Ali worked long hours and throughout her weekends causing her mental health and her relationship with her teenage daughters to suffer. Ali just wanted to quit, but being a single parent she believed that wasn’t an option but recognised something needed to change, what that was exactly she didn’t know.

Goal: Avoiding Burnout.

Ali was incredibly successful in her career, able to pick and choose the projects she’d worked on, and well regarded both in her organisation and within her field for pushing boundaries she was reaching her career goals.

Recently though multiple tight deadlines, limited and sporadic resourcing and a manager who was barely visible led to Ali working harder than before. When we met she was exhausted and feared it could only end badly.

Results.

Uncovering A Cycle of Behaviour

We started exploring what thoughts, behaviours and feelings were being experienced and uncovered a cycle Ali described as a ‘vortex’ she couldn’t get out of.

When thinking spiralled, Ali could become quite vocal about how overwhelming her busy life was. Frustration bubbled into anger. Only when Ali became tired would futility replace anger, and a word that repeated throughout our time working together emerged - resentment.

Developing Awareness 

Experiments were set as homework to trial different ways of disrupting the ‘vortex’. She was building a toolkit that she could use to slow thinking down, challenge her thoughts and bring objectivity to situations. Results were positive, with a few significant moments where she was able to notice ‘a full-on vent building’ and apply her new skills to slow the feelings down and intercept thinking from becoming overwhelming.

Lingering Resentment

Managing, sorting and controlling a tried and tested strategy, that had proved successful at home and she recognised this was one of the reasons she was successful at work. The significance of this behavioural pattern emerged when Ali described a challenging encounter with her manager where resentment emerged as she attempted to control the situation.

A metaphor of a caped crusade was how Ali describe herself, her cape would swish in the air as she swooped in to sort any given situation.

The payoff for holding on to resentment

• Being seen as a hero

• Adoration from friends, family and colleagues

• Appreciation for being the one to rescue them

If thanks weren’t received resentment would resurface.

In exploring possible scenarios where rescuing behaviour could emerge she developed an understanding of what behaviour may be appropriate and what fulfilled an old need. 

Improvements in Life & Work

Ali observed choice, after experimenting with different situations away from coaching she was able to choose to step into an adult space, choose to consider alternative options and choose not to rescue. As a result of these significant moments of conscious awareness, Ali made some decisions;

1. Mum and Daughter time; set bi-monthly diary dates were ‘non-negotiable’ for both of them, it was their time

2. Task time fit: Weighting her thinking and writing tasks to the early part of the day and planning, emails and meetings to later in the day, stopping her from being sidetracked into places she didn’t need to be

3. Experiments with delegating were more challenging, the need to control at times continued to be very strong

4. Asking if people needed her help was a major decision for Ali to break the cycle of resentment she’d been caught up in

5. Remember her toolkit for moments were thinking and strong feelings started to more prominent has continued to be important