Oakland Psychotherapy & Online Counseling

Therapy for Work Burnout

Burnout | Work Life Balance | Imposter Syndrome

What is burnout?

When you have zero energy or motivation, it might be a sign you’re experiencing burnout. Usually burnout happens when we’ve invested too much energy and time into only 1or 2 areas of our life for too long. For most of us, that area is work.

But it’s not just about the work, it’s how we feel when we’re working that leads to burnout.

If you don’t find your job fulfilling, challenging, or interesting, it can be a slog putting in the hours everyday. Also feeling stressed out, unappreciated, overwhelmed, pressured, or inadequate while at work takes a toll on us mentally. We feel zapped of all our energy and it’s really hard to want to do anything but flop on the couch.

Therapy helps you refocus your priorities and consider new perspectives about the work you do.

Perhaps you’ve been really hard on yourself when you make mistakes, or you don’t stand up for yourself with your manager, or you are putting everything into work to feel like you’re good enough. Talking through other ways of thinking about things and coming up with action plans to change things up is something I can help you with in therapy.

Connecting to your values can help you find purpose at work, even if you don’t like your job.

Changing jobs is not easy and takes time. So if you don’t like your job, we’ll work on how to help you get fulfillment from it until you can find another one. For example, if you value community, you might spend extra time getting your coworkers together after work. If you value creativity, you might explore interesting alternatives to solve problems you encounter at work. If you value self-growth, you might experiment with new ways of doing things. If you value challenge, you might take that course you’ve been thinking about or get mentorship from someone who inspires you. These are just some of the ways that I would help guide you when you’re miserable at your job but can’t just quit.

Building confidence at work to set healthy boundaries and ask for what you need is something we can work on together in therapy.

Another way to avoid work burnout is to know when to say no. This might mean delegating, setting firmer work hours, pushing back on ideas, and advocating for yourself. If you have low self esteem or don’t feel valuable at work, it can be hard to stand up for yourself. ACT will provide you with some tools to bypass negative thoughts about yourself that keep you stuck so your voice is heard at work.

What is Work Life Balance?

Spending the majority of the day at work makes it very difficult to figure out how to spend what little time is left. It’s hard to know what to prioritize. Having time for family, exercise, friends, partners, hobbies and sleep are all essential to feeling balanced. But working early morning & late nights, traveling, family obligations, school functions, chores, errands, and packed schedules leaves little time for these things.

The key to work life balance is flexibility.

Ideally all the things we want and need to do could be perfectly proportioned into equal time each day. But we all know that is not how life works! By being flexible you allow your priorities to constantly shift as needed. Sometimes you sacrifice certain things to make room for other things. But remembering that it won’t be like that forever is crucial.

If you zoom out on your life in the span of a few days or weeks, you can see how to create work life balance over the long-run.

For example, maybe part of the week your priorities are work and exercise, midweek it’s a hobby and friends, and the weekend is all about your partner and kids. And then understanding that all these proportions will constantly need to shift and change depending on the season and what’s going on in your life.

I like to have my clients visualize their time/schedule as divided into a pie chart.

Thinking about your life broken up into smaller chunks of time, like a few days or a week at a time, can help you sort your priorities for specific periods or seasons of life. There may be one week where you have to focus on your kids, and another week it’s important to prioritize self-care. Perhaps you invest in a hobby and that means a little less time for exercise sometimes. If we visualize obligations and interests as a constantly fluctuating balance of give and take, it allows us to feel more free to pursue certain things while others take a backseat. Nothing needs to be the exact same level of priority forever, nor do you need to give up on something you need or want forever; it is all shifting in waves temporarily.

Learn more about finding work/life balance through therapy with me in Oakland today!

Therapy for imposter syndrome & confidence building

You don’t believe in yourself the same way your team believes in you

Lack of confidence is more common than you’d think — Especially in the workplace. 

“Imposter syndrome” is real.  There’s a lot of pressure out there.  Competition can leave you feeling inadequate and second-guessing your every move. 

When you don’t have enough confidence in yourself, you may fall behind your colleagues and not meet your professional goals. 

Using ACT, I will guide you through exercises to teach you ways to deal with self-doubt, negative self talk, and fear of failure.