When Work Comes Home With You
The working day is over, but you’re still replaying a conversation, questioning yourself or worrying about tomorrow. Who do you talk to about how it all feels?
You finish work, but work hasn’t finished with you.
You’re still thinking about the meeting where someone questioned your decision. The email you haven’t answered. The conversation you need to have tomorrow. Perhaps you’re wondering whether you were too blunt, too accommodating, or whether everyone else seems to know something you don’t.
Someone asks how your day was.
Fine. Busy.
Where would you start?
Sometimes the difficulty isn’t knowing how to do your job. It’s managing how your job makes you feel.
Being capable doesn’t mean it’s easy
You can be experienced, competent and respected, and still find work emotionally difficult.
You might manage a team, carry responsibility for other people or make decisions with significant consequences. Perhaps you work for yourself and there is no one to turn to when things go wrong. Or you spend your day supporting others, then find there is very little space for you.
People see someone who gets things done. They may have no idea how much time you spend questioning yourself afterwards.
And because you usually cope, you may feel you ought to keep coping.
I should be able to handle this.
But being able to do something doesn’t mean it costs you nothing.
Perhaps you’re distracted when your partner is talking, more impatient than usual with your children, or too caught up in tomorrow to enjoy the evening. You’re home, but part of you is still at work.
What is actually getting to you?
Work pressure can mean an impossible workload, unclear expectations or a manager who keeps moving the goalposts. These are practical problems, and they need practical attention.
But there can also be something about a particular situation that stays with you.
Why did that colleague’s comment hurt so much? Why did you agree to another piece of work when you were already overwhelmed? Why does making a mistake feel so much worse than you think it should?
Perhaps criticism feels like an exposure: someone has finally discovered you’re not as good as they thought. Perhaps disappointing your manager feels unbearable. You might find yourself working harder and harder to earn approval, then feeling resentful that nobody notices what it takes.
Understanding these responses can help you make choices. If you know what you’re reacting to, you have more chance of deciding what to do next.
When everything is a priority
Sometimes you come home thinking about everything you haven’t done, rather than everything you have. Everyone needs something, everything feels urgent, and deciding what can wait means risking someone’s disappointment.
It may help to ask for clearer priorities or be realistic about what fits into a working day. But knowing that doesn’t necessarily quiet the guilt when you stop. How do you let yourself finish for the day when the work itself is never finished?
Do you need a cheerleader?
Someone who has your back, but can also gently challenge you, once they’ve listened and understood what it’s like for you.
There are days when you need someone to remind you that one difficult meeting doesn’t undo years of experience. Someone who can see how much you’re carrying and say, that sounds hard.
You may need encouragement to have a conversation you’ve been avoiding, put yourself forward for something or stop apologising before you’ve even spoken.
But would it help if that person agreed with everything you said?
Perhaps you’re expecting people to recognise that you’re overloaded without telling them. Perhaps you’ve taken a question as criticism. Perhaps your standards are so demanding that even a good day ends with a list of what you should have done better.
Having someone in your corner can include being asked questions you wouldn’t necessarily ask yourself.
Support can include challenge
I can listen to how hurt you felt when a colleague challenged you and also wonder what their words meant to you.
Did you hear, I see this differently, or did you hear, you don’t know what you’re doing?
We might look at whether you were treated unfairly. We might also explore why you’ve been replaying the exchange for three days, or why you now feel you have to prove yourself to that person.
Both deserve attention.
Challenge needs care. If you already spend your days feeling judged, you probably don’t need another person telling you what you’ve got wrong. You need enough trust to be able to look honestly at your part in a situation without feeling that your whole worth is on trial.
That can include recognising when you wish you’d handled something differently, deciding whether to repair it and allowing yourself to move on.
Why not just talk to someone at work?
You may have an excellent manager, mentor or trusted colleague. Those relationships can make an enormous difference.
But there may be things you don’t feel able to say to them.
I’m jealous that she got promoted.
I don’t think I want this job any more.
I’m frightened I can’t keep this up.
I’m so angry with someone I’m supposed to be supporting.
You might worry about damaging your reputation or putting someone in an awkward position. If you lead a team, there may be very few people at work with whom you can be uncertain.
At home, the people who love you may listen patiently but eventually say, Just leave, or, You need to stop caring so much.
You may not want to leave. And if you knew how to stop caring at six o’clock, you would probably have done it already.
Counselling gives you space to talk without having to manage a colleague’s reaction or reassure your family that everything is all right.
What might we talk about?
We can start with whatever is happening now: the meeting you’re dreading, the criticism you can’t shake off or the workload you keep agreeing to.
We might explore what you feel responsible for, what you fear would happen if you said no, or how closely your sense of worth is tied to doing well.
Sometimes that leads to a practical change: preparing for a conversation, setting a limit or giving yourself time before replying to an upsetting email.
Sometimes it means recognising sadness, disappointment or anger that you’ve been trying to work your way out of.
And sometimes it means acknowledging that the demands being placed on you are unreasonable. Understanding your emotional responses doesn’t make you responsible for fixing an unhealthy workplace.
How Counselling with Lucy can help
You don’t need to wait until you’re unable to work or dreading every Monday before asking for support.
You might simply want somewhere to say what work is really like for you. Somewhere you can be ambitious and uncertain, capable and upset, pleased with yourself one week and struggling the next.
I offer confidential online counselling for adults, including space to explore the pressures of working life and how you respond to them emotionally.
Sometimes you need encouragement and understanding. At other times, it can help to consider a different perspective. We can do that together, at your pace, with time to talk about how those conversations feel for you.
You don’t have to arrive with a clear explanation of the problem. We can start with the thing you’re still thinking about after you’ve closed your laptop.
You’re welcome to book a free 20-minute initial conversation to see whether working together feels right for you.
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