Therapy
Career Therapy
WHAT IS THE STORY OF YOUR CAREER?
Career Therapy
What is the story of your career? The narrative we use to frame our career decisions has a big impact on how we feel about our work. Our careers and our sense of self are usually tightly linked, yet we don’t always recognize this relationship. This connection can have a big impact on how we relate to others at work, how we face a new challenge or how we approach looking for our next job.
Here are a few examples of this connection at play:
When we look at our career, we often focus on the negatives: the promotion we were passed up for, the job we applied to and never heard back, or the boss whom we didn’t get along with. This negative lens makes it challenging to weave our past experiences into a purposeful narrative about our future success.
Sometimes our career decisions were not our own, so it feels challenging to “own” them and describe them to others. For example, perhaps we consciously or unconsciously selected a career path to please our parents. If this path isn’t a good fit with our personality and skills, we may feel disconnected from it and unhappy.
Sitting down to write a resume feels daunting because it feels like a reflection of who we are. In reality, it’s a summary of our career journey thus far, but emotionally it can feel much bigger.
Highlighting our accomplishments can feel like we’re bragging or promoting ourselves, which for many of us, does not feel natural. We feel that our accomplishments should speak for themselves, yet in reality, we need to weave together the story so that we and others can understand what we’ve achieved and where we want to go from here.
Connecting to the twists and turns of our career story and sharing it with others can leave us feeling vulnerable, particularly if we haven’t felt ownership of the decisions.
I am ready to start my journey
At PWS, we focus on the connection between your career and your sense of self. We explore career decisions, interests and needs to help identify what may be at the root cause of stress, frustration or feeling lost.
Our areas of focus include:
Career change/exploration
Interpersonal dynamics at work
Identifying and owning strengths
Navigating a new role/promotion
Processing the ups and downs of change
Processing the emotional stress of searching for a job
Providing support for the components of a job search: Resume / Cover Letter / Elevator Pitch / Online Profile Help
Interviewing techniques and role playing
Skill building around stress reduction, time management and leadership development
