3. Work-life balance and other nonsense
5 mental health myths debunked
The Rewired for Good podcast | Episode 3 | 15 October 2024
Notes
World Mental Health day is an opportunity to take stock of where we stand in the humanitarian sector, despite much progress made in this field over the past couple of decades. This episode looks at 5 persisting ideas and myths in the humanitarian sector regarding mental health that may not only be inaccurate but actually harmful. They make it harder to tackle mental health issues adequately, with serious consequences not just for aid workers, but also humanitarian organizations and projects, and ultimately, crisis-affected people and our collective ability to have a positive impact. A myth-debunking episode.
Transcript
Hello hello my dear workers, I hope everyone's doing okay, I'm doing fine. I just spent a really wonderful week in Cairo, spending time with extraordinary people really, humanitarians, brainstorming ideas for impact, it's been really really good. I'm quite happy all things considered… The news remaining what they are across the board of course.
Just a few days ago we marked World Mental Health Day and I confess that I get a little worked up when I read and I realize the amount of progress that we still have to make on that front in this sector. We've come a very long way, but we have such a long way to go. I see it with the aid workers that I coach, with my humanitarian friends and with myself. So many of us are trapped in burnout cycles or trauma that we just don't look into, self-doubt that cripples us, all kinds of really delightful emotional treats that this sector is prone to producing.
And so I wanted to do an episode to share a bit what my humble little take is after more than a decade working in this sector, as a humanitarian and aid worker at HQ, on the front lines, years of coaching aid workers. Like for everyone, for me, there's been very, very high highs and very, very low lows. There's quite a bit of stigma.
And so I wanted to have a very frank conversation about it. I wouldn't say that any of my deployments have been a walk in the park, but recently I deployed to a particularly difficult duty station that left me with a lot of pain, a value crisis, open wounds really, and I noticed upon my return to my less extreme duty station that I felt a lot of shame over having a hard time. And I felt that people were looking at me weirdly. Like, I was not quite normal. And you know, I might have been making it up in my head, but that's what it felt like.
And one of my coachees went through a very heavy burnout episode recently, and she had to take leave and medication, and she was debating whether or not to disclose it to her boss and her colleagues.
Another one simply resigned because she was feeling so unwell in her duty station in the past.
I've seen colleagues hide in their rooms alone at night during weekends, refusing to speak to anyone.
And I also recently heard a horror story from a friend who says he was offered a job in a pretty prominent international NGO. He has a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and that job offer was withdrawn. I haven't obviously fact-checked it, but whether it's true or not that that's the reason the job offer was withdrawn, the point I'm trying to make is that our mental health is a constant worry for us. And that the opinion of others on how we're coping on not looking too distraught, not looking like we can't handle it or like we're not tough enough or something is a concern.
And so for this episode I've chosen to look at mental health through five very common beliefs about mental health that not only do I find inaccurate but I actually find potentially harmful.
And before we jump into it – sorry this intro is taking a long time – I want to take a minute to thank you for listening and for sending all the feedback that you've been sending me. It's been mostly very positive and also I've been very grateful for people who suggested changes and improvements. This is of course a podcast in its infancy, a work in progress. God knows what this will sound like in a year, but I want this to be very useful to you. I want to co-create it with you. And so the feedback is very welcome. Keep it coming, please.
So yeah, without further ado: mental health myths, because as long as we misunderstand mental health, as long as we have misplaced ideas on how to define it, how to protect it, how to restore it, how to go about maintaining it, we're going to have a very hard time addressing it properly.
And of course the consequences of not addressing it properly is lots of burnout, lots of unexamined trauma, cowboy attitudes, inter-aid worker violence and subtle bullying, peer pressure, insane turnover in organizations and in emergencies, which is of course not good for anyone. It's not good for us. It's not good for the organizations we work for. And of course, ultimately it's just not good for the crisis affected people and the impact we're trying to make.
So let's go. Oh wait, actually, I don't want to say “let's go” anymore. A friend of mine mocked me for using let's go as a catchphrase too often. So today I'm going to say “yallah”, let's look at five mental health myths that require our attention.
The first one is the notion that we should pursue work-life balance. I find that to be a massive load of poop. I think it's so much pressure. Thinking of our work universe and our life universe as being two separate things that need to be balanced as if we were some Cirque du Soleil artist is simply bananas to me. I don't think it's about balance. I think it's about integration. You have one life and your work is part of it.
Just looking at the math, right? You spend easily 50-60 hours working a week if not more. I certainly can't remember the last time I had a 40-hour week in the sector. But even if you do it's still a huge chunk of your time on this planet and so a more interesting question to me than how to balance life and work, is how to make it work together. How to make work, the biggest part of our weeks, feel like living. Not apnea, not brain death, not intellectual coma, no flat lines. Not like life is on hold while you work, not “getting through it”, but actually living while working, to feel alive while you're working. It doesn't have to be a balancing act.
And so I want to free us from that binary outlook and mindset that compartmentalizes work and life. And what if instead of seeing it as a scale with a plate on the right and a plate on the left, we just pictured one big plate and you decided to make decisions for that one container that is your life. It would feel a lot less like acrobatics. It would feel a lot less like this difficult balance that we have to keep and it would enable us to connect the two a lot more skillfully.
The second myth that I want to throw out the window is that burnout is a problem. It's not great. It feels pretty awful. Been there, done that, earned my medals there. And if you're going through it as I speak, my heart goes out to you. It is tough, but burnout, much like fever, much like pain is a sign, a physical sign. It's an alarm. And it's not the problem itself. And a lot of us try to fix those symptoms by sleeping more, by taking a break in South Tome or Zanzibar or Bali. And then we go right back to the way we were doing things without looking at what caused the problem to begin with. And that's not going to work.
A lot of us were overworking like a badge of honor. It's very glorified in the sector in many ways. And then a lot of us also see taking care of ourselves as contradictory with our mission to take care of others who are suffering a lot more than us.
Now, I want to point out that what mostly causes the burnout is the ways we approach our workloads, our overflowing inboxes, toxic office ambiences, how we perceive criticism, our need for external validation, sacrificing values, the fact that we believe that we don't know what we're doing or like we're not enough, lack of physical care, lack of connection, bottling things up and sometimes the feeling that we're ticking boxes and not making an impact, that's what drains us.
You can take a nap, but you're going to feel exhausted again.
You can leave your duty station, but you're going to recreate the same experience for yourself in the next one.
I'm not saying that taking a nap and taking a break or resigning are not helpful, but they're symptom relievers. They're painkillers. They're a distraction. If you don't look at the root cause of your burnout, you're going to take it with you wherever you go next.
And so my invitation to you, if you're feeling exhausted, if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you feel like quitting is to first of all, give yourself a little hug, I wish I could give you one myself, but then also move to looking at burnout as almost a gift, right? Like a finger that points out the problem for you.
The third myth that I want to stomp over is that rest and play are not productive activities, and so they can be sacrificed for actually productive activities. Meaning work. And that to me is also a load of poop.
So I recently coached someone who had a hard deadline for a grant proposal, and she canceled on everything that was about her self-care. That's food quality, sleep, working out, coaching, social life. And of course, we've all done that. I continue to do it on a regular basis. I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just inviting you to be thoughtful about it and to perform a mini cost-benefit analysis.
Basically creating time for an effort by removing time from self-care, you are depleting your capacity to produce your best work, to have endurance and to work as efficiently as possible. And the longer you do this, of course, the higher the cost.
So my recommendation here is that for your mental health to be as steady as possible, you don't go looking for time in the rest and play components of your life, because those are productivity boosters. Instead, look at your work to-do list and see what can be postponed, what can be delegated, what can be scratched off altogether, where you can produce B- work instead of A+ work. Where can you say no or not now and create time from there?
Preserve your rest and play time as if your life depended on it, because it does.
Protect it with all your might.
Make those the non-negotiables.
The fourth myth that I find a lot in this sector is that if you're going through tough times, you're broken and you need fixing. A lot of you, a lot of us in the humanitarian sector see a lot of suffering. It's pretty stressful. The physical comfort levels are low. We're not sleeping in our own beds. We're eating food that either isn't our jam or is placing us on the toilet for a week. We're far away from family and friends. It's hard to feel rooted in a home. Jet lag is ever-present. Long-distance relationships are the norm, and then some of us of course work in actual danger, and we have lost or are losing people dear to our hearts. Survivor's guilt kicks in, fear…
And I want to point out that if that stuff is hard for you, you're not broken, you're pretty normal. I'd actually be very worried about you if you were going through that perfectly unscathed, untroubled, and you'd probably qualify for psychopath status.
The shift here is not to think you're broken that you need fixing or repairing, but simply to learn some skills to manage that stuff so that it's there, but doesn't spill over and affect and poison other aspects of your life that you care about.
These are skills, tactics, reframes that you can learn through life coaching. Lots of apps have sprouted that can help, Instagram accounts – if you need recommendations, shoot me a note. There's cognitive behavioral therapy, non-judgmental friends...
But whatever you do, my recommendation is to approach it from a place of normalization and skills building rather than assume something's wrong with you and that massive repairs are required.
Fifth and final myth I want to cover the notion that your organization is responsible for your mental health.
We're going to continue to work on the culture as a whole.
We're going to continue to advocate for the right kind of organizational support to be put in place and for more of it, for more avenues to be put in place. But we have to admit that the movement here over the past two decades has been quite slow.
And if you're going through depression, burnout, loneliness, I don't want you to wait, because what if no one's coming?
And you know how they say that security in the field is your responsibility first and foremost. I think it's the same with mental well-being.
I mean, I remember just six years ago, three colleagues got killed by a non-state armed group, and three others were abducted. They were decapitated months later. It was just awful, and we were all very affected. And the silence from our organizations, the organizations that were employing these colleagues was absolutely resounding. Nobody checked on us. No support was provided. No one said “Hey, take a day off to grieve and process whatever's going on with you”. It was just radio silence.
I also worked for another organization – this was a good one – that sent monthly happiness calendars. And so you would open the PDF and like every day had an idea on how to, you know, sprinkle happiness in your day. And you know, that felt wildly inadequate for the types of problems that this sector generates.
So my approach is let's continue to move things at the higher levels. Let's continue to advocate for the right solutions. Let's continue to denounce the shortcomings, but let's also individually be the change that we want to see. It starts with each and every one of us making better decisions for each and every one of us.
So there you have them. My five mental health myths.
The first one, replace work-life balance with work-life integration. Find ways to make them work together, not in competition.
Two, treat burnout as a symptom, a sign, an alarm to be almost grateful for, because the problem is what caused the burnout. So go look at that.
Three, make your rest and play times non-negotiables. They're what ensures your endurance, replenishes your energy and keeps you in the right frame of mind. If you need extra time for a project, go take it from other projects instead, but not from the aspects of your life that bring you wellbeing.
Four, if you're going through difficult times, it's perfectly normal in this sector, please, you're not broken. You just need to learn to manage it. And it's very, very doable.
And five, while we continue to work for bigger, faster improvements on mental health at the organizational levels, the responsibility of you being well ultimately lies with you. You can do this. Go get the help you need. Don't wait.
I hope I inspired you to make taking care of your mental well-being a top priority. I hope I didn't piss anybody off, but if I did, again, my email is yasmina at rewired for good dot com.
I send you mountains of love, no matter where you are on this little planet.
I'll see you next week.
Take care.