[fatneck]

I’ve been reflecting on my work recently and am trying to work out what level of stress is acceptable for me and the organisation. I am interested in other people’s experiences of how work stress impacts on sleep. I know there are many other indicators but theses seems a decent place to start…

I run a small charity (12 staff mostly part time; annual turnover c. £400,000 pa; we run a large Trussell Trust Foodbank [11,000+ people fed last year, 90 tonne of food turnover per year and growing]; Debt Advice service – c. 900 people per year, managing £6m debt and writing off £1.6m debt per year; 200 volunteers supporting everything we do) and increasingly find myself and our CEO saying things like;

“My waking worries last night were…”
“I had a brilliant idea at 3am this morning…”
“What’s keeping you awake at the moment?”

I would say my sleep is impacted most weeks by something work related, usually HR stress or organisational finance but occasionally people we are supporting in horrendous circumstances. As an organisation, we have a thorough internal supervision and appraisal process and offer external supervisions and counselling where appropriate. I am confident that my staff do not suffer with similar levels of stress to me and our CEO.

I am interested in whether people suffer similarly and, more generally, whether people think this is acceptable. I suspect it’s fairly wide spread as a funder recently asked us what kept us awake at night which was a) a good question and b) started this line of thought!

I appreciate this has limitations, please treat it as a straw poll!

[yetix]

I tend to wake up a couple of evenings a week to email myself ideas about projects which I'm working on, this is much better than it used to be though, as at one point this was occurring every night. One thing which really helped me was reducing my hours so that I worked 4 days a week. Sometimes my hours over the 4 days exceed a normal 5 day week but I've been a lot stricter with myself over the last 12 months and have noticed some improvements to my sleep patterns. I've also found I'm more efficient now, possibly because I'm a little better rested than before I'm more confident in my decision making and don't feel I need to recheck over things with the same level of scrutiny.

I work for a contract research organisation building databases for clinical trials and often have to figure out how to make various complexities about the trial fit into quantifiable ways etc. 

[James Malloch]

It’s an interesting question. My answer 6 months ago would have been very different but moving to a self-employed role has made my life much nicer due to the less responsibility I now have compared to being a permanent member of staff.

I’m just there to get the work done, don’t have performance reviews and on the whole enjoy what I’m doing.

I imagine your role is more demanding than many. I could say I’ll work 9-5 and that means a bit less coding would be completed (might impact my/others pay/bonus) however when the role directly helps those in need the work that doesn’t get “done” has a real impact on others lives.

Ideally people wouldn’t ever worry but I don’t think that’s achievable for most in today’s world where living costs are rising faster than wages. The world is a bit of a bleak place too in terms of news - I found that reading the news a few times a day hugely impacted my thought processes and impacted my work/life. When surrounded by doom and gloom it was harder to always think positively.

[Duma]

How much you care/are invested in your work is, I would imagine, the biggest driver for this - in your case both your senior position and the type of organisation and sector likely mean you are much more invested than most of us.

There's also a few gaps in your poll: the difference between "at least every week" and "most months" could be huge, and I'd say for your sort of role the line between ok and not may fall in the gap.

[andy popp]

It is an interesting question. Academia often has a very poor work culture. There's a lot of precarity and pressure and its extremely easy to let work bleed into all parts of life. Presentism may not be as prevalent as in some organizations but many academics are almost never not working. I'm guilty of this. I'm on email all the time and will often do editorial work over the weekend.

But though I certainly have things that can keep me awake at night they are very rarely directly related to work. I enjoy the vast majority of my work a great deal and feel privileged to have this career. I know I'm very lucky to be able to say that. I have a great deal of freedom to make choices about work and have largely felt trusted to get on with it. And I'm motivated. I would carry on researching and writing even if I no longer needed a job.

However, I feel lucky to have got out of the UK when I have. Managerialism is making very serious inroads into academia. I actually strongly doubt I would get a job in a UK management school now because I don't conform enough to an increasingly narrow set of criteria. Trying to conform to those criteria would likely not go well for me.

I'm looking forward to a very different work-life balance here. Danes take these things very seriously. When they're not working they are really not working, at all. I didn't receive a single email from a Danish colleague or student over the holidays until this morning - not one. If a child is sick you simply stay home with them etc.

[SA Chris]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/7-reasons-denmark-is-the-happiest-country-in-the-world-a7331146.html

Might be part of the reason Andy - is what you describe a cause or an effect?

As Duma says - i probably fall into the gap - maybe once or twice a month. My job is very deadline based, but my new job is nowhere near as bad as the old, culture and commitment at all levels are so much better.

You can take solace though, in what you are doing making long lasting difference to people's lives, which is truly admirable.

[turnipturned]

Hi Fatneck,

Really interesting thread.

I also work for a charity (8 members of staff) but we are conservation focussed.

I think it’s very stressful working for a small the charity and feel your pain. We have had numerous occasions when the financial situation has not been great putting a lot of pressure on staff and the organisation. You will probably experience similar issues to us. It is very hard to draw down core funding to help with the day to day running of a charity. I don’t think people really realise how hard it is to run a charity and how much resource it requires. So much so, people often ask me ‘so do you do this as a volunteer’’. In addition, unlike our charity, I think you have the added stress that the fantastic work you do, does have an immediate and direct impact on people lives.

A few years ago, I suffered pretty badly with anxiety (up all night with my head buzzing), this was for a number of reasons, but work was definitely a contributing factor (at the time I was 25 and the only person working for the organisation).

  My strategy was to have clear destinations between work and your own life, which is harder said than done.  Replying to emails and doing work at 10 o’clock at night on a regular basis doesn’t help anyone (I understand this might be required occasionally). I also think it’s really important to give yourself a break especially if you have been doing lots of additional hours. The success of charities is dependant on the passion and enthusiasm of staff that work there, being burnt out, anxious or tired burns that energy. I also think it’s important that you get the recognition and praise by both your staff and external people for your achievements and work. If you don’t receive this, I always find it worthwhile sitting down and writing down the things you have achieved in the last 6months (I find we never do this as once one project is finished we are desperately looking for the next funding opportunity)

Finally, I think it really important to take a step and always realise, that if it wasn’t for your charity, this stuff probably won’t be happening.

So to answer your question, unfortunately I think the nature of working for small charities is that you will feel more strain and there will be less support than larger organisations. However, if that begins to impact on your life and or health then you need to make that very clear to your line managers or trustees.

Anyway, good on you mate, sounds like you do a fantastic job and you are really passionate. So from me and the rest of society thank you for making people lives in difficult situations a bit more bearable!

[Paul B]

I guess whether or not you feel it's acceptable is your decision to make. 

Today marks my ~1-year anniversary with my new employer and I left my previous employer based, in the most part, to the impact work (stress) was having on my day to day life. I stopped climbing as much. I had a complete meltdown on someone at the wall (which was completely disproportionate to whatever they'd done to tip me over the edge; I think they matched on a board problem FFS). I'd go cycling and literally spend the whole ride ranting to myself (out loud) about the day's events (I'd avoid going out with others due to this). I'd talk to myself when driving (angrily). I was regularly waking up during the night with chest pain and shortness of breath. I was doing increasingly less around the home and generally neglecting Nat, and I'd imagine I wasn't the best person to be around at (a lot of) times.

Meteora was a bit of an eye opener for me as although I was there, and it was amazing etc. I just didn't want to climb and my head was appalling (not an ideal place to be shaky). Interestingly this persisted into my first holiday (Riglos) at the new place and I was seriously concerned Madagascar would be the same (it wasn't, thankfully) to the point I got in touch with Hazel to see if she'd take me on as a client.

For context I worked as a Civil Engineer within a Design & Build environment which is quite high pressure as the sums of money involved are relatively high and the margins are relatively low. Despite design being 'cheap' (when compared to for instance the cost of machinery sat around on site doing very little), my team was massively under-resourced (when I left they added 3 team members) and was also having to fight extremely hard against poor behaviors (leveraging hard won client trust for short term commercial gain is one example) from the construction side with little defense from management above. There were a lot of people simply saying things that were provably nonsense but these days that doesn't seem to matter  . Without going into it too much I thought there was a risk of having a serious H&S incident or an environmental incident if not both all with added reputation damage.

I should have thrown the towel in much sooner but on the face of it, the project was a once in a career type and had the potential to lead to good things (admittedly, up to a point I also work better under pressure). I'm fairly aware that I can't currently devote enough time/effort into sport to perform as I'd like to and I was sat on the fence about whether or not it was worth going completely the other way into work; WTF was I thinking?

What worries me now is that I see Nat in exactly the same position. She's working in a similar environment to myself and has challenges everywhere she looks. I notice often (or did before Xmas) that we'd talk about something and you can just tell none of it is going in at all. She also complains a lot about feeling 'spaced out' and you can spot it easily and has reacted poorly to a few minor actions by colleagues.

[Will Hunt]

I had a complete meltdown on someone at the wall (which was completely disproportionate to whatever they'd done to tip me over the edge; I think they matched on a board problem FFS).

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.


I've answered Almost Never. There have been times where I've been stressed/anxious at work, but this hasn't affected my sleep and I've thus far been able to completely switch off when I leave work in the afternoon. If anything, at these times I would tend to languish in bed - putting off the inevitable going into work.

[webbo]

I was a mental health nurse for 30 plus years and there were plenty of nights waking up at 3 worrying about decisions I or staff I supervised had made. However things change quickly in the clinical world and generally there is a lot of support and supervision around which helps. Also I worked for the NHS which being a very large organisation, you can usually find someone else to blame for any cock ups.

[Davo]

Hi Simon

Interesting thread topic. As others have said - it’s a good and extremely worthwhile role you do and given the type of person you are  it seems likely to be difficult to leave things at “work”.

For myself I think that at times work gives me some trouble sleeping at least once a month and at some times of the year much more. For context I run a small physio practice with about 7 self employed part time staff and my partner does about 3 days per week of billing and invoicing etc for the business. Although as mentioned by Webbo with healthcare there can be some stressful clinical moments I in general find the physio side of things quite easy. My anxiety comes from the fact that the business needs to pay our mortgage and finance all our general expenses. This means that taking large gambles to try and grow things really isn’t an option and I have to be pretty conservative in how we spend money to promote and advertise things. The set up means that all major work decisions come down to me (this is good and bad at the same time) and all the staff are managed directly by me (again good and bad). Certainly I have had a whole load of learning curve stuff to deal with in relation to managing people and getting them to do what I want. It turns out (who knew?!) that people are actually very variable and all have their individual differences in how they react to stuff.

Overall this means that at some times in the year, I end up fairly stressed and having to work a large amount and having some difficulty switching off from things but at other times it is to be honest fairly easy.

Anyway, was good to see you on the annual scouse bouldering meet.

[petejh]

I answered almost never, a few times a year maybe. That hasn't always been the case and like most I have in the past experienced anxiety and ruminating over stuff in the small hours. Actually the worst was from some volunteer work - writing a guidebook! First and only time in my life I experienced crippling anxiety due to exhaustion and stress.

For context my job should actually be pretty stressful in theory. I think many who know me might be surprised how much work I actually do (!) and how much is expected of me. Responsible for approx £1million turnover with virtually no guidance, in an organisation in the middle of a majorly traumatic merger and a lot of responsibility on my shoulders should anything ever go wrong either financially or safety-wise.
But I think I've always been quite able and willing to not cross the stress line too far or for too long, and if I think I'm getting close to the line I'm quite willing to turn my back on work and let the work suffer instead of it being me suffer. Because I value my own health more than I value any career, any amount of money, any boss or any client/customer I can think of. Is that selfish? If it is I'm OK with that.

For me no job or career is worth letting it stress you to the point that it regularly disturbs your sleep and impacts your health - which is the same thing. Can't recommend the book 'Why We Sleep' by Matthew Walker highly enough.

[reeve]

Great thread fatneck - I find this really interesting from both a personal perspective plus my thesis was on work-related stress.

Similar to Webbo, I was also a mental health nurse for far less time 7 years, and at times had anxieties about similar clinical decisions. I've just re-trained as a clinical psychologist, y decision for doing so was in part about the more boundaried role despite working with the same client groups which I hoped would give me some space (I've only just started a new job, so time will tell!). In reality, I suspect the factor that could - and hopefully will - make the biggest difference is that I feel more likely to stick to my own boundaries now than I did previously. This is obviously something I have had complete control over before, but through perhaps a combination of growing older / maturing and some of the self-reflection and development that my course facilitated I think I am better equipped to do this now.

I think there's a really interesting observation when you look at the replies to this thread in combination: Most people would say that it is unacceptable for work to be so stressful that it damages your health, well-being and dominates your supposed free-time, but despite this, it is very easy to fall into the trap of doing more and more work and so feeling more stressed and exhausted, particularly if you in a context which encourages this (such as Paul B's example of Nat, or you fatneck given your position in the organisation [not a comment on your organisation per se obviously, more a comment on what is expected as a result of running a charity]).

For my doctoral research I did an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy intervention (a bit like CBT) for people working in a third-sector social care organisation who had high levels of work-stress. Let me know if you'd like to chat through any ideas if that would be relevant 

[battery]

I'm a director at a very small charity that supports some incredibly vulnerable people who we often get to know really well over a long period of time. Strangely though, it is not normally that sort of thing that keeps me awake. My role also crosses over into academia and that I find really stressful sometimes which I know is in part down to a bit of imposter Syndrome. I feel confident and supported within my face to face work with people and the feedback is instant, if they don't like what you're doing they will tell you however when teaching or dealing with the uni it's often not until the end of the year that you know what's going through people's minds and if it's not great the goalposts can get moved very quickly.

There's lots of great stuff in this thread and lots I agree with. Although interestingly I am less stressed now I work for a small charity than I was when I worked for a big one. Even when we lost our core funding and had to have conversations about redundancies and potentially closing the company, I didn't feel as worried as I did when working in a larger more stable organisation. A lot of this is down to the fact that I absolutely love my job. I really believe in what we do and I feel like I have found where I fit in the world, both in terms of the work and the ethos of the company.

It can be really hard to switch off however and I often find myself checking emails and jotting down notes in the evenings and weekends. I try to be disciplined and one thing I try to do is step away from the phone - if it is in my hand, it is tempting to check social media then check emails. I try hard not to work from home if I can so that my brain doesn't associate the dining room table with work (something I have found useful since being a student) and I like my 45-60 minute commute, I take that time to listen to science podcasts/audio books that challenge me but in a completely different field to my work, it helps me switch off.

[Oldmanmatt]

I was the General Manager of a shipyard in Dubai.
So reporting directly to the group chairman, a TO of $20M+ (The last yacht I completed sold for $24M @$10M profit, for instance, but they were all multi year projects, so TO all over the shop).

It nearly killed me. By 2008, I was putting in 12-16hr days, 7 days a week (in the 2007/08 year, I had 15 days off, total). With a toddler at home and another on the way, hardly any sleep, an impending move to a new, larger site, an over excited  boss eager to expand (but not eager to let me employ a new layer of senior managers to assist me) I took my bonus from the last yacht and quit.

I get what Pete says, but it was a really hard decision. I had no plan, not really, just enough money to have time to think. I don’t think I would have been able to just stop, otherwise.
I suspect it’s family that make that difference.
Up until that point, I had quit so many jobs/projects I’d lost count. I’d been a project worker since I left the Navy in ‘96. If I didn’t like something, I’d just move on. I would have absolutely agreed with Pete in those days, I’ve changed a great deal since then.

I was also lucky, in that I hadn’t fallen into the debt trap. Massive salaries and bonuses, were an everyday thing in Dubai, but so were massive debts. Huge villas, cars, yachts etc and suddenly even quite huge pay checks were heavily committed. Failure to cover your debts in Dubai, lands you in jail (just bouncing a cheque was enough).
Plenty of  acquaintances ended up in jail, one is still there (since 2010) because his business went tits up, leaving him owing ~$1M.

After that, I was running my Consulting and Surveying company, a TO of ~£90K, just me (really, with some casuals). Again, when Lili, my wife, was first diagnosed with cancer and number two child was only 18 months, I had to scale back my work dramatically. So much, that lost 75% of my first year turnover in year two. Eventually, by the time treatment was done, a year later, I pulled the plug and took a Chief Engineer’s position on a Saudi owned yacht. All the money from the Dubai era had evaporated. Prince Turki, the yacht owner and Saudi defence minister, was arrested and imprisoned, his assets seized (BAE scandal) and after I suddenly found myself and the vessel, under arrest in Barcelona.
Great for my climbing.
Fucking shit for everything  else.
We’d taken enough money to cover a few months, but the pay cheques had stopped. It’s too complicated to detail here, but when a vessel is arrested by a port authority, if debts are unpaid, eventually (and sooner than you might think) the authority auction the vessel. In this case, the first debt settled are crew salaries. My salary was €9k/month, it was worth waiting for. I had to for the family. But keeping a vessel like that going, with no money/budget, no shore power, no credit for fuel, no parts, no food money etc etc, was bloody stressful. Trying to keep it in a desirable condition for auction. Again. No sleep, deep depression and anxiety.
The family were now school age, but they came out to stay with me on the yacht during holidays. We could eke out Easyjet tickets etc with a bitof help from relatives, but I couldn’t risk leaving before resolving the issues and getting paid the now 9 months of back pay.

Then the cancer came back.

I left and came home.

But truthfully I had a full breakdown atthis point. Somehow I split into two people, the one who carried on, looking after kids and sick wife etc and another who shouted at walls and raged, when no one was looking. I was unable to help myself at this point.

By the time Lili died, in 2012, we were homeless and broke. The council put us onto the emergency list and we got a house pretty quickly. We’d had no income for almost two years.

I eventually got my money from the Prince, mid 2012.

And, that’s how I ended up with a Climbing Gym.

And that’s so damn stressful!

Not at first, at first it was liberating. But running an SME in the UK is bloody hard. Heat waves, kill climbing walls, for instance. We’ve had a lot of heat waves in the last 7 years.

We hired a man withserious mental health issues. We didn’t know, because he had multiple personalities, unfortunately, the one we hired/interviewed, wasn’t the one who turned up for work. He had a three month trial contract.
We decided not to give him a permanent contract at the end of the trial (we still didn’t know hewas ill, just thought he was crap).
He took us to tribunal for discrimination against his disability. About the worst thing that can happen, Tribunalwise as damages are unlimited and directors not protected.
It took a year and a lot of money, but the Judge eventually threw out the case.
But the stress! Ffs!

I’m done.

We’re keeping the business, but we’re going to be handing over the day to day running to our staff and an HR company.

I’m going back to sea. After recertification, I’m joining the Navy again as an Engineering officer.
Sort of, anyway, we’re going to be in RN uniform, with Merchant Navy rank insignia, on civilian T&C’s and confined (initially) to OPV’s (Offshore Patrol Vessels). I’m going to be DMEO at first, because I’ve been ashore too long. But it’s one month on, one month off and steady, good, money.

But even this is stressful.

I still don’t have my contract.

I have to redo and finance all my firefighting, sea survival, survival craft license, medical care certification and sit a professional Oral exam (at a fee of £220), totalling more than £2k without accommodation costs, that I don’t have.

So even the “easy” option is killing my sleep patterns.

I will get through it, but really tempted to go back ontothe Fluoxetine to do so.

I couldn’t run a charity.

We do a little work with other bereaved families (my partner, Polly, is also a widow) and that is traumatic enough. I think, like the medical/nursing profession, you need to be something special to do that. I don’t know how you do it at all. I’d have gone postal at the system by now, knowing how it works against the unfortunate.

I/We only got through the crap, thanks to various charities (including me getting that back pay, my Union were useless). The system is bloody awful to those in genuine need (seems to favour liars and charlatans, mind you).

[battery]

Oldmanmatt I am consistently in awe of you. I really wish you (or anyone else) hadn't had to go through all of that but your ability to speak about it is important for you and others.

In terms of running a charity, we all have our triggers and red lines, it's about knowing what they are and managing them. I for instance try not to do family based work as it tends to be young children and with 2 youngsters myself I find it incredibly upsetting.

Resilience ce is a word I talk about a lot, I make a conscious effort to look after myself in my personal life so that my resilience stays high for my professional life. But I know that I'm lucky to be stable, if things were not so strong at home I wouldn't have the reserves to do what I do. Similarly I avoid the news in the evenings and don't watch a lot of TV dramas or charity appeals (CiN for example) because I've used all my rescilence up at work so find them too hard to watch.

[fatneck]

Thanks for the replies, comments, recommendations, general good vibes and offers of support both on here and in PM! Ironically, I am not losing any sleep at the moment but my back is fucked from moving loads of donated food! Ha!

Agree with loads of the points made and I am generally pretty good at switching off. In fact, I almost never have any difficulty falling asleep - light out and I'm snoring pushing zeds in seconds (much to my better half's annoyance!)...

I am pretty invested in the people we support but also removed from them by virtue of managing the frontline staff. James mentioned not watching the news and this is a good point. The current political climate lends itself to significant quantities of doom and gloom and I was recently asked how I stayed positive? My answer is always to focus on the individuals and families we support. The small differences we can make and the stories I hear – this is what makes the job worthwhile in a climate of cuts, lack of good jobs, increased cost of living, universal balls up, stagnant wages etc etc…

I think one of the specific factors in my role is that my boss and I have very different thresholds for stress – he is driven and motivated by it to a much higher degree than I and this impacts on the culture of the organisation. Andy mentioned the “poor work culture” of academia and my boss comes from this background and undoubtedly this affects how the organisation approaches stress in the workplace.

We had a good trustees meeting last night where I raised this and we have agreed a culture and values away day. We also have some bespoke boundaries training coming up later this month. This is all good stuff and I feel like I am being listened to!

OMM – kudos bro and as Rachel said, I am in awe of what you have dealt with over the years. Best of luck with future plans! 

And to finish, (although this feels a little bit rich given what has been said on here since I started writing this reply) but I did some filming with the One Show over the weekend and may appear on the show this Thursday or Friday!

[mrjonathanr]

Replying to emails and doing work at 10 o’clock at night on a regular basis doesn’t help anyone (I understand this might be required occasionally).

Basically, that is teaching. Come home, relax, put kids to bed, start work around 8 or 9pm.

[Oldmanmatt]

Just an addendum to my post above, about an hour ago (16:30), I received an email from SSAFA, confirming that they, along with the Royal Naval benevolent fund, the IMAREST benevolent fund and the Merchant Navy benevolent fund, will be funding my retraining; between them.

So it’s all booked and a major weight has lifted. So, this morning’s 4am, sweaty and bothered, sudden wakefulness and subsequent pacing around the living room; really wasn’t required...

[webbo]

As side issue I retired 2 years ago and for about 18 months I would still occasionally wake up in the middle of the night feeling anxious but about completely trivial things. For example I would find my self worrying about what if my bike broke along way from home, while on a ride during the week. When I wouldn’t be able to ring the wife for a rescue.
Currently moving house so waking up panicking about where we are going to live as we complete the sale, weeks before the house we are buying completes.

[Falling Down]

Good thread Fatneck.  I'll write when I have a bit more time, but in the meantime, this podcast from Jared Green (Disclaimer : I know Jared through my training) is pretty good. Ignore the 'wellness' in the title as I know that can be a turnoff - there's some good practical advice on it, particularly managing the boundary between work and homelife.

https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/ukcp-news/podcasts/talking-therapies-how-can-you-achieve-workplace-wellness/

[andy popp]

But truthfully I had a full breakdown atthis point. Somehow I split into two people, the one who carried on, looking after kids and sick wife etc and another who shouted at walls and raged, when no one was looking. I was unable to help myself at this point.

I didn't have a breakdown but know absolutely what you mean about splitting into two people. When my children were 3 and 7 my wife was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that proved to be extremely aggressive. I was her primary carer and primary parent to the children for the next five years. There were many crises, late night dashes to hospital, as well as stays in hospitals of months at a time, driving into the city every evening to visit. All the while I held down a job I had to commute a couple of hundred miles to once a week, got promoted, undertook significant administrative roles, published huge amounts, travelled to conferences (I did have help at home during these absences) and even maintained some kind of climbing standard. After she died I spent the next ten years as a single parent, still publishing in a very steady stream, took on my leadership roles, got promoted a couple more times. It was utterly breakneck for 15 years. I look back now and have no idea how I did it (or why even, sometimes).

[tomtom]

The posts here are very strong - its amazing adaptation to the adversity.

For me - I have always been able to partition work stress in relation to deadlines/workload well. However, I find personal conflict (whether that be with a fuckwit boss - as we may happen to have at the moment) difficult to section off - and find myself waking up in the night getting angry / sad about situations that may or may not happen. I am a (classic?) scenario player - in that I go through and through all the different peruations of what might happen in order to feel prepared and/or make myself feel better that nothing more can be done.

Since late 2014 I've mitigated alot of this by going part time (50%) which removes me from any management roles within work, returning me to being one of the troops rather than an officer - of which I am far more comfortable. But even this cushion does not get me out of every work stress - especially as large parts of the University will enevitably be closing and we (as a department) have lost close to half of our students and teaching staff. But thats turning into a whine more than a post about stress etc...

Moving PT has meant that work is now the smaller part of my week than not work (whereas before it could be all consuming). Two things helped with this. First going 50% - it meant there were no quibbles about how my workload was sliced up and what days I was in - I see this with people droppign a day and still doing the same work. Second, I work Mon > Weds, and on thursdays I had childcare all day. So my working week HAD to finish on Weds... there was no opportunity to do any work at all on thursdays.

Andy and Matt - your posts are remarkable in what you managed to carry on doing whilst effectively having a FT job caring... I've found with my academic job in the past that when dealing with personal life adversity the mentally consuming facets of academic work can provide a safe bubble in that they are a space where I can lose myself for hours (or days) if I choose to. Related to this a bit (I may be rambling) I think doing a PhD leaves many people with a long term guilt if they are not working...

[battery]

I think doing a PhD leaves many people with a long term guilt if they are not working...

0

Might be going slightly off topic but as someone who is applying to do a PhD as part of my role I'm curious to know what you mean by this?

[Wil]

Sobering reading these!

I worked full time as a teacher for several years. PGCE was stressful, but I felt busy rather than stressed out and generally very well supported. I felt like this for the first term in a teaching post, but the stress built. I had (arrogantly) assumed I would be able to cope with the stress of teaching, but I felt a very large responsibility to the kids I taught and have tendencies to perfectionism which made it hard to accept my own failures along the way. I reached a level of stress where I had a strange combination of apathy and anxiety - I think really this was because I cared very much about doing a good job, but advice I was given to improve conflicted with my own feelings or personality, was a short term fix that wouldn't help me be better in the future or was given to make my line manager look good for taking action. I lost all context on whether I was doing the job well, there are no easy measures to see this by. I had a head of department who was a bully, but in a classic case I saw the bullying as part of their own insecurity and felt sorry for them. It took me a long time to recognise just how damaging it had been to me. I did report some concerns to senior leadership at the time, but they didn't take any action and it ended with me signed off work with stress and quitting.

I went part time with teaching after a bit of time out, and while this was better in many ways it introduces other problems. If I were married to the idea of being a teacher this might have been a long term plan though and I felt respected and listened to by the school, so there's a chance that some of the problems could be mitigated. I left in December, SO other job change forced my hand but I'm glad to be out and don't intend on going back.

My sleep patterns have been pretty messed up since the year before I started teaching. While I was teaching I frequently lost sleep over things that happened at school, replayed arguments in my head. I don't like conflict and not being backed up properly with managing children's behaviour didn't help at all. During the holidays I would have nightmares for the first 2 weeks before it would settle down and I could sleep properly.

Fingers crossed for developing better habits going forward!