Do we need a psychotherapist at work?

Help us before we burn out and quit.

In my very personal and honest opinion, people’s “taking care” of their mental health has gone to extremes.

Dismissing a healthy diet, exercise, and decent sleep, people chase new marketing trends like “cortisol detox” and forest bathing. We pick up walking as a hobby, pay dozens of dollars to join walking events, and subscribe to expensive mindfulness apps with three-minute videos tailored to our short attention spans, which are supposed to heal us somewhat.

When I got my first managerial (editor) position, my boss asked me what an ideal superior is. Having had no previous experience managing people, I aimed to avoid being like some of my former managers.

Fortunately, I wasn’t left to grow as a leader on my own – the company offered training in various formats that I could enroll in.

Recently, I’ve been trying something new that has thrown me out of my comfort zone – coaching. I have biweekly 1-on-1 meetings with my coach, where I set my goals and develop a plan to achieve them.

For example, one of my bigger goals is to become more emotionally resilient to the work dynamics that can drive people into despair. One smaller step toward becoming, I’d say, more “chill” at the office is to develop positive habits I can practice throughout the day.

Those sessions feel a lot like psychotherapy – you do most of the talking. It often feels awkward when I'm at a loss for words, feeling the need to sound smart and together, and it is exhausting to overanalyze myself.

However, unlike therapy, these work‑psychology sessions provide proper guidance and very specific next steps. My homework for our next meeting is to choose a new audiobook to help me get back into the habit of listening to books instead of music while walking to work, and to make notes about other work‑related goals I’d like to work on.

While some people are natural leaders, for others, becoming a manager who contributes to business goals while also being fair to employees is not something that comes naturally. For these people, companies need to invest in their growth.

That got me thinking: could we have a workplace psychologist? Someone like a school nurse – a specialist you can consult on an ad hoc basis when you’re having trouble with subordinates or face issues like the fear of speaking up.

HR business partners can and often do provide that sort of consultation. However, their allegiance always lies with the employer, and I would prefer having an impartial party, also bound by confidentiality, so I would feel safe discussing my work struggles.

What are your thoughts on this? Let me know.

More from Cybernews:

• When Amazon started recommending ant traps a day after a shopper bought them at Walmart, the internet demanded answers. How is this even possible?
• Kim Kardashian has blamed ChatGPT for failing several law school exams.
• New creepy details are emerging about how Musk really built Grok’s anime girlfriend, Ani.
• I wanted a cloud at home, but AI assistants kept sabotaging my efforts. I just wanted to make my home network simpler and more secure – use nice domain names and the encrypted TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol for my services instead of plain text HTTP.
• Meetings may be one of the few fields where employees are happy to be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) – and they’re increasingly doing so, even if they’re being called “rude.”