Musings on psychotherapy at work 🤔
Psychologist, RD Laing, writes about The Family and ‘The Family’. Essentially, the latter is the internalised version of the actual embodied family. ‘The Family’ may not really resemble the family however; it is an internalised version shaped by one person’s perspective, their beliefs and their experiences within the family. Each family member has their own version of ‘The Family’.
If we think about people at work as our work families, we can apply the same thinking. Each person in a team will have their own idea about their place in the group, what role they fulfil and how the group functions. Some will say it’s harmonious while others would report feeling cast out. One person’s view might not align with how others see them and the group.
I’ve been learning about groups — couples, families — as systems and how the process of therapy happens in systems. You won’t be surprised to learn that there are a lot of dynamics at play! You have the system — the family, the couple, the group, which at one level operates as a unit. But you also have the individuals that make up that system, with each of their personalities. As well as that, within each group member exists different concepts of identity — for example there’s how I see me, how I want you to see me and how you actually see me. I could go off on a tangent here and talk about collusion. But I’ll save that for another article!
I think where I’m going with this is that working therapeutically with companies is probably a good idea and definitely one that interests me. I’ve been part of one work family or another since I was 16. Younger if you count my paper round 📰!
Companies are systems made up of people. In my last article, Four attachment styles walk into an office, I mentioned that most of us are able to leave our work selves behind when we go home, but it’s pretty impossible to leave your self at home when you go to work. And so, no matter how professional we are, how accomplished the work persona is, we are still ourselves deep down. We’re human beings with a past, with experiences, emotions and vulnerabilities. And it’s not always possible to temper those — as Will Smith demonstrated at the Oscars this week. I think he even said something along the lines of the devil can sneak up on you even at the top of your game. Don’t quote me on that exactly.
I tried career coaching a few times when I hit obstacles at work. Whether I was addressing what I wanted to do next or why I was stuck in a rut, I found that I quickly hit the outer edge of coaching and the start of therapy. I know they’re two different things — different approaches, different training, different goals. But people seeking help for their work self might not make, or even know, those distinctions. For me to grapple with the work-related decisions I’d made, why I was stuck or struggling, I really needed to dig deeper than the moment I was in. To truly understand myself — to answer all the why questions I had — I had to do the hard work of therapy. And it is hard work.
Not everyone wants to do therapy. Not everyone can, for financial and other reasons. And it’s certainly not something every company offers. But the more I understand how humans develop, how deeply our early experiences affect us and how all of this bubbles up in our day-to-day adult lives… the more I see the need. Think about all the people who suffer from imposter syndrome, such a common term now. Many of them are people who, seen from the outside, are at the top of their game — CEOs, leaders, managers, Oscar winning actors… What happened to them to make them doubt themselves so much? What’s happening to them on the inside as they go about their work on a daily basis? How are they modelling good leadership if that’s how they feel about themselves?
I’d love to run group therapy within a company. One of my therapeutic heroes, Irvin Yalom, is a big advocate of group therapy. As he says, at the heart of therapy is the relationship between the client and the therapist, or the clients and the therapist. The therapist does not have a magic wand that makes everything better, there is no magic potion that will resolve peoples’ incongruencies. But what the therapist does have is the power of listening. Which in turn gives clients the power of talking and of being listened to. And what a superpower that is! ⚡
