Mental Health Tips 2 | Workplace Mental Health Institute

First Aid for Mental Health Problems – W.A.R.M.

01-08-2018

So you think someone you know maybe experiencing a mental health problem? Then the big question is ‘so what do I do? How do I respond now?

There’s no perfect thing that will always ‘work’ 100% of the time, because people are people, and we are all different, but there are definitely some clear principles, that are considered best practice when responding to someone who might be becoming unwell.

We’ve put together an acronym to help you remember the steps. And it’s called WARM.

It’s a reminder that as you do each of the actions in these steps, you are dealing with a person, a human, being, so be warm and friendly in your approach. Remember to use good body language and non-verbal communication that shows you really care. (If you are a manager, we encourage you to look into running a Workplace Mental Health Masterclass for Leaders in your workplace to make sure your team has the necessary skills. In the meantime, you might want to check the blog ‘How to Ask ‘R U OK?’)

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Lets have a look at the WARM steps:

W stands for Watch

– look for the signs and symptoms. Be observant. It doesn’t mean that you have to be going about your day, nervously staring at everyone and looking for signs and symptoms. If you do that, you will start to think everyone has them! But it does mean to just be aware. If you see some things, and start to be concerned, don’t ignore it.

A stands for ASK

– Approach the person directly. Ask them. This is the simplest, and best way to respond. By going directly to the person it avoids getting in a situation where you are talking about the person or making decisions about the person without having all the information and without them being involved. By going directly to the person, it can also help to minimise any fear or paranoia they may have bout office gossip.

So how do you ask then? (We deal with these topics more in detail in the Mental Health Essentials course)

Questions – It’s a good idea to plan your approach alittle bit. What sort of things do you think you should consider before asking the person? Some questions people are asking that are having good results are ‘Are you ok?’, ‘I’ve noticed that you haven’t been yourself lately, is everything ok?’ or ‘Are we ok?’

It’s important that you find a question you are comfortable with and that is sensitive to the other person’s style.

Location – Where is the best place to raise this? In the middle of an open plan office it’s usually not a good idea. Ideally you would look for a quiet, private spot somewhere, where you wont be interrupted. You want to he person to feel comfortable to talk, if there is something going on. It’s a good idea to keep it informal as well, so if at all possible. It’s also a good idea to avoid taking the person to a formal meeting room or office. In fact, maybe you can bring it up outside the office, going for a walk or over a tea of coffee? Just a word of caution: make sure the environment is safe for the both of you. If you are a person of the opposite sex, could you get someone else to have the conversation? Would that be more appropriate and safer for you? These are things to think about.

Physical Safety – You should also think about physical safety as well. If there is a chance that the person may want to hurt themselves, you, or others, perhaps it is a good idea to be somewhere where you can either escape easily or you can get other people’s attention,should you need to.

Psychological Safety – It’s good to remember that you are human too and have your own issues, needs and wants. While it’s important we take care of others, it’s also important that we remain strong and resilient ourselves. That’s why so many workplaces are doing resilience training these days. We need to take steps to self care at all times and make sure we stay healthy. If you are applying these principles at work and you are in charge of a team, then it would be good to ensure your team is prepared for anything that comes its way. Our Resilience At Work course is designed to help workplaces stay strong.

Timing – Another thing to think about is timing. If at work, and you are the managers, it is probably not a good idea to raise this matter last thing on a Friday afternoon, or at the end of their shift. You don’t know what it could bring up and then they’ll be going home where they may be alone, or in a not so great environment.

You also don’t want to bring it up right before any important work, for example, before they’re about to go into a meeting or give a presentation.

We usually recommend, that if you are able to choose your timing, then before lunchtime tends to be a good idea. That means that after this conversation the person can have a bit of a break before they go back to work.

The conversation might not be a big in depth one, but we want to be prepared just in case it does bring things up for the person.

R stands for Refer

– refer on to professional and other help. Here, it is important not to be too eager to jump in with ‘suggestions’ as to what the person should do. Remember, each person will have their own view of what is going on, and the action you think is best, may not resonate with them at all.

So again, questions are best. You can ask things like ‘have you seen anyone about this, or done anything to get some help with it?’. It is quiet possible that they are already getting some professional help.

Or you can ask them ‘what do you think we could do to get some advice with this?’. Notice the ‘we’ language, helps the person to feel like they are not all on their own with this. You’re in it together.

Or you can ask who or what has been helpful in the past? When the person identifies what they think will be useful, they are much more likely to follow through and actually seek help, than if you told them where to go.

Of course, if they really cant think of anything, then you might like to make a couple of suggestions. Make sure to give a few different options, from a few different filters. For example ‘have you thought about seeing a doctor, or a counselor, or even a life coach?’.

Your aim here is to make sure the person knows what options they have available to them, and if possible has agreed to take some steps to get help.

M stands for Monitor

– Finally, the last step is Monitor. Check in with them over the next few days or weeks, and continue supporting them by being available to chat or to help with any practical assistance they may need. If they have said they will get some help, just check in and ask how it went. Keep these check-ins casual, and make sure you also talk with them about other, non mental health related things too. You don’t want all your conversations to be about mental health!

So that’s the WARM response. Easy to remember, and easy to do. As long as you follow those steps, you have gone a long way to assisting someone with a mental health problem.

It doesn’t necessarily mean they WILL get help, or that they WILL get better. But remember they are responsible for what they choose to do. You have done your part to help, and followed the best practice we have for responding to someone who may be experiencing a mental health problem. It also means that this person now knows they are not alone. This is very powerful.

If you are ready to get practical, real skills around this subject, our Mental Health Essentials course does just that over one day. Perfect for workplaces of any sort.

Author: Peter Diaz

Peter Diaz is the CEO of Workplace Mental Health Institute. He’s an author and accredited mental health social worker with senior management experience. Having recovered from his own experience of bipolar depression, Peter is passionate about assisting organizations to address workplace mental health issues in a compassionate yet results-focussed way. He’s also a Dad, Husband, Trekkie and Thinker.

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On R U OK Day: How Managers Can Make It Easier For Staff To Say, “I’m Not OK”

14-09-2017

On R U OK? Day we’re reminded that leaders play an important role in safeguarding and supporting the mental health of their teams. Asking after the mental health of a team member is the first step, and a very important one, in creating a more mentally healthy workplace.

However, what we’ve noticed over the years in our training and consulting work, and what we’ve read in studies from the major world economies, is that employees are reluctant to open up about mental health concerns to their leaders.

A study we completed recently confirmed what we’ve been hearing. We reached out to our community of managers and everyday employees and asked them two questions:

‘If a friend asked R U OK?, and the answer was ‘No’, would you tell them?’

‘If your BOSS asked R U OK?, and the answer was ‘No’, would you tell them?’

And, anticipating the response we might receive, we asked another question:

What advice would you give management to make it easier for their people to say ‘I’m not OK’?

We asked respondents to leave comments on the first two question if they wished, and we asked about their gender and age group so we could look for basic trends.

The results were pretty interesting.

Results

Consistent with what we’ve seen and read, managers are a lot less trusted by employees when it comes to disclosing their mental health state. 29% of people said they’d hold back from telling a friend if they have a mental health concern. But that figure jumped to almost half when asked if they’d tell their manager.

Gender differences

What did surprise us was that women were less likely to disclose than we expected, and actually less likely than men. Is it possible that women feel less secure in their employment than men, and feel a greater need to keep up appearances? This is an area we’ll be looking into with future research.

Age differences

We received low numbers of respondents under 35, so didn’t include them in age comparisons.

We noticed that males aged 35-44 were the least likely to disclose to friends or a boss. Perhaps with these years being the phase were men start to move into senior leadership and take on significant responsibility, that giving the appearance of ‘not handling it’ would be detrimental to their forward progress and so they stay quiet.

The other trend that stood out was respondents aged over 55. Again, it’s possible that older workers are concerned about job security, and perhaps it’s a generational thing: with older people in the main valuing their privacy and separation of personal life from professional life.

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Comments

Would you tell a friend?

Of course, many people said it depends on who the friend is, citing things like:

How close they are
How easy they are to talk to
Whether they had the strength to deal with their reaction
Whether they were good listeners and would give their opinion
How supportive they are
If they thought they could help
If the friend has past troubles and perhaps could empathise

For many people, factors like timing, choosing the right setting and how bad things are, were also important.

Reasons they wouldn’t tell a friend included:

Not wanting to burden others, especially if they have their own struggles
Concern for privacy
Not wanting to be seen as a ‘whinger’ or ‘wimp’

But the news was not all bad. There were some strong arguments for telling a friend, a stand out one for us was, “I’ve learned the lesson of when you try to ignore it.” Seems like the message is getting through that asking for help is the best course of action.

Would you tell your boss?

Again, not surprisingly, most respondents said it depends on the person in the big chair.

I have faith or trust in my boss
It may help them to understand their situation too
I work in a supportive organization
I’ve had good personal experience

…were all reasons people said they would and have told their boss.

But the news was not all good. Reasons given for not telling the boss ranged from concern about what might happen:

Stays on your record and impacts promotion opportunities
Don’t trust the boss
May be used against me
They may doubt my ability to do the job
Blurs boundaries – there are other options available
I work in mental health, we are expected to be ‘above that’
Fear about being performance managed
Don’t want to come across as not having it all together, weak or underperforming

To being once bitten, twice shy:

Had a bad past experience
Telling my boss complicated the situation
Boss avoids me now and I’m discounted
It was used to fire me

It’s clear a strong stigma remains around disclosing mental health concerns in the workplace. Alongside asking ‘RUOK?’ which is a noble and very important first step, we need to be giving managers better support. Specifically, we need to do two things:

Help managers break down the stigma attached to mental health issues to create an environment where it’s ok to say, “I’m not OK”
Give them the tools and training to respond and to help an employee who tells them they’re not OK. Sometimes a manager won’t ask because they don’t what to say if the answer is not ‘I’m fine, thanks for asking.’

In doing so, we’ll be creating confident, psychologically safe managers, capable of engaging teams to perform at their best.

Are you a psychologically safe manager? Take the test to find out.

Advice to managers

But don’t just take our word for it. Below we’ve listed verbatim all our respondents’ suggestions for how managers can make it easier for them to disclose a mental health issue without fear of repercussions.

Be genuine and authentic, care and empathy – all the time, too late when it comes to R U OK
Show interest in the whole person
Be available
Listen not problem solve
Talk about the subject at work, normalise it
Peer support group, EAP, resources
Discuss options without going down workcover route
More conversations
Culture of being your whole self at work
Open minded and honest
Confidential
Stress leave, reduced hours, duties, RDOs
Better education for managers
Let them know re good work too
Mental Health and Stress Management Policy
Safe that it’s not going to impact job
Suggestion boxes for anonymous feedback

Ensure privacy
Clear open policies promoted
Leadership skills for managers
Modelling from managers on how to deal with hard times, be vulnerable, take leave etc
Don’t doubt the answer when you get it
Do something – not just lip service to employee mental health
Ask more often not just once a year’
Be OK with uncomfortable
Treat worker as a human, not a number
Get others with a good experience to share it
Context – some want to be asked and to talk about it others won’t.
Recognise needs of carers (of people with mental illness, elderly, children etc)
Ask but also express that work need not be involved as long as performance ok
Managers need skills – don’t just pass it off to HR or EAP
Know how to follow up the question

On R U OK Day, and every day, let’s ask the question. But let’s go a step further and actualy equip our managers to create the productive and mentally wealthy work environments that we keep asking them for.

If you’d like to know how you can build the capability of your leaders in this space, consider inviting us to run a private Workplace Mental Health Masterclass for Leaders for your managers or team.

Author: Peter Diaz

Peter Diaz is the CEO of Workplace Mental Health Institute. He’s an author and accredited mental health social worker with senior management experience. Having recovered from his own experience of bipolar depression, Peter is passionate about assisting organizations to address workplace mental health issues in a compassionate yet results-focussed way. He’s also a Dad, Husband, Trekkie and Thinker.

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3 Ways To Break The Stigma Around Mental Health At Work

07-09-2017

Mental health issues are a common problem facing Australians, and the related statistics are telling:

Currently, about 450 million people around the world are living with some kind of mental disorder.
According to the World Health Organisation, about 25% of the global population will experience a mental disorder at least once in their lifetime.
In Australia alone, about 1 out of every 5 of us will experience mental ill-health every year.
Mental health problems hold the dubious honor of being the third leading cause of disability within the Australian labour force.
It’s been estimated that Australian businesses lose more than $6.5 billion every year by not providing early intervention and treatment for their employees who are experiencing mental health issues.
However, despite evidence showing just how common this condition is, it’s been estimated that up to two thirds of people with a known mental health condition choose not to seek professional help.

Why is this so?

Access to care, language barriers, and a dearth of quality resources are a few reasons why, but perhaps the most insidious reason is stigma.

Mental Health Stigma Exists — and it Doesn’t Necessarily Stop at the Workplace

Stigma has a powerful influence in the world of mental health issues. Society at large often views people living with mental disorders as unstable, dangerous, or even violent. People with mental health challenges are often believed to be incapable of leading productive and fulfilling lives—indeed, sufferers themselves may even believe this. Research doesn’t tend to support these assumptions, but media and cultural expectations often bolster them, anyway.

These assumptions—real or imagined—can discourage people living with mental ill-health to seek much needed treatment. Their condition may make them feel ashamed, weak, and alone, which of course only compounds their mental health issue and propagates a vicious feed-forward cycle of stress, isolation, and illness.

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Mental Health Issues on the Job

If we agree that stigma about mental health is virtually ubiquitous, then it becomes clear how this same stigma can exist in the workplace, too. Specifically, both employers and employees may assume a mental health problem will render a person less productive, less organized, and less able to focus on their tasks at hand. Of course, in some cases this can actually hold true, especially if an individual hasn’t sought treatment for their underlying disorder.

Many workplace team members living with a mental health issue choose to hide their issues. They often fear for their job security or are afraid to risk “losing face” in front of their bosses, colleagues, and customers. On their end, employers may not have the tools and tactics to talk to their employees about their suffering. Indeed, an employer may not even be aware that one of his or her team members is suffering from a mental health issue in the first place (unlike a broken ankle or other physical ailment, mental health conditions are often “invisible” and difficult to recognise).

Are you a psychologically safe manager? Take the self assessment to find out.

It’s worth pausing here to reflect on something: mental health problems are common problems. It’s unfortunate that so many people grappling with anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other issues believe that they have to face their challenges alone. Fortunately, leaders in business organizations are in a unique position to change the way their individual companies approach and accommodate mental health, which can have a profoundly positive impact on the issue of mental health as a whole.

3 Ways to Reduce Stigma Associated with Workplace Mental Health Issues

A workplace culture that stigmatises against workplace mental health issues can be detrimental to both individuals within a company and to the company as a whole. Breaking through this stigma can be extremely difficult. Here are 3 ways to get started:

Educate at all levels.

From senior executives to entry-level team members, everyone in your company can benefit from learning more about mental health. Consider sending out company-wide memos, holding in-services, inviting guest speakers, or even running annual events such as “Mental Health Month” as a way to disseminate information and reduce the fear, stigma, and mystery surrounding mental health.

Ensure everyone on your team has access to help.

Work with your HR team or consultants to raise awareness about policies and programs designed to support both physical and mental health. Use discretion and show that you respect your employees’ privacy.

Make your anti-discrimination policies clear.

As a manager, it’s in your best interest to show your employees that they will not be discriminated against due to a mental health issue. Lead by example. Show that by acknowledging and seeking help for a health issue, a person can become an even more valuable employee at your company, rather than a liability.

To your mental health,

Did you download our Mental Health Awareness Posters? DOWNLOAD HERE

Author: Peter Diaz

Peter Diaz is the CEO of Workplace Mental Health Institute. He’s an author and accredited mental health social worker with senior management experience. Having recovered from his own experience of bipolar depression, Peter is passionate about assisting organizations to address workplace mental health issues in a compassionate yet results-focussed way. He’s also a Dad, Husband, Trekkie and Thinker.

Connect with Peter Diaz on:

Mental Health and Productivity. Why Managers Need Mental Health Courses

15-08-2017

Workplace Mental health is an issue of grave concern. In fact, it is one of the leading causes of absenteeism from work. Mental health problems at work can cause immense suffering to those experiencing them, and those around them. As such, there is an overwhelming need for managers, business owners and employees to address the issue of mental health at work. Managers particularly should play a significant role in promoting mental health among employees. However, it is essential that managers receive the right support to assist them to handle this task efficiently. If we are to empower supervisors and staff to make a positive impact on mental health it will involve giving them the proper training from industry experts and professionals through mental health courses.

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A course on mental health would create awareness and understanding among managers, as well as teach them important lessons such as how to categorise common mental health disorders. Besides learning how to classify the signs and symptoms of mental suffering, they would also be counseled on practical strategies that can support members of their organization.

The major benefits of taking a mental health course include:

Gaining the ability to understand and appreciate the stigma surrounding mental health at work.
Giving employees the confidence to handle clients or workmates suffering from mental health conditions in a humane manner.
Awarding employees and business owners the opportunity to understand the legal requirements surrounding workplace mental health care.
Teaching people techniques and strategies for managing employees with mental conditions.
Improving one’s understanding of stress and how it impacts morale at work.
Reflecting on our own attitude towards mental health problems. If the attitude is a negative one, then we can take measures to change and improve.
Allowing participants to learn possible interventions for workplace mental illnesses.

Did you check our Mental Health Courses?

The outcome of a good mental health training course should be to help management and their employees create a work environment where personal resilience is enhanced, and the comfort and safety of all employees are protected. This will enable the workforce to respond effectively to the challenges that arise while working, which in turn will enhance their confidence, allowing them to produce their very best.

Organisations often lose out on the expertise of capable workers due to mismanagement. Knowing what to do and how to manage the mental health of teams can be tricky. For most people suffering from mental health conditions, their last resort is often, sadly, a choice between a decline of their mental health or abandoning their jobs. Employers have a duty of care to their employees and investing in a course in mental health is the best way to secure the mental health of a workforce. The training should be practical and applicable so that the psychological safety and wellbeing of the whole organization and its employees is enhanced. Good workplace mental health is good business and at the Workplace Mental Health Institute we want to help.

Author: Peter Diaz

Peter Diaz is the CEO of Workplace Mental Health Institute. He’s an author and accredited mental health social worker with senior management experience. Having recovered from his own experience of bipolar depression, Peter is passionate about assisting organizations to address workplace mental health issues in a compassionate yet results-focussed way. He’s also a Dad, Husband, Trekkie and Thinker.

Connect with Peter Diaz on:

What Does ‘Recovery’ Mean?

22-09-2016

Often, when I deal with health professionals and people in training, I get a range of responses when they learn that people can recover from mental disorder. Some are surprised, some intrigued by the concept since they’ve never heard it before and others oppose the idea of recovery with a vengeance. Why? What’s going on?

The concept of ‘Recovery’ from mental health problems has been around for hundreds of years, and yet for many people, the fact that people do recover from mental disorders is something that still surprises many people.

There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that the traditional model of psychiatry has explicitly stated that people do not recover. We now have oodles of research showing that this simply isn’t true. But nonetheless, the misconception persists.

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So here is my attempt to summarize some pretty complex ideas, into a few simple explanations of what ‘Recovery’ means to us here at the Workplace Mental Health Institute:

The Recovery approach adopted by the Workplace Mental Health Institute emphasizes and supports a person’s potential for recovery.

1. We believe Recovery is not only possible, it’s probable.

1. Research over the last hundred years is showing that on average around 57% of people with severe mental health problems do recover. And the statistics are much better for people with less severe mental distress, those who get help early, and with newer therapeutic modalities now available.

2. We view mental distress as mostly psychological, social or spiritual in nature, not as an illness. Though there maybe physical consequences and interactions.

1. Treatment therefore can come from a range of alternatives. We are all unique and one size does not fit all.

3. We focus on ability, not disability.

1. A person experiencing mental distress has strengths, skills and personal characteristics despite their current emotional state. Research indicates that when people recover from a mental health problem, they are actually more productive at work than they were before becoming unwell, due to their increased resilience, and strategies learned.

4. We define Recovery as the absence of severe or abnormal distress, and the presence of positive emotions and wellness.

1. Everyone has some stress from time to time, but if mental ill-health is defined as severe emotional distress, then recovery would mean the person no longer experiences that level of distress.

Author: Peter Diaz

Peter Diaz is the CEO of Workplace Mental Health Institute. He’s an author and accredited mental health social worker with senior management experience. Having recovered from his own experience of bipolar depression, Peter is passionate about assisting organizations to address workplace mental health issues in a compassionate yet results-focussed way. He’s also a Dad, Husband, Trekkie and Thinker.

Connect with Peter Diaz on:

What Can YOU Do About Stress at Work?

15-08-2016

When it comes to workplace stress, and what to do about it, most people, most managers, will start to think about things in the workplace environment. Things that I would call ‘external factors’ like workload, overtime hours, the physical environment, etc. And these are all good considerations.

Yes, we should look at them. But very rarely is any attention paid to the ‘internal factors’. Those qualities, characteristics, or skills that reside inside each individual, and impact upon how much stress they will experience, regardless of the external environment. You see, in the same workplace, given the same conditions, different people will experience different levels of stress. Some people thrive on a challenge, work non stop and love doing it! Where as others seem to fall apart at the same challenges. There are individual differences, but that’s not to say that they are necessarily fixed. The studies are indicating that although people may be born with different sensitivities, and have different experience in their upbringing, personal resilience can be learned, like any other skill.

Therefore, when people respond differently to a pressure-filled environment, like many workplaces are, that is due to a combination of things relevant to the individual.

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As we’ve talked about previously, in our article Workplace Stress we all fall somewhere on the mental health continuum, and that can change day to day, hour to hour, minute by minute even! So if we’re already feeling a bit stressed by other things going on in life, chances are we’re going to have a bigger reaction to each new challenge put forward.

Think of the analogy to the camel carrying straws on it’s back. We can carry only so much weight before we start to feel a bit strained by it all, and our knees start to shake.

But if we’re the camel, we can also build our muscles so that we become stronger, and able to carry more weight with ease. And that is ‘personal resilience’ or ‘emotional fitness’. If we do certain things to build our emotional stamina, when life (or work) does throw that extra challenge your way, you’ll be much more able to handle it in your stride.

We recently released our on line short course called ‘Creating Personal Resilience’, which introduces people to some of those techniques that can be used to minimize stress and build emotional stamina or resilience. It’s designed with workplaces in mind, but really, the strategies are tools that can be used in any area of life – after all, we’re still human wherever we are, right?

Building your own personal resilience, focussing on those internal factors, is particularly helpful for those people who might not be in a position to change their work environment. Similarly for managers, if you can’t make changes to the workplace itself, why not think about helping your team members to develop their emotional fitness to better handle the challenges.

Author: Peter Diaz

Peter Diaz is the CEO of Workplace Mental Health Institute. He’s an author and accredited mental health social worker with senior management experience. Having recovered from his own experience of bipolar depression, Peter is passionate about assisting organizations to address workplace mental health issues in a compassionate yet results-focussed way. He’s also a Dad, Husband, Trekkie and Thinker.

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managers can do to improve the emotional health of their teams mental health

3 simple things managers can do to improve the emotional health of their teams

01-04-2016

In my last blog, I explained how people need to feel valued, loved, and wanted. I also explained that it’s normal for people to create situations to fulfill these needs. If managers do not work in tandem with these needs people will usually manufacture drama to get these needs met. So what can you, the manager, do to get some balance back into your team? Let me tell you about three that will make a massive and immediate difference:

1 – Create regular touch points to reassure people that ‘we are ok’

The wise leader doesn’t take the relationship for granted. It reassures regularly. Some managers make monthly appointments with their direct reports and remind them of why they were hired.

2 – Communicate clearly and courageously

Don’t assume your reports know you care. Tell them. Tell them specifically. And remember: most managers fail to do this because they lack the courage to open up to their reports. It takes guts to tell others you care about them and to be available. The results make it worthwhile though.

Read more on workplace mental health issues….

3 – Articulate a clear vision for your team and make it a part of your daily discourse

It’s been said that ‘the people without a vision will perish’. A team without a clear vision will perish too. But long before then it will develop into fertile ground for mental health problems to thrive. That is the death knelt for a team if left unaddressed.

Simple.

By the way, just one of these things will make a massive difference to your team’s mental health and help you avoid problems.

Try them. Let me know what happens.

Author: Peter Diaz

Peter Diaz is the CEO of Workplace Mental Health Institute. He’s an author and accredited mental health social worker with senior management experience. Having recovered from his own experience of bipolar depression, Peter is passionate about assisting organizations to address workplace mental health issues in a compassionate yet results-focussed way. He’s also a Dad, Husband, Trekkie and Thinker.

Connect with Peter Diaz on:

What If People Do Not Want Love?

01-04-2016

I was talking to a group of Aboriginal leaders recently and one of them, in the break, asked me, tongue in cheek, this question, ‘What if people don’t want love?’

And because my message is always centred around compassion, this is relevant. I encourage managers to use compassion when dealing with their teams. This goes a long way to help create mentally healthy workplaces. So, It’s a relevant question: are there some people that don’t want love? (Besides psychopaths, of course). Just to clarify, when I say ‘love’ here, I am not talking about romantic love (although it could apply too), but more generally, about that compassion, respect, unconditional positive regard for another human being, simply because they are a human being, with all the struggles and challenges that entails.

So, back to my question ‘are there people who just don’t want love?’ I have met people that assured me this was the case with them. They said they didn’t like people and didn’t want love. They even distrusted the idea of love and people saying they loved them. After a little additional exploring, it became apparent that some are angry, frustrated or disappointed at people. These people are not generally not wanting love but in fact, having a deep yearning for it and have been deeply hurt or let down by others. As a protective mechanism, their psyche has built defences that keeps others at arms length.

You can read more here….

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In my experience, these individuals are deeply caring individuals, sensitive souls, eager to connect meaningfully with others but don’t know how to go about it. It is natural for human beings to want to feel connected to others and to want to be able to do so safely. To be yourself and to be loved unconditionally. Without negative judgement of you as a person. To be held in positive regard. To feel that we somehow matter to someone else. We yearn for this. We desire this deeply and, if we don’t get it, then our psyche reacts – either through apathy, isolation, distrust, complaining, undermining,…you name it. If we don’t get what we need, we’ll manufacture situations to get some semblance of what we need. For example, These manufactured situations are likely to become a drain to your team’s resources resulting in stress, conflict and chronic negativity.

Best be avoided.

So it makes sense that if we want our people to develop a strong commitment and loyalty to their work, and our people want to feel valued, loved, and wanted, we managers would do well to provide that. But, how do we do that in the workplace?

My next blog will give you three proven techniques to address the emotional needs of your team. Stay tuned.

Author: Peter Diaz

Peter Diaz is the CEO of Workplace Mental Health Institute. He’s an author and accredited mental health social worker with senior management experience. Having recovered from his own experience of bipolar depression, Peter is passionate about assisting organizations to address workplace mental health issues in a compassionate yet results-focussed way. He’s also a Dad, Husband, Trekkie and Thinker.

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Tag Archives: Mental Health Tips

W stands for Watch

A stands for ASK

R stands for Refer

M stands for Monitor

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Advice to managers

Mental Health Stigma Exists — and it Doesn’t Necessarily Stop at the Workplace

Mental Health Issues on the Job

Are you a psychologically safe manager? Take the self assessment to find out.

3 Ways to Reduce Stigma Associated with Workplace Mental Health Issues

Educate at all levels.

Ensure everyone on your team has access to help.

Make your anti-discrimination policies clear.

Did you download our Mental Health Awareness Posters? DOWNLOAD HERE

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1. We believe Recovery is not only possible, it’s probable.

2. We view mental distress as mostly psychological, social or spiritual in nature, not as an illness. Though there maybe physical consequences and interactions.

3. We focus on ability, not disability.

4. We define Recovery as the absence of severe or abnormal distress, and the presence of positive emotions and wellness.

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