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Where There Is A Will, There Is A Way

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Mrs. M (name hidden for privacy reason) was a 27 year old, married, female client working as a software programmer in an IT company and had graduated with top honors in both college and MBA program. Her complaints were that she was highly self critical and had feelings of worthlessness and shame because of her inability to perform as well as her past at work. She was unable to keep up her deadlines due to her need to be overly perfect with report submission and project completion. For the past few weeks she had been unusually fatigued and has been finding increased difficulty in concentrating at work. She had been observed by her co-workers to be irritable and withdrawn. She called in sick on several occasions.
 

The biological factors can be associated with insomnia and fatigue. Behavioral factors include social isolation, irritability, poor treatment adherence and the need to be overly perfect with report submissions and project completions at work. The mental factors include her self critical nature, denial to her husband regarding her problems and thoughts wishing that she was dead. The feelings include that of worthlessness, gloominess, shame and frustrations.

The behaviour was triggered due to the inability to perform adequately at work place due to over perfectionism. As a result Mrs M had to face the criticisms put forth by the boss. This behaviour can be attributed to her high achieving, career oriented and highly self critical nature which requires her to meet high standards. The sudden reaction was because she was rated as an underperformer in performance appraisal. Her boss spoke to her harshly and criticized her for her poor performance. She has not been able to accept the criticisms. This behaviour continue because her close friends were not in the same city to communicate and share her feelings with. Her habit of seeking perfectionism and denial to her husband about her problems made it stick to her. As a result, she fell sick on several occasions. 
 
In order to make her feel better, she was advised to practice relaxation techniques for warding off irritability and frustration. Since she mentioned she was interested in yoga, I asked her to take up yoga classes and follow a schedule. I told her that her negative thoughts related to self criticism were taking a hit on her self esteem which made her feel worthless. I reassured her that nobody in this world is perfect and it’s humanly impossible to be that way. I asked her to stop blaming herself for anything. I made her list out the positive qualities about herself and she instantly felt that she had been unnecessarily criticising herself. I asked her to follow a schedule so that she can finish her deadlines on time. I reminded her that she needed to finish more tasks in the stipulated period of time rather than spending too much time making one task perfect. I asked her to maintain a thought record where she could write down all her negative thoughts. 

In the following session, we analysed the rationality of each thought. Together, we identified irrational thoughts and tried finding logical solutions to each of her concern. She recognised that she had unnecessary thoughts that influenced her behaviour in a negative way. Once we identified the irrational thoughts, she was asked to block the negative thoughts whenever they came up in her mind and replace those thoughts with constructive thoughts. She was asked to be more involved in her hobbies and spend more time with family and friends as that would give her true happiness. She was also asked to share her concerns with her husband and asked her to be more open with him. I suggested her to take a small break and go on a small family trip that can help her bust all the stress.
 
One month later, she reported that there was a significant improvement in her work performance, she was less self critical and she felt happier. 

It was her own will power and self determination that got her out of her misery!

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About Author:
Vijayapriya did her masters in psychology from Christ University, Bangalore. She is interested in providing psychological assitance to those in need. She was in the school football team and also has keen interest in dance where she has won a lot of awards in school and college. Through Your D.O.S.T she wants to reach and help people using her academic knowledge.

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About author
Vijayapriya did her masters in psychology from Christ University, Bangalore. She is interested in providing psychological assitance to those in need. She was in the school football team and also has keen interest in dance where she has won a lot of awards in school and college. Through YourDOST she wants to reach and help people using her academic knowledge.
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