A realization came to me the other day when having a catchup with my boss. It was the first catchup we had had for some time and this one was different. Not only had there been recent stressors of COVID and local flooding, but I had also been spread thin at work. All of this resulted in, to my surprise, a series of tearful speeches to my boss and a recognition of a level of tension I didn’t know I had.

During the meeting, my boss had asked me to recount the events of the previous working week, day by day.  This was a great exercise to allow us to both appreciate the mounting pressures and why I had been behind on my work. And it helped me diagnose the reason for my unease which I hadn’t, to this point, been able to name. Ultimately, I was being pulled to help my colleagues almost every day for the last couple of months, taking me away from the core responsibilities of my role.

My main takeaway from this interaction was “this must be what therapy is like”! And how fantastic it was. Simply by talking through what was going on in my head, I was able to untangle the knot and identify the source of the pain point.

Personally, I have never really had therapy before. I recently discussed this topic with Flora on the “All or Something” podcast about Mental Health which you can check out here. Ultimately our thoughts were that therapy could be helpful for everyone, even as a preventative type of measure, as it is sometimes hard to know how various issues will manifest themselves throughout our lives.

Second, shout out to my wonderful boss for taking so much time out of his day and going through this exercise with me! It was something akin to a weekly review (which I really should do more often and sadly neglect in favour of more new work). Let the record reflect this is something I want to use in my future interactions with junior staff or colleagues needing assistance, and that I think all managers could adopt.

So friends, if you are willing to share, have you had therapy? Did you find it useful? And is it something you have kept up long term?