The Client’s Goal
Angela is a young women with a fluent command of 5 European languages, 2 Masters degrees from leading European Universities, and impressive work track.Young, beautiful, extremely well educated, with a solid portfolio of experience, she looks like an epitome of a successful young woman. Until the moment she collapsed emotionally, threw her career to the winds and relapsed in a deep depression.
When she approached me, she wasn’t sure what she really wanted. She seemed disconnected with herself, with a lost direction and unable to make sound judgement of her own situation.
My Approach
My immediate impression was she was going through a major burn out. However, I needed a session of 2 hours to explore and find evidence that was the case. In her situation, it was an issue of a break down caused by an excessive form of perfectionism. Burnout is a multiple stress reaction, marked by considerable exhaustion – physical and emotional.
I worked with Angela to explore what was truly important to her in her personal life and at work and what the balance between the two might look like. We also worked on the thinking patterns supporting her extreme perfectionism and demandingness from herself and others. Then developed constructive alternatives to them.
As Angela describes it
‘Tanya helped me realise everything I have been achieved so far was to respond to the demands of my parents – be excellent at school, graduate from a prestigious university, have high status and a well paid job. I also wanted all these things, but the bottom line was that I was doing it all for their approval. I was obsessed with succeeding at all costs. After my emotional collapse, I realised I could set myself more realistic targets that I could feel comfortable with. Tanya led me quite graciously and subtly through all these stages until I could make my own decisions on my terms.’
The Result
Angela reapplied for a job position, where she carefully considered all the job requirements. She chose a position which would allow her to have a balanced workload and space for her personal life. Having done this small step, she realised she wanted to be able to deal with people’s unrealistic demands of her and be able to decline them in an assertive way. By overcoming her personal crisis through reconnecting with her self, she was able to set tangible goals and work in small step towards their achievement. She had things done without frustration and over exhaustion.