(Article by Peter Good for Counselling Directory, published 27th January 2025)
I've recently been watching the TV series Severance. The basic premise of this fictional drama (no big spoilers, I promise) is that inserting a chip in your brain allows you to completely separate your work and home life. Characters in the series have no recollection of their work lives as soon as they leave the office, and vice versa - when at work no memory of home. Initially, this sounds like a neat way to achieve the perfect work-life balance. However, the characters soon discover that life is not quite that simple.
If you feel stressed or anxious at work, those feelings can seep into your relationships at home, impacting those around you. This, in turn, can amplify feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression, which further affects your work. Conversely, if your home life is affecting you, putting on a mask at work can be exhausting, adding to your anxiety. It becomes a vicious cycle. Coping mechanisms like alcohol and drugs, can also negatively feed into this cycle.
Work can serve as a distraction from home pressures; in Severance, the main character takes this to an extreme, using his wiped memory to escape the pain of losing a loved one. In the long run, this makes it difficult for him to grieve, prolonging his pain.
Inserting a piece of technology that literally separates your work and home life seems appealing. Much of the work I do with clients involves setting boundaries between work and home (such as not checking emails outside office hours), which follows this theme of separation. However, we don't have technology that can completely compartmentalise our work and home lives, and the solutions for creating a healthy separation are not always practical or achievable. It is advisable to delineate when work ends and personal time begins, but this is not always possible.
As emotional beings, it is not as simple as flicking a switch, ignoring an important email, or hiding your emotions at work. In many circumstances, I would argue that it is not advisable to do so.
Work-life balance has become somewhat of a cliché, but the key word is balance. Balance is not about putting our stress and anxiety in a metaphorical box and storing it away, or pretending it does not exist. This strategy can work for some, but often only for a short time.
When work becomes all-consuming, the absence of familial or social connections can exacerbate feelings of stress and loneliness. Without a healthy balance or integration of these two critical aspects of our lives, the emotional fallout can be severe. In Severance, the characters are trapped in an environment that prevents them from processing their emotions or connecting with their lives outside of work.
How counselling can help you find balance
Even with a supportive partner or family, or empathetic work colleagues or managers, it is often beneficial to talk to someone who is independent. As a counsellor, my primary concern is what is happening for you - helping you understand your thoughts and feelings, cope, and make changes. There are thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that you may not want to share with family or work, as this could further strain these important relationships.
The independent, non-judgmental relationship between counsellor and client provides you with space to fully express what is going on for you. It allows for the exploration of manageable and achievable solutions and coping mechanisms.
For many, taking the step to reach out to a therapist can be daunting. This is why many counsellors, including myself, offer initial free 15 to 20-minute consultations. This serves several purposes:
Allows you to gauge whether you connect with a counsellor.
Provides insight into the process.
Helps the counsellor understand what you want to achieve.
Gives you the information needed to decide whether to engage in a full session.
While the allure of compartmentalising work and home, as depicted in Severance, might seem appealing, the reality is that it is difficult to simply switch off or ignore our feelings. Being free to express these feelings to a counsellor, who is not directly involved, can be powerfully therapeutic. Therapy can help you develop workable strategies to cope and explore root causes, creating the right conditions for positive change.
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