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Key points
- Many people feel that they must make a choice between working and being mentally fit.
- We often suffer at work because we show up with childish expectations and try to act like adults.
- The inner worker is that part of ourselves that tries to express itself through meaningful employment.
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here." ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
A common expression in workplaces, regardless of the nature of the business, is “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.” While mostly a tongue-in-cheek expression, there is often a sense of resignation in these words pointing to the fact that many people feel that they must make a choice between working and being mentally fit.
Too many workers find that their jobs, while earning them a living, come at the cost of their mental health. The good news is that having to choose between work and sanity is a false choice; evidence shows that work can provide much more than a paycheck and can in fact stabilize and improve one’s mental health.
In his book, Why We Work, Barry Schwartz made the following observation: “So it is possible that if people bring the right attitude to their work, almost any job can provide satisfaction, and if they don’t bring the right attitude, no job will provide satisfaction.” While the cynics would respond, “Good for Barry, but he doesn’t work in the hellhole that I do,” his point confirms my experience as an employee assistance professional that the deciding factor on whether a job is negatively impacting one’s mental health has less to do with what one does for a living than how one goes about doing it.
Early in my career, much of it spent working in psychiatric hospitals, I realized that the common factor in the work-related situations seemingly robbing me of my rationality was myself: “I have met the enemy, and he is me.” This was a bitter pill to swallow as it felt much better to blame my environment and coworkers. However, once I accepted this insight it became easier to focus on a solution other than the geographic cure of looking for a new job where everyone was "sane."
Restoring sanity to the workday begins with the realization that it is not work, per se, that threatens one’s mental health. Most of my clients admit that they enjoy the actual work part of their jobs. The list of things that are slowly chipping away at their sanity include:
- Lack of resources
- Change for the sake of change
- Being captive to outdated policies and procedures
- Supervisors who were elevated beyond their skill set
- Insufferable coworkers
The question I ask after reviewing a client’s list is, “Has your job changed, or have you?” With only a few minutes of reflection, most agree that the stress factors have been consistent, but their expectations have shifted over time. When I share Barry Schwarz’s quote about the importance of attitude a common reply is: “So what is the right attitude?”
I’ve found it helpful, and enjoyable for my clients, to begin by listing what constitutes the wrong attitude. A short sample includes:
- Taking credit for other people’s work
- Blaming others for our mistakes
- Complaining without offering solutions
- Not accepting feedback from supervisors
- Expecting others to treat us better than we treat them
- Looking to our jobs to fulfill needs best met elsewhere
One of the first “aha” moments to come from creating such a list is that the person has just outlined how he or she is currently acting at work. Once we clear the resistance hurdles of “But everyone is doing it” and “You would too if you worked where I do” we can move on to the benefits of acting this way. In most cases, the “bad attitude” arose because of an effort to either fit in with the crowd—the “If you aren’t miserable, you aren’t one of us,” phenomenon—and/or as a defense mechanism to protect against daily assaults on one’s mental wellness.
Before moving on to the right attitude list, I introduce the concept of the inner worker; that part of ourselves that tries to express itself through meaningful employment and helps to define who we are as adults. I explain that many people have been convinced by popular psychology that their adult problems are a result of a wounded ‘inner child’ and that these youngsters need healing. I offer that it’s been my experience that we suffer at work because we show up with childish expectations and try to act like adults. Once I convince them that things will improve when they allow their inner children to grow up, we move on to creating a right attitude list to aid in healing their inner workers:
- Take responsibility for my thoughts, feelings, and reactions.
- Look for the humor in situations before finding fault.
- Reserve enough conscious attention to perform self-evaluations on a regular basis.
- Avoid the allure of commiserating with disgruntled coworkers.
- Realize that thinking you are going insane is a sign of a healthy mind struggling to stay balanced.
Most of my clients come with the ready-made definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I’ve found it helpful when healing the inner worker to define sanity as doing only that which is necessary. When asked, “How do I know what is necessary?” I answer, “The situation will determine that and the ability to both assess that, and act accordingly, arises when we have not spent our limited energy trying to fend off an enemy that is actually within.
