One Year Post-Birth: Taking Care of your Mental Health

Becoming a parent is one of the biggest life transitions that many people will experience. On a practical level, the changes can impact every aspect of life – every new parent will be familiar with the huge shift in routine and lifestyle. But one aspect that’s often overlooked is the impact of new parenthood on your sense of motivation and purpose at work. In this article, we’ll take a look at what to expect, and how you can prepare for the changes ahead.

 

What should I expect to feel on returning to work?

Since every new parent will have a unique experience, you could expect to feel a range of emotions – hope, ambition, motivation, exhaustion, anxiety, stress, overwhelm… or a mix of all these feelings! Experiencing a range of emotions on the return to work can be a healthy response to a complex, challenging time – it’s important to take time and space to recognise emotions as they come up, and try not to avoid or deny your feelings or personal experience.

Here are a few key themes you might find relevant to you:

 

“I feel like so much has changed since I left, and it makes me feel anxious, stressed or worried about my future”

 

Feeling ‘left behind’ or excluded from the organisation in any way is a typical experience for those returning to work. This is a completely natural feeling – and can often be experienced by those re-entering the workforce after any break, so it’s likely that others in your team or organisation will have also felt the same (in other words: you’re not alone). After acknowledging this feeling, it might help to take some time over the next few weeks to reflect on how things are going. As you develop a sense of your new routine, you might feel these anxieties ease – if not, it might be helpful to chat to a supportive manager or supervisor about how you can develop a sense of greater integration.

 

“I don’t have the same ambition for work as I did before”

 

A loss of ambition is another common experience, and most new parents will undergo a shift in core motivation, purpose and values during the process of becoming a parent. It’s entirely understandable that priorities shift, and we may no longer find our previous commitments or passions to be of interest. However, it’s important to lean into this process, allowing it to realign our sense of identity in a way that we feel reflects who we are in this new time of life, and understanding more about ourselves and our motivations. Instead of feeling guilty or disappointed in our loss of ambition for work, we can evaluate what we do care about now – perhaps, along with the new arrival, we also have a greater appreciation for our physical health, community or wider family. This recalibration of values is likely to happen at multiple points throughout our lives, so it’s important to pay attention – and enjoy the process of discovering or developing new aspects of our identity.

 

“I feel conflicted about leaving my child, and / or I feel that my attention is fragmented between work and home.”

 

It can be easy to lose our focus at work during the first months or years of parenthood, and this can feel frustrating, exhausting and overwhelming. A helpful tool might be to draw some boundaries around our working lives – for example, when we’re in the office and childcare is taken care of, we can commit to focusing our entire attention on the task at hand. In a similar way, we can also set boundaries around our home lives – when we’re off work, we can commit to not picking up work calls or emails, and practising full present-moment awareness in the moment.

 

Tools for exploring your “why” at work

For those questioning their “why”  (or purpose, motivation, ambition or values) at work, there are a few practical tools that could help. One of these is a ‘core values’ exercise, which can take just a few minutes and requires nothing but a piece of paper and a pen (or your notes app!).

To begin your core values exercise, give yourself five minutes to write down all of the work-related values that are important to you. Nothing is too small or irrelevant – include everything that comes to mind. If you get stuck for ideas, think back to the beginning of your career and re-evaluate older ambitions or passions to see if they still align. You can also reflect on pieces of feedback you’ve received in your career, as well as your strengths and key abilities.

Once you have your list of core values, see if you can condense them into two or three key ideas – for example: ‘curiosity’, ‘community’, and ‘innovation’. From here, you can write some notes about the ways in which you currently find these values to be fulfilled at work, and perhaps some ideas on how you might be able to further develop these work-related values in the future. You could include promotions or new projects within your current role, or brainstorm on future roles that might reflect these values.

Once you have your findings, you could keep it somewhere visible, or refer back to it every month or so, adding new values and ideas where relevant. Ultimately, the process of understanding your career values and priorities is an identity-related task, and – as with any identity-related reflections! – it will change and adapt over the course of your life.

Eloise Skinner, The Purpose Workshop

www.eloiseskinner.com

www.thepurposeworkshop,uk

www.instagram.com/eloiseallexia

Eloise is a psychotherapist and author with a specialism in existential therapy. Her work focuses on meaning, purpose, identity and values.