep Mom happy and try to win their father’s approval. This person also struggles a lot with perfectionism.
The roles you took on as a child don’t just magically disappear when you leave home, in fact, they stay with you and you likely find yourself in similar patterns and relational dynamics in your adult life as you did in your childhood. This happens in friendships, intimate relationships, and also, you guessed it, with bosses.
So it’s not going to be uncommon or even surprising that that person comes to find themselves in a work role with an overbearing boss that demands so much from them. That person may try really hard to keep their boss happy in similar ways they tried to keep their Mom happy and they will always come up short. It’s often at this very spot where a person feels so frustrated about the situation but doesn’t know how to change it that they end up on the couch of a therapist and can begin making these very connections.
Know you are absolutely not alone if you are coming to a place where you’re realizing, “Oh shoot. My boss is really similar to my Mom or my Dad.” Hi! Welcome to being human!! And here’s a shameless plug on why going to therapy to explore these roles and how to begin shifting them to create some healthier dynamics for yourself, can be oh-so-helpful!
In therapy, a person like this would start to grieve the care they didn’t receive as a kid and begin learning how to be assertive, how to have a self, and how to value and honor their needs and limits. In essence, they would be learning how to give themselves the care they never got. And one of the most incredible parts is that as a person changes in therapy, their outside world also changes. This looks like having more boundaries with your boss or a lot of times it looks like finding a totally new job and work environment that honors that person’s boundaries and fullness as a human.
Seven. Nothing is as glamorous as it looks.
Literally nothing. I won’t expand on this much except to say, if it looks easy and glamorous, just know a lot of work has gone into making it looking easy and glamorous. For example, I talk to a lot of folks who are interested in pursuing graduate school for counseling. I like to remind people that your two or three years in school is the least “sexy” part of your career, as are your first few years out of school. In fact, it’s the opposite of “sexy.” It’s long hours, a lot of work, it’s finding your own way, it’s asking a lot of questions, it’s doing a lot of messing up. The same is true in every profession. And speaking of messing up…
Eight. Embrace being bad at things.
This one hurts really bad for those of you that really identify with being a perfectionist. Oof! BUT before you’re able to be really good at things, you have to be not good at them. I always love how Spanx Founder, Sara Blakely shares that growing up around her dinner table her Dad would always ask her and her siblings what they failed at this week and he would be disappointed if they didn’t have anything to offer. I talk with clients a lot about how changing your relationship to failure can make such a huge difference because failure and messing up doesn’t have to mean that you’re bad or you’re not good enough, it gets to mean that you’re trying and taking risks and putting yourself out there. All qualities that make you more confident in yourself and can help you to be more flexible and open to trying out new things.
Nine. Meaning at work is important but you don’t need to hang your hat on only that.
The idea that you should not only love your job, but that you should be passionate about it and that your work should be a part of changing the world for good is a tall order, and a privileged one at that. I often hear stories of shame surrounding people’s jobs that they aren’t doing enough good for the world. So here’s a gentle reminder that if you are showing up to work and your work provides you with resources to take care of yourself and your family, to save and invest and give where you want, that is plenty of meaning. Be proud of that.
One podcast I recommend most often to clients is the podcast Be There in Five by Kate Kennedy. It’s a long form podcast where she explores in great detail and nuance topics like purity culture, dress codes from the 90’s, MLM’s, being a childless millennial, and all sorts of incredible deep dives. It will definitely make you feel less alone if you grew up in the nineties with popular girls, Abercrombie jeans, and too much roll on glitter from Bath and Body Works. One podcast episode is titled, “Per My Last Email” and I’d encourage you to give it a listen as she offers a kinder take on how vague corporate jobs are really good and not to be devalued. It truly is okay if you aren’t out there monetizing your side hobby or creating a new app to change the world. Figuring out how to be human is hard enough!
Ten. It’s not helpful for you or the people you work with to not charge your worth.
This is especially true for those of you in the helping profession. You deserve to be paid for your expertise and for your years and years of hard work. Exploring your relationship with and to money can be incredibly beneficial because in some cases money can serve as a greater metaphor that speaks to what you value and how you value yourself. It’s not uncommon for a person to begin drawing a connection between how they view themselves and what they think they ought to be paid. This is where imposter syndrome can easily show itself and make you doubt what you are worth.
Charging money for your services or products confidently is showing both yourself and others that you value your work and you value your expertise. It’s a way that you get to honor yourself for your time and you get to honor the person you’re working with. If resentment is showing up in your work, it would be a good time to consider if you’re undercharging out of fear or scarcity and talk with your own therapist or mentors about beginning the conversation of what it would be like to increase your rate. By confidently charging what you’re worth, you’re also showing others it’s possible to do the same for themselves.
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Your career is a big part of your life and your relationship to your career can absolutely have big implications in positive and negative ways on your mental-health.
If you’re feeling the nudge to see what’s beneath the surface with patterns of bosses that don’t value you or finding yourself constantly overworking, consider that therapy might be a really beneficial option for you.
And if you’re living in South Carolina and any of these points pricked a curiosity to go deeper in your own unique experiences, feel free to schedule a free 15 minute phone consultation with me to talk more about how therapy can help you create better boundaries and begin shifting some of the dynamics that are keeping you stuck at work.
Warmly,
Blake