Understanding life event using CBT

In this journal, I’d like to apply concepts of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to understand my life event. I was working at the supply chain team of an educational equipment company during the pandemic period. At that moment, the marine logistics is unstable and thus causing great pressure to myself. And the management announced bonus of six months’ salary will be given to staff a few months later. I was very struggle because I got severe eczema and backpain for the whole year, but I wish to have those money for the expense of upcoming wedding and emigration. When I look back to the history, the anxiety that’s affecting me is the uncertainty of future, and I jumped to the conclusion that having more money is the best way to deal with it. I did noticed my body situation at that moment and I thought I should carry on because that’s a huge money and I think I deserve it as a reward of working at the company for eight years. To deal with the cognitive distortion of ‘should’ statement and jumping to conclusions, I initiated self-talk and asked myself is it worth if I earn those extra money but forfeit my health. After a while, I realised that I still wish to have those money, but health is more important to myself and my partner. So I decided to quit the job and spend some time to rest and prepare for the future journey. 

In the next paragraph, I’m going to explore how I develop and maintain my relationship with my former colleague. I was promoted to a higher role to handle the development of new produces because of my performance. As a result, I have to work with colleague that I’m not used to deal with. The whole team promoted a 7/24 working style and expected the team member should work even they’re on annual leave. And they tried to justify this and asked me to follow. My new manager said that everyone else is doing it, so I as a new member must do the same thing. Since everyone were following that norm and agreed with that, I had no choice but to follow this irrational work style. At the beginning it’s fine and I justified this with the mindset that I should try my best to be part of the team. A few months later, I found that I’m exhausted and I no longer able to rationalize the work that occupy all of my time. I found that one of the greatest barriers that prohibit me to rebel was about the relationship with those colleague. I was taught that keeping good relationship with people is important and I always do whatever I can do maintain good relationships. I was worries about how the colleague would judge me, thus I pushed myself to stay in the role for a longer time. I decided to report that to the director when there’s a time that I couldn’t enjoy the time with my friends during weekend. I realized the cost of pleasing my colleague and that’s not healthy to my other relationships including family and friends. So I decided to abandon the idea of pleasing the others and strike a balance of work and my life. When I look back, I noticed the impact of “should” statements in my life. In my life, I was taught a lot of values and what I should follow. Now I have better understanding and that allows me to make correct decision to interact with different relationships. 

Personal blocks

Nowadays the society promotes the idea of diversity, equity and inclusion, many organisations and companies apply this in the recruitment as well. However, that doesn’t mean that discrimination doesn’t exist. It still exists in the workplace, but in a more hidden way. In my previous workplace, I belong to ethnic minority because there’re only two to three Asian staff. Most of the staff were friendly to me, but I can sense that some staff were quite hostile. When we’re working in a project jointly, I noticed that one colleague always criticises my language barrier. He’s aware that I’m not that familiar with popular slang or fashionable vocabularies, and he always explain the meaning to me exaggeratedly. It seems he tried to be friendly to a foreigner, but I though that’s a form of contempt. The tricky thing is that it’s hard to say it’s direct discrimination, but I can sense the unfriendly expression from his facial expression. The above experience enables me to understand the feeling of being treat unfavorably and I wish my client will never face this when we’re in a counselling relationship. It's inevitable that I will meet people that are from other background and they may have belief that completely different with mine. I will remind myself to demonstrate respect and congruence during the sessions, make sure they feel it’s comfortable to share their story and feeling with me. The key point is I don’t have to adopt their view in my own life, but I need to do what I can to listen and understand his ideas throughout the session.

In the next paragraph, I’d like to discuss what kind of personal blocks that will affect me to show empathy when developing a counselling relationship. The first one that I can think of is I’m hard to empathise with people that culturally promote machismo. I know that I should demonstrate underconditioned positive regard during the session, but I can foresee that I will feel very uncomfortable when I hear a male place woman into a lower standard and justify this in his own way. I grow up in a society that empathise gender equity and thus I own the value of treating the others fairly. If I have a chance to work with client that own different value, I guess I need very strong self-discipline to force myself not to argue during the session. Another type of people that I feel I’m hard to deal with are those with strong political views. I believe every people have their own frame of reference to see how the society operate, and people may have contrasting view because of their own experiences. I tried to understand my friend’s political view a few years ago. His sharing not only involved political beliefs, but also include strong negative emotions due to incidents happened in the society. I found that the conversation was very difficult because it’s a mixture of opinion and feeling, it’s difficult to differentiate them clearly during the conversation. When he mentioned some feeling due to a viewpoint that I disagree with, I found that I’m not able to show empathy, I was tempted to initiate the debate of that political point. Now I have more training and knowledge of counseling skills, but I still feel hesitate if I speak with a client with strong political belief. I’m not sure if I can focus on understanding his feeling instead of the political points. I think that’s still challenging to me at this moment.