Why Is This Important?
As a therapist you, more than most people, should be aware of the need for balance in your life and the importance of looking after yourself. Some training courses for complementary therapists encourage their students to check their PEMS state each day.
PEMS stands for:
- physical
- emotional
- mental
- spiritual.
Monitoring these states on a daily basis and recognising you own needs and requirements seems a good starting point. In order to do our work well, and to get the most satisfaction out of life, we need to be in good health. This means that we need to recognise our own limits, become aware of own vulnerability and actively seek to restore the balance by whatever means necessary.
Keeping Home And Work Life Separate
Whether you have a family to look after, or live on your own or with a partner, it is
essential that you keep your work life from intruding on the rest of your life. This can be hard to achieve when you are first setting up and there are all kinds of inducements to make you take your work home, or to work very long hours.
To get some order back into your life try the following:- physically separate your work from your home life
- do not take work home
- have set days and times when you are working
- keep your business phones separate from your home phones.
How Can I Physically Separate My Work And Home Life?
This is easiest if your practice is located outside the home.
However, even if you are working from home you can keep the two separate. If you have a room set aside as your therapy room and do not need to use it for any other purpose, make sure you shut and lock the door at the end of your working day and resist any temptation to go back in and do any pre-work on some of your cases. If your therapy room is also a family room, then make sure you lock away all your files, put your phone onto answerphone and shut down the computer –just as you would if you were working from an office. It can also help if you rearrange the furniture, symbolically changing the layout to ‘family’ use.
Leaving Work At ‘work’
Whatever your working arrangements are, get into the good mental health practice of leaving your work behind when you have finished for the day. This practice can be made easier if you get into the habit of literally, or symbolically, locking your work away. If your practice is a mobile practice, have a filing cabinet or lockable cupboard at home where everything, and I mean everything, is stored away after use.
Don’t take any business calls, or respond to any faxes or emails outside of your working hours. You may also find it helpful to have ten to 15 minutes of quiet time between finishing work and going ‘home’ in order to
sit, still your mind, maybe meditate for a while or listen to some music to help you unwind. This can become your ritual for closing down after work each day and it may help you to keep the boundaries distinct.
Boundary Setting
Boundary setting can also involve setting new rules for your friends and family members. Whether or not you work from home, you are likely to get some friends, or members of your family, who believe it’s alright to phone you while you are at ‘work’ or ask you to deal with some personal requests during your working day. This is generally because you’re no longer seen to be ‘employed’ in the usual sense.
You need to be just as tough with friends and family as you would be with clients trying to contact you out of hours. Persistence pays. If you don’t take their phone calls or deal with their other requests, they will eventually be reeducated to your new work boundaries.