A child inherits the dysfunctions of his family and of the society they are born into.
A spouse inherits the dysfunctions of their partner’s childhood socio-familial dysfunctions.
The employee inherits the dysfunctions of the employer’s workplace and their colleagues, and the employer inherits all of the above.
In this article I will explain why addressing mental health at work through topical interventions is never enough, and why we must shift our approach to a holistic whole ecosystem preventive self-education.
A stressed person at work will carry their stress home, severely impacting their family life.
A stressed mother will quickly lose patience with her children for small things such as a pair of socks on the floor. Her overloaded psychological system from work will cause her to overreact. Her children at their turn will suffer emotional stress caused by her behaviour. Their perception would be altered; they would evaluate their mother’s reaction as their fault. On top of the mother’s blames, they will blame themselves for their mother’s condition, which could be anything from a nerves crisis to a headache, or in the longer term, a physical or psychological illness.
In this unbalanced emotional state, they will carry their mother’s stress, which by now became theirs, at school. Their attention, school results, and extracurricular activities will be compromised. They will offload that pent-up energy on their peers and teachers. Bullying and attention seeking behaviours are the classic behavioural mirrors of this domino effect work-home-school stress leading to work-related generalized mental health conditions.
To protect themselves from this emotional pain, children, as adults, will choose subconsciously an indirect form of defense: either an illness or an aggressive behaviour marked by avoidance of any emotional circumstance that may cause them pain.
This fires back at the stressed mother/parents, adding another layer of stress. In time, this will become anxiety, manifested either under the more socially accepted forms of a physical illness or as a long-term series of small accidents at work or home.
Once this mechanism is triggered, the affected person will choose one of the two subconscious responses: passive employee/mother/wife/partner, or a more aggressive form which will eventually lead to physical and mental illness, childhood neglect and unintended abuse (shouts and verbal abuse, emotional unavailability, etc.), domestic disputes, all the way to domestic violence and divorce.
The stressed mother (fathers too) will perceive at her turn the situation as a failure from her part to cope with family and social life, which will further deepen her emotional turmoil. Her psychological state will affect the team. In self-defense, the other members will either react “in-kind”, or will congregate, excluding the affected one.
This social rejection will, in turn, exacerbate the stress, the anxiety and the emotional responses of the sufferer to the point of complete loss of self-esteem and self-confidence, and the esteem and confidence of those surrounding them.
The sufferer then identifies with their situation, ending up severely depressed and seriously ill.
This whole negative emotional spiral was caused by the initial stressor – either from home, brought to the workplace and then exacerbated, or from work to home and then increased through the feedback reaction-response above demonstrated.
The truth is that stress is not just one thing. It is a monster with as many heads as the number of human interactions.
The reason why the treatments for stress, anxiety, depression and psychosomatic illnesses cannot provide relief with a permanent result is because we cannot treat stress and the conditions mentioned. They are but a symptom of a deeper condition, and as long as the cause is not addressed, treating the symptoms will be a never-ending process deemed to failure.
Stress, anxiety, physical or mental illness, absenteeism, low productivity, bad temper, and all devious social behaviours are symptoms of the same cause: lack of self-knowledge and poor self-management in all areas of human life: physical, psychological, social, and spiritual.
Otherwise said, our subdevelopment and lack of self-awareness of how our underworld affects everyone, and how everyone affects us at all levels.
An employer inherits the family conditions of their employees the same way the family inherits the work conditions brought home by the family members.
The school inherits the same dynamics as an employer, and the family inherits the school conditions the same way they inherit those from the workplace.
This implications are more serious than currently acknowledged.
While employers have put stress management and mental health support programmes in place, they provide little to no relief because they address the symptom and not the whole ecosystem, the cause.
The psychological, behavioural models and several other techniques only work as a palliative, like a painkiller treating a headache, like antidepressants attempting to treat depression and mood swings.
One single person unaware and unprepared emotionally and mentally for conscious and deliberate responses in front of the ocean of stimuli we are swimming in each day has the same effect of a virus entering into contact with a healthy host. The virus will feed on its host until the host turns into the virus.
A stressed mother from work will infect her family; her children will infect their peers and teachers with their unbalanced energy and need for care and attention not found at home. The colleagues will be disrupted, the teacher will be asked to provide more than teaching, causing the well-known exhaustion of teachers, which will backfire in return on their performance and quality of teaching.
The husband of the work-stressed woman will suffer from both sexual and emotional frustration causing him to look outside the marriage for emotional fulfillment, often jeopardising both his work performance and family life. His behaviour will impact further his wife’s health and performance, causing her extra emotional and mental stress, which she will carry to work.
Her perception of what is just and what not would be severely impaired, often leading to prolonged work absence, all the way to litigations with her employer on various grounds on which she will not be completely wrong.
But even in the case of a win from her part, finding another employer would not address her real cause. She will carry both, the initial state and the new negative attitude formed, in an attempt to prevent similar situations and further emotional pain.
Her attitude will be more assertive, sometimes too assertive to the point of not allowing for concessions we all need to make from time to time when living with others. This emotional rigidity will then cause further isolation. When before she was isolated for her ‘weakness’, now she will cause her isolation through aggressive assertivity which will cause others to feel just the way she felt in the previous scenario.
From a victim, one becomes a perpetrator.
The much-disputed ego in both psychology and spirituality is nothing but the result of these unconscious self-preserving attitudes one develops to survive in the social jungle.
The health system then is itself a victim and a perpetrator. Victim through the pandemic number of sufferers and the overburdening of doctors. Perpetrator through its top-bottom rigid approach to healthcare decisions which affect us all:
Attempting to treat a symptom is the recipe for social failure. Addressing the cause will guarantee relief from all related symptoms, the return to homeostasis, and ultimately, to a better quality of life in all areas: family, work, school and social.
In the given example, is not just the mother who needs mental health support. Is her family, her employer, her colleagues, her husband, the school teachers, the other kids and their parents… One bad apple infects the basket. The emotional pain of one creates ripple effects in the whole ecosystem.
The more self-aware and higher consciousness level the individual, the better and kinder the mother, the child, the colleague, the wife or partner – the wiser and kinder our society.
After 12 years of research and practice in working with people from all walks of life failed by the conventional treatments and therapies, I have created The Competent Self® programme addressing all the missing aspects of human life: individual, family, work, school, relationships, and non-dogmatic spirituality.
Educating all sides, employer and employees, school teachers and families, health carers and patients into their health and wellbeing science is the only solid short and long-term solution to progress, health, happiness, and wealth, as an individual and as a species, and the CWS Preventive Mental Health Programmes have the unique tools to respond to our growing demands.
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