From Chronic Stress to Stress Management Coach
I still remember the last careers lecture that we had just before leaving senior school. “You can be anything you want to be, you are High School girls, you don’t need men, you’re much better than the boys at the boys’ school, you can do anything you want to do.” "OK", I thought.
I got a degree and did what everyone tells you to do - take the first job you’re offered because it’s always easier to get a job once you’ve got one so if you don’t like it you can change to something different after 6 months. But I was good at it and I got a promotion, followed by another promotion, then I got headhunted followed by another promotion etc etc. After 3 nationwide relocations to places where I knew no-one I was starting to feel overwhelmed with workload. An unimaginable, totally inappropriate workload for one person. I wasn’t the only one. Everyone of my grade and above had such workloads; it was the norm. You just had to get on with it. After all, the contract states that you must “do the required hours to get the job done”. I was getting up at 5am most days to go for a run, getting into the office for 7.30am, doing a full day of meetings without a break (luckily assistants recognise when you haven’t eaten and kindly get you something before the canteen runs out of food and in the hope that you will at some point resurface from a meeting room to show your face so that you can answer their questions and provide them with support that a good manager should and perhaps have 2 minutes to chuck the warm sandwich that they had got you hours earlier, down your neck.) I remember not having time to even go to the loo sometimes. In fact, I remember my first boss suffered from recurring kidney infections because she never had time to go. If you haven’t experienced life in the corporate world then this all might be surprising and you might be thinking, “Well, why didn’t you just make time?” or “Surely you could find 5 minutes to go to the loo??” Well, actually, no. There isn’t enough time in the day to do all the meetings you need to do, return all the calls that your assistants are intercepting and reply to the, literally, hundreds of emails arriving in your crazy inbox while you’re in the meetings. I’d often have multiple suppliers waiting in reception to see me adding to the pressure of an already crazy diary. One meeting runs late, the rest then start late, some suppliers rock up early and suddenly people there to see you are taking up most of the seats in reception. That was a standard day before you have completed a single task on your to-do list - your actual work. I remember sometimes dreading ‘popping’ back to my desk to pick something up or to ask my assistant to help with something not least because I knew my PC screen would be covered in brightly covered sticky messages, but because I knew that I would get hassle from my colleague; I hadn’t done something that he needed and I needed to do it in that moment before I went AWOL again. He understood the pressure and my diary, but he often needed work from me so he could progress with his. Work that I had no way of getting to. Working late in the office was a frequent occurrence followed by a drop-in to M&S food for a ready meal on the way home. (I had ‘earned it’ and let’s face it, I had zero energy to create anything from scratch). I also knew that my evening was going to be filled with trying to tackle my to-do list. I would work until midnight or 1am, go to bed and then get up and repeat. I would also spend a lot of my time at weekends trying to catch up.
If you have had experience of the corporate world, then it’s very possibly a scenario that you’re familiar with. If you are reading this and are currently in such a vortex, then please read on and consider getting in touch.
I was never a top set or straight A student at school or uni, but in my career I was ambitious and a high achiever. I was (am?!) a Type A. Type A describes people who are driven, highly motivated, goal orientated, competitive, ambitious, determined, hard working (often ‘workaholics’) and are often impatient. Type A’s often get their self worth from their achievements. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they are often perfectionists. On the flip side, Type As find it hard to relax and often don’t have a healthy work/life balance. All that said, it therefore makes complete sense that Type As are more pre-disposed to stress than other behaviour types.
Timeout
After years of workload that was vastly unreasonable followed by one particular boss and team that were highly unsupportive, I found myself signed off with stress. The doctor said to me, “Do you know that you’ve got depression?”. I was in shock. I had no idea. I wasn’t in a great place, but depression? He wrote a sick note for stress and I was off work for 10 weeks. He told me what he could offer me and I opted for CBT. I managed to get back to work - I seem to remember that work suggested a phrased return. I also had a couple of sessions with the occupational health lady. Shortly after that my working life completely changed when after a restructure I had a change of boss and a change of team. It was as though someone had flipped a switch and I was living in a different world. I had previously felt like I was in a small boat on my own rowing against a really strong tide going nowhere fast whilst I could see everyone else on the beach enjoying cocktails. Suddenly I had a supportive team and line manager and we were all working together. Everyone’s workload was still high, but when you’re part of a supportive team working towards a common goal, it helps hugely.
Remember that I took the first job I was offered in order to get a foot on the ladder? Well, 15 years later and the ladder was still up against the same wall, but I was on a much higher rung and it was still the wrong wall. Plus I was burnt out. I could see an opportunity arising to exit stage left and I grabbed it. I left my ‘first career’ knowing that I wouldn’t be back.
I needed a break. I thought I knew what I was going to do - start a business related to my degree - but as it turned out that that was just an assumption that I had always made, and I discovered that I had moved on. I wasn’t the same person anymore. The first thing I did was sign up to a marathon, something I had always wanted to do, but not something I had the energy to contemplate previously. (I barely had enough energy to feed myself after work let alone train). The next thing I did was, unwittingly and very unfortunately, enter into a toxic relationship with someone who had a personality disorder. The impact of that was devastating. I had never been more stressed. I’m not sure you ever really get over something like that, but you learn to move on. After a prolonged period of chronic stress and burnout, and then a relationship which breaks you and challenges everything you think you know about yourself and the world, you find yourself having to start again from scratch (or at least that’s what it feels like.) What is important to you suddenly and comprehensively changes.
I knew that my life was going to have to be different. There was no way that I could get back on the hamster wheel even if I wanted to. I realised that I needed to redesign my life in order to live the way I wanted to live. Did I want to be office based and sat at a computer? Absolutely not. Did I want to take non-negotiable instruction from others? No. Did I want others to control my diary? No way. I needed to be outside in the fresh air. I needed to say yes or no, to call the shots, to be in control of my life. I needed to spend my days doing something that I enjoyed rather than only enjoying 20% of what a job role required of me. I designed my new working life around the lifestyle that I wanted and needed. My everyday was the important thing, not how many Mulberry’s I could afford.
Starting Again
I grew up on a farm in the middle of, a beautiful, nowhere. Both sides of my family have been farmers for longer than records go back. Whether I would always have come full circle, whether it’s my age or the result of stress & burnout, I will never know. I love walking, gardening, foraging, and finding peace in nature.
If wanted to be outside most of the time, what were my options? For starters, I decided that I didn’t have to do one thing full time. It was the time of side hustles and more side hustles, after all. I could start something that was computer based and balance (the magic word) that with something that was definitely not sedentary and facilitated by a screen.
In 2019 I started Life Coaching. I’ve always been a goal oriented person and it was a natural fit for me. It enabled me to use my natural skill set and the skills that I had developed over my career. It enabled me to carry on with the 20% that I enjoyed about my career while leaving behind the bits that I didn’t.
I also started a dog walking business. A simple, low risk business model - no van, no group walks, just me and one client’s dogs walking from their home and back for an hour. My diary was chopped up into hour slots. I didn’t offer less than an hour, only multiples of 1 hour. I wasn’t going to have a diary that was all over the place and like a jigsaw puzzle. I only took on clients within a 15 minute drive of my house. I didn’t know how it would go. Apparently everyone has dogs that they need help walking; I was fully booked within 5 months. I was turning people away. I was reliable, professional, caring and trustworthy. My testimonials speak for themselves.
Whilst building my life coaching business I would always try and work out how I could incorporate my interests in wellbeing and nature. For so long it just didn’t seem to gel together with traditional life coaching and I thought I would have to keep my interests separate. Until the penny dropped. And that’s when I realised that for all this time, I was unknowingly trying to find my way to Stress Management Coaching.
Simple Life Coaching; Here & Now
After my 20 year journey with chronic stress & burnout, I’m passionate about helping others to overcome it. I still currently have my dog walking business, because it is great for my physical and mental health. I get paid to exercise and have some me-time in nature. I use the time to think, listen to podcasts and to plan social media for my coaching business. I ensure that the balance of hours I that give to my dog walking business vs coaching business supports the lifestyle that I want. Online coaching is great and means that I can help people who live anywhere in the world, but I don’t want a lifestyle where I am tied to a computer and where I am sedentary all the time. For that reason I created a coaching offer which not only benefits my clients, but which supports the lifestyle that I want for myself. I know how it feels to walk or sit in nature and that is why I offer green & blue space coaching. Being outside in nature can have such a profound effect on someone’s physical and mental health, before we even add on the positive impact of the actual coaching conversation.
I now manage my boundaries and only make decisions that are right for me. If something isn’t in my best interest then I don’t do it. I can be really driven to achieve something I’m working on, and then suddenly become aware that I need a break. And that’s fine. There isn’t anything that can’t wait until I’m ready.
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