Work can give us purpose, structure, friendships and a sense of achievement.
It can also be one of the biggest sources of stress in our lives.
We spend a significant amount of our time working, so when something isn’t right at work, it rarely stays neatly contained within working hours. It can follow us home, occupy our thoughts, affect our sleep and begin to influence how we feel about ourselves.
You might find yourself thinking about work on your days off, replaying conversations with colleagues, worrying about mistakes, dreading particular shifts or meetings, checking emails when you’re supposed to be relaxing or lying awake mentally preparing for tomorrow.
Sometimes the problem isn’t the work itself.
It might be the relationships around it.
When Work Starts Following You Home
Workplace anxiety can develop for many different reasons.
You might be working in a high-pressure environment where decisions carry significant responsibility. You may be dealing with organisational change, restructuring, uncertainty, increasing workloads or conflicting expectations.
Perhaps there is tension with a colleague or manager.
Maybe you’ve lost confidence following criticism, a complaint or something that went wrong.
You might be trying so hard not to make a mistake that you’re checking everything repeatedly, second-guessing decisions or spending far longer on tasks than you need to.
Or perhaps nothing dramatic has happened at all. You’ve simply been coping for a long time and you’re beginning to realise how tired you are.
The People Who Are Good at Coping
Some of the people who struggle most to recognise workplace stress in themselves are the people everybody else thinks are coping brilliantly.
They turn up.
They get the job done.
They support everybody else.
And they keep going.
I understand that world particularly well.
Alongside being a counsellor and psychotherapist, I have spent 30 years working in frontline emergency services. I understand shift work, responsibility, difficult incidents, organisational pressures and the strange ability we sometimes develop to deal calmly with extraordinary situations and then become completely overwhelmed by something seemingly insignificant.
Being resilient doesn’t mean being unaffected.
And being good at your job doesn’t mean work cannot sometimes become too much.
When Relationships at Work Become the Problem
Not every workplace difficulty is about workload.
Relationships matter.
A difficult relationship with a manager or colleague can change how it feels to walk into work. Miscommunication can grow into resentment. Small disagreements can become entrenched conflicts. Sometimes people stop speaking directly to each other altogether while continuing to work alongside one another every day.
As an accredited workplace conflict mediator as well as a therapist, I have a particular interest in what happens when communication breaks down and how unresolved conflict affects the people involved.
Therapy isn’t workplace mediation, and I won’t decide who is right or wrong in a disagreement.
What we can do is explore what is happening, how it is affecting you, what is within your control and how you might approach the situation differently.
How Therapy With Gail Can Help
Therapy gives you somewhere outside the workplace to talk honestly.
You don’t have to protect colleagues, reassure your family that everything is fine or worry about how what you’re saying might be perceived professionally.
We can explore the anxiety itself, but we can also look at what sits underneath it.
My Person-Centred foundation gives us space to understand your experience without judgement. My degree-level training in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can help us identify patterns of thinking and behaviour that may be adding to your anxiety.
Perhaps you’re assuming what somebody else thinks about you.
Perhaps one mistake has become evidence in your mind that you’re not good enough.
Perhaps you’re avoiding a conversation because you’re predicting how badly it will go.
Or perhaps the problem genuinely isn’t your thinking at all. Sometimes workplaces are difficult, expectations are unreasonable, relationships are unhealthy or circumstances need to change.
Therapy shouldn’t automatically turn every workplace problem into something you need to fix about yourself.
We can work out the difference.
Finding Your Boundaries Again
Work can gradually take up more space than we intended to give it.
We can explore boundaries, confidence, communication and what matters to you outside your professional identity.
That doesn’t necessarily mean leaving your job or making dramatic changes. Sometimes relatively small changes in how we think, communicate or respond can make a significant difference.
At other times, therapy may help you recognise that something genuinely does need to change.
Either way, the decision remains yours.
Therapy With Gail can help you make sense of what’s happening at work, understand how it is affecting you and explore how you want to respond — without assuming that simply becoming better at coping is always the answer.