HR pros: How to be well when everything else isn’t
Even before the pandemic, HR professionals lived at an unsustainable and exhausting pace.
The coronavirus pandemic, financial and weather disasters, political and social justice issues, and the personal and professional challenges of individual team members have stretched human resource professionals beyond their limits. You’ve got a thousand emails to answer, rapidly evolving COVID-19 protocols to communicate and enforce, stressed business leaders, and yet another round of layoffs to handle. And while you’re dealing with the revolving chaos at work, you have your own children, marriages, families, friends, and communities to manage and navigate at home. We lived at an unsustainable and exhausting pace before the pandemic – and now we have crashed.
Related: Employers, employees feeling the strain of pandemic stress
Underneath it all, we’re disconnected from friends and family, and we’re lonely. Research tells us a lot about the physiological toll of loneliness. The biochemical poison our brain creates when it recognizes we’re alone is even more damaging to our bodies than smoking.
Something’s got to give, and too often the person you sacrifice is you. When I speak to mental health professionals, I tell them it’s an ethical mandate to take care of themselves first in order to best take care of the people who come to them. You have to decide you are worth being well because you are. You have been told that your value is in making sure others are well, restored, whole, and satisfied. You’ve come to believe that the more exhausted you are, the more valuable you are.
This is dangerous and wrong.
You are worth being well. You have value just because you are you – and this is true even if no one has ever told you this before.
Your co-workers and their families need you. You’re building the sidewalks–the infrastructure of the institutions–that are going to support families now and in the future. You deserve to be well and whole. We need you to be whole and well.
So, you’re in HR and you’re feeling this stress and anxiety. What do you do? I’m going to give you five things that can start you on the road for finding joy, deeper relationships, and a good night’s sleep. But I warn you, it’s going to be hard. You’re going to have to look in the mirror as you embark on this long and arduous journey toward emotional, mental, and physical health. You have to come to believe that you are worth this journey. And the truth is hard.
Step 1: Invest in relationships.
Connection heals anxiety. Other people are your emergency fund for life. You can’t be well if you don’t have social connections. You have to find people who you can honest and vulnerable with – people you can laugh and cry with. This needs to be your number one priority.
Step 2: Understand secondary traumatic stress.
These are small, repeated, cumulative traumas of dealing in the pain of other people. The hard conversations, the daily issues surrounding sickness, death, compensation, bad behavior, discrimination, and office politics. It’s like walking around with a backpack filled with rocks, and the weight on your back gets heavier and heavier with every hard conversation or separation agreement you draft. Your job in HR is to experience the weight of other people, but you do not have to let it become a part of you.
Step 3: Learn to control your thoughts and actions.
We are addicted to trying to control everything, and we forget the only thing we can truly control is (drumroll, please) ourselves. You can’t control your CEO’s mood on a given day, the economy, or but you can control your integrity, your honesty, your commitment to getting the job done, and keeping your dignity.
Step 4: Learn to speak in pictures.
We all use the same words, but we picture things differently. We say we want to be happier, in better shape, to have better marriages, and so forth. But we don’t really know what that looks like. What that feels like. So, what does the picture for your life look like? What does wellness actually look like? What does being a good friend, partner, and employee look like? Only you can paint that picture.
Step 5: Breathe. Eat. Sleep. Exercise. Turn off the news.
We can no longer deny our situation. Forty-two percent of Americans are obese, and 50% of the country is on some kind of prescription medication. We’re sleeping less and drinking more alcohol. We live our lives attached to screens. And we’ve forgotten how to simply breathe. You are worth treating your body right. Be a steward of your body and your one, precious life.
Finally, I want to encourage you. You got into this business because you loved helping and supporting people. You deserve support and connection, too. You are worth being well, and you are worth being loved. You are most certainly not alone when it comes to anxiety. What you’re feeling is completely normal. It is not a permanent medical condition, and it’s not your identity. It’s just an alarm that things are not okay. If it all feels like too much, be brave and get professional counseling. Commit to learning how to be well.
It’s time for you to look in the mirror and say, “I come first, so that I can honor my people well.”
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