Looking after your personal and professional well-being

• Talking openly and normalizing mental health challenges is critical to reducing negative perceptions
• The balance between work and personal life may never be perfect, but accepting that is key to mental well-being
• You can’t do it all, but you can do many things well if you focus your time and attention

Over the past decade, there has been growing acknowledgment of mental health and the need to balance personal and professional well-being to achieve a state of health and wellness. Awareness of mental health has been driven by younger generations and the media speaking more openly than they have in the past, which has helped to reduce negative perceptions around conditions that affect many millions of people around the world.^1,2 Living with a mental health condition can challenge our ability to enjoy life, can cause difficulties in relationships, and can impact our work or schooling.²

With so much at stake, Healthcare Transformers spoke to Sheryl Ziegler, Therapist, Author, TEDx speaker, and Podcast Host about how we can address some of the key challenges to personal well-being including the impact of technology and the perceived pressure to “do it all.”

HT: How can the healthcare industry address the unique mental health and well-being challenges that arise from working directly with patients?

Sheryl Ziegler: When you work in the field of trying to help others you can get what we call “compassion fatigue” as caring for others can be very taxing for our mental health. Making sure that that topic, even that term, is being used can help. Or I might use the term ‘vicarious trauma’, which means you feel stressed if maybe you weren’t able to help somebody. These kinds of terms are helpful for people to realize others are also being affected by the work they’re doing. It normalizes it so it can be discussed, and we know simply talking about it really does make an impact.

Debriefings, I think, are really important. Therapy, peer support programs, all of those kinds of things in which you connect with others. Sharing experiences can help people reduce stress and transition to their personal lives, so they feel like they can leave work stress behind. This allows healthcare professionals to have healthier personal lives, which has a positive impact when they are back at work.

HT: How can organizations create a more inclusive environment where employees from different cultural backgrounds feel comfortable addressing their mental health needs?

Sheryl Ziegler: First and foremost, you want to address it. Talking about inclusivity and using that word makes people question, “Am I being inclusive? Am I being thoughtful, am I taking time to inquire in a way that’s sensitive and considerate?”

There are differences in how cultures approach mental health and it’s essential to have a tailored mental health approach that is culturally sensitive and considerate. And maybe you have advisors, or you have a cultural lead that helps to inform policies and activities within a company, especially if you’re a global international company.

Secondly, companies really need a strategy, and categories of inclusivity, so a company doesn’t try to have one sense of what it means to be inclusive under this huge umbrella, but we have buckets under each one to say what we are focusing on. I think that specificity is really important.

Lastly, if we don’t have leadership who can actually represent that kind of initiative and inclusivity, I think it’s less likely to be effective and will impact overall professional well-being.

HT: What role does technology play in both supporting, and potentially worsening, mental health?

Sheryl Ziegler: A big topic right now is how technology both helps and hinders human happiness. On the one hand, we’ve viewed technology as giving us the ability to talk to people around the world on video, to be able to have multiple teams sit in on meetings, to have that meeting transcribed, to have subtitles in which everybody can understand one another, and be able to go across time zones to accomplish amazing things.

I also think that with things like having a Slack channel or having access to e-mail on a cellular device or having laptops and being able to use Wi-Fi to work on a flight, it almost feels like there’s never time off. There’s no true boundary from work to rest, then to enjoyment, to sleep, and to all the other things. One of the things I think that the movement is saying is: “Is this really making our lives better? Is it really making us more productive?” Or should we go back to having a lot more focused, segmented time, reducing distractions and turning off notifications, because the data says this “always on” technology is actually worsening our mental health.

HT: How can parents model a healthy work-life balance for their children while meeting the demands of their careers?

Sheryl Ziegler: There are lots of people who like to say there’s no such thing as a work-life balance, but I do think there is such a thing, it’s just not a perfect balance.

First and foremost, it’s the acceptance of that and it’s the awareness that this is the way that it is for most people for most of their career because there’s not a finite number of years that you’re a parent. So having the awareness, and then having the acceptance that this is the way it’s going to be goes a long way. 

The third piece is finding a good fit. Is your workplace family friendly? What is the flexibility there? Do you absolutely have to be at your office or in the lab? How many hours a week is the norm there? Those are things that I think people need to think about when they’re trying to balance both career and family life. We find that working parents really thrive with flexibility.

Lastly, it’s important to set a positive tone for your child. One of the things that really can make a difference is instead of saying, “I have to go to work”, say things like, “I get to go to work” or “I’m really excited about the meeting that I’m going to lead”, with authenticity. It’s really important that kids get the sense that you like what you do, and that’s why you work hard to get to do this.

HT: What advice would you give to parents who feel the pressure to “do it all”? How can they create person and professional well-being in their lives?

Sheryl Ziegler: The first thing I would say is you can’t do it all. Learn how to focus so that if you’re a parent, when you are with your kids, don’t try to do other things. Don’t try to just sneak in one quick call or one last e-mail, because that’s where A, you’re not doing it all, and B, you have this incredible level of guilt, distraction, lack of presence, and honestly, errors. You burn the dinner, or you have typos in the e-mail or whatever it is because our brains were created to focus on the task at hand.

So, my definition of doing it all means that when I’m doing X, I’m with my kids, or when I’m at work, I’m really focused and that is what I’m focused on. That gives me that whole doing it all, having it all feeling. Being able to be present in what it is that you’re doing is going to give you the feeling that you did it all and the person or the job, the feeling that you’re really invested.