When Karishma joined her new company in September 2020, there was a ton of excitement to lead an established content team and to lead new projects and initiatives. However, being an outsider brought in to manage an existing team has its challenges, and those manifested themselves early on.
For instance, one of the writers left soon after because she had been brought in to fill the role but found the management unreasonable. The management did want to set an aggressive pace for work, but that wasn’t how the team functioned. Therefore, there was a lot of friction. And that’s the difficult situation Karishma found herself dealing with.
She didn’t mean to be in a spot. And yet, she had always been playing ‘the buffer.’ To ensure the team wasn’t overloaded AND maintaining pace, she took on more than her fair share of work, often at the cost of 15-16 hours of work daily.
Times got worse when all her team members gradually resigned. It left Karishma in a state where she kept pushing herself to the point close to a breakdown.
February 2021 saw her entire team leave. So, now she was trying to achieve more than her capacity and replace a whole team. While she understood the importance of meeting the deadlines, she could not meet organizational expectations. And this took a significant toll on her confidence and mental well-being. Eventually, work started to suffer as well. Nothing seemed to be going right.
Her company was already tied up with YourDOST as a wellness coach for their organization. And hence, the HR, who was also a friend, insisted that Karishma speak to a counselor.
He said, “You must sign up. You are under constant pressure.”
Although Karishma was mindful of how therapy helped other people, it had never occurred to her to seek therapy for herself. Her go-to coping mechanism was to speak to her family. She felt grateful for being part of a very loving, unorthodox, fun family. But the situation at work had reached alarming proportions, and so, every time she told her mother the issues, her mother got angry.
Hence, she needed to talk to someone relatively neutral. Upon being thrust to consider therapy by HR, Karishma signed up for YourDOST.
Before starting therapy, Karishma was a bit nervous about how she’d perform at it. Karishma tended to approach everything analytically, and so was not sure how or where to start.
This is the reason why, on meeting Reema for the first time, she said:
“I want to make sure I do this right. How do I tackle therapy correctly?”
“There’s no right or wrong way to therapy!” Reema replied.
Reema then further helped Karishma look beyond perfection. She helped Karishma reflect on what was causing her so much stress and gently spoke about her issues. Reema even talked about herself without taking the focus away from Karishma to make the sessions comfortable. When asked to pick what bothered her most, Karishma told Reema that she could reduce 90% of her stress by sorting her work life.
Karishma’s biggest problems stemmed from letting people down and not meeting commitments, regardless of how achievable they were, to begin with.
So, when stress was a central theme of their conversations, and then Reema suggested Karishma ask herself-
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
She further ensured that one couldn’t snap out of anything abruptly. Reema also encouraged Karishma to use her problem-solving capacity to address her fears. She suggested breaking the concern down into segments, as she’d do with a project at work. As a part of the process, she asked Karishma to imagine the situations, the worries attached to them and write down the worst possible outcome.
Reema understood that writing was already a coping mechanism for Karishma. Reema’s exercise helped her keep calm, especially when Karishma was mentally drained because of her work. Karishma tried the exercise, and as a result, was able to solve the problem within a week.
A lot of Karishma’s stress came from worry and her desire to avoid unpleasant situations. They were also compounded over years of challenging experiences. By reading her thoughts on paper with a clear mind, Karishma figured out where her irrationality and emotion overtook her ability to make a sensible decision.
Karishma is now on a path of handling anxiety and stress better & not letting it affect her.
In a fun rapid-fire round with YourDOST, Karishma rates her improvement a four at a scale of 0-10. She believes therapy is a necessary process and that it needs time and constancy to bear lasting results. Karishma’s stint with YourDost was great (in her own words), and it helped gain clarity in a time of enormous stress. Although she never thought of therapy as anything other than helpful, she now realizes its immense value first-hand.
Karishma’s misconception that therapy is only for people suffering from mental anguish or illness has changed. She previously thought that she, a fundamentally happy human being, didn’t need it. But she has come to realize that this is not the case. Therapy is beneficial to everyone.
And while we at YourDOST can’t thank her enough for honesty –
On our scale, Karishma is already a ten on ten as a mental health warrior inspiring change!
Karishma’s Warrior Tips:
1. One must not be afraid to explore ways to reach out; for even if you can’t talk to someone for an hour at a stretch, there are other ways to seek help.
2. Mental health is like physical health, so you may choose to talk about it at your own discretion.
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