This case study is based on a real situation but names have been changed to preserve the identity of the client.
When Stress Comes From Everywhere!!
Richard
is a middle manager in a large manufacturing company. He is 43 and
married with two teenage children. His wife, Jenny, has her own
secretarial business and works from home.
Richard
is an extremely skilled technician and as a result has been promoted
several times and now manages 25 people. The company is going through a
merger and Richard is aware that a number of jobs are going to be lost.
He
has never been a very assertive manager; he likes to be liked and
therefore finds it difficult giving his team unpleasant or
controversial news. As a result most of his team feel let down and
stressed because no one is telling them anything and they feel in
limbo. They are constantly knocking on his office door complaining and
attacking him for his inability to manage. In addition his bosses are
coming down on him because he is supposed to supply a report on the
team and who he feels should be lost in the merger.
Jenny's
business has taken off more quickly than she could have imagined and is
finding it difficult to juggle family commitments with her
ever-demanding business. Richard has always been her rock and now she
needs his help on a practical level, to cook the evening meal and help
with homework, while she returns to her office at the back of the
house.
On
one particular evening Richard arrives home after a very stressful day
to find the police at his house - his son has been arrested for
shop-lifting. When the police leave he is so angry with his son that he
hits him, the first time he has ever hit one of his children or anyone
else for that matter.
It
was at this point that Richard contacted the confidential counselling
service which his company had put in place. He was given six sessions
to try to make sense of what had happened.
The
counsellor listened to the story and then helped Richard to prioritise
the various crises that were developing in his life. By the sixth
session he had had a meeting with his team and been much more open and
honest with them. As a result they began to support him in the
difficult tasks he had to undertake and were much less stressed
themselves.
At
home he sat down with his wife and told her how he had been feeling.
Together they made a plan which involved the whole family in taking
some responsibility for the day-to-day running of the house.
Life
is still not perfect for Richard, he is now considering going back to
the technical job he loved, which would mean a drop in salary, but
would give him and the family a much better quality of life.
