Written By: Xin Wei
During this work from home season. It is likely that stress leads to job burnout. Job burnout is a special type of work-related stress, a state of physical and emotional exhaustion that involved a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity.
More information about recognise work from home burnout in Singapore here.
There are many ways of dealing with stress, some choose to stress eat, some choose to sleep their problems away. Albeit these methods are effective, it is still advisable to release some tension or burdens that have been bottled up in your chest for a long period of time. You can release those tensions by sharing your woes with your friends and family, or if you prefer to offload your emotional burdens to a third party, you can consider going for therapy.
Though there are some stigmas regarding going to therapy, such as that it makes us look weak, or seen as though as having a mental illness. Some stigmas are self-imposed, but generally, seeking help from professionals is still not normalised and accepted in our current society. With this article, we hope to be able to clear off some of the doubts that you may have of going for therapy and spill out the benefits of therapy.
As an HR recruitment agency, we believe in providing the best for you and your employees, and that the mental health of your employees should be one of your top priorities. Especially with the pandemic ongoing, remote working makes it hard to ensure that your employees are okay. Here are the reasons and benefits of therapy!
1. Reduce physical symptoms and boost your physical health
Oftentimes, mental illnesses reflect on your physical body. There have been many studies that show that there is a clear correlation between mental health and physical health. People diagnosed with depression have been linked to a 50% increase in the risk of dying from cancer and a 67% increase from dying from heart disease. One of the reasons why people with mental health issues are at higher risk of dying from physical health issues is because they tend to not seek help for their physical health in the early stages. They could have unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as smoking, drinking, lack of exercise, or usage of drugs, which have proven medically that it has negative effects on physical health.
Additionally, therapists can help you identify and process the emotions that are affecting you and teach you strategies on how you can better cope and manage your negative emotions, and strategies to soothe your nervous system. Thus, with the strategies and knowledge, you will be able to prevent any physical health issues that may have been caused by any potential mental health issues.
2. Change unhealthy patterns
There are times where we fill up our time with unfulfilling habits to take our time off the troubling us, which in turn translates to dissatisfaction. With dissatisfaction in our lives, we are bound to be unhappy, and it may also cause confusion because of the standards and expectations that you set for yourself which may be hard to achieve.
There are certain causes that cause dissatisfaction in our lives:
You think that you should be constantly happy – setting yourself to only one kind of emotion will cause you to have an unrealistic outlook on life. By allowing yourself to accept a wider spectrum of emotions will make you respond to the events happening around you
Comparing yourself with others – humans tend to be competitive, and we compare ourselves with others in many ways. Comparing will just make you unhappy and dissatisfied with what you already have.
Sometimes we just need a third-person point-of-view to get a clearer understanding of our own habits, and this can be easily achieved from having a conversation with a therapist, and they will also be able to provide advice on how you can change them. With regular meet up with the therapist, you will have someone who is doing this change with you, someone to motivate you along.
3. Become happier
Therapy is no quick fix to any problem you have in life. Again, having someone who lends you their ear to listen to your problem, and a shoulder to “lean” on when things get tough, will definitely alleviate any long-term mental discomfort that you have. Therapists can provide you tips and tricks on how you can better manage your thoughts and deal with the things that bother you on a daily basis.
After sharing your problems with the therapist, you might feel better, as though the weight has been lifted off your chest. You may also gain new perspectives of your situations, because as you are sharing, you may have fixed or lifted the mental blocks that have been preventing you from seeing how simple that issue was. Or, the therapist will ask you questions and lead you to solve your own problem, because it is still your life, you have to call the shots and not just let someone tell you how to.
But, at the end of the day, the therapist can only share, teach, and guide you on how to be happier, you need to do the walking. It may take some time, but most times, it is worth it.
4. Improve your relationships
Therapy can teach you how to have lesser arguments and have more constructive communication with the people around you. Along the way when you share your problems with the therapist, you can also discover and figure out which relationships are hurting you, and which relationships are helping you to have a better life.
Through the therapy sessions, you can also vent about your negative emotions to the therapist. It is similar to complaining about your relationship problems with your closest friends, but in this case, you would learn how to better handle your emotions and have a solid plan for the growth of your relationships. Therapists are also trained, whereas our friends are not, and they wouldn’t just tell you things that you would want to hear, therapists would tell you the truth that your friends might sugar-coat for you.
When your relationships are improved, you will find that life isn’t as tough as you think that it is, and maybe even your working environment will be a lot more positive. In the long run, it may even increase your employability because of the good relationships with your colleagues, which will link to good testimonials when you choose to find another job.
5. Learn new techniques and skills to help you in the future
Of all the things mentioned in this article, the main benefit that therapy brings about is teaching us how to better handle our emotions and actions. Though, yes, during therapy your past will be discussed most of the time, but only by identifying the mistakes you made in the past, would you be able to learn and change the unhelpful behaviours that you had in the past, and are currently holding you back.
With these skills and techniques that you learned from therapy, you can advocate them and share them with the people around you. You might also learn some new soft skills that will help you with your employment or your career or your relationships with your colleagues, increase your employability.
TLDR
Therapy is beneficial for all of us, and not just for people who have mental illnesses, therapy can help us discover a different side to us, our inner selves. Just sharing our problems with someone else is already a form of therapy, and it might just be healthier for your wallets too.
Should you need someone to talk to. Consider these options:
- Samaritans of Singapore (SOS): 1800-221 4444
- Silver Ribbon Singapore: 6385 3714
- Fei Yue’s Online Counselling Service
Like what you've read? Check out our other candidate focused and work from home articles on the BGC Singapore blog.
Read more: 5 Effective Ways to Dealing with a Hostile Co-Worker