Blocked

What do you do when you are blocked again? I imagine many people experiences all kinds of “blockages” some require surgery, some require milk of magnesia, and others simply require radical change or careful consideration.

It’s a Saturday morning at Starbucks and that already can be difficult. My team is moving about the building and they are energized but you can already see the subtle hints of frustration that comes over them each moment we get closer to the town waking up. That moment signifies the change of pace that we will endure for the duration of our shift. Throughout the morning we find a way to connect with one another, to check in, to make sure that everyone is holding on till the finish line. Isn’t that the most basic of needs? To make sure we are checking in with our team, ourselves, our people. I ask this because as a manager of people, I am required to check in a lot. I say required because it is a major part of the job description. I however, pay closer attention to this on Saturday and the requirement shifts to attending to their needs. They need my presence, they need me to care enough to see that they are struggling, that they are stressed, that they need a break.

People seem shocked that with my work schedule that I work on Saturday’s. They can’t fathom how after almost 11 years I am still working shoulder to shoulder with my people. The answer is that retail doesn’t care what I do for the additional hours of my life no matter how important that work is and outside of a few planned Saturdays off my team needs me here to feel supported and cared for. They need to know that even though I know how difficult Saturdays are and how easy it would be for me to take the day off, that I am here with them. That I am always in the trenches with them otherwise, I am not sure that I would have a staff left and if I did, they would be tired, overworked, and under supported.

I am effective at navigating the “blockages” that I experience at my job. I can make immediate change, I am able to clearly communicate the expectations, as well as being able to take the needs of 22 other people into consideration because they are the ones doing the work. I may spend my fair share of hours on the front lines, but they are doing it every moment we are open, and they deserve their needs to be at the forefront of every decision that I make. Their needs must always supersede mine. The question is, does that same ability translate to my personal life, to my life as a psychotherapist. Or do I continue to be blocked because I am unable to apply my skills to all areas of my life?

I think there is a twofold answer to this very important question.

The first component that my work life has that my personal life doesn’t have is teamwork. I am engaged in teamwork at work with a variety of people of all shapes, ages, sizes, and sexual orientation. Like my caseload I can enhance upon the skill sets that suit the business needs or that will help a client to work on their most difficult experiences. I can adjust to each person’s needs because that is what is in the best interest of those involved. So, then the question is what happens when I’m engaged in the 1:1 format with a person in which I have emotions and feelings towards? I lock up, lockdown, and my ability to connect, to attend to needs outside of my own, escapes me and I appear as a selfish, arrogant, asshole. The teamwork goes out the window and it ends up being a showdown between me and another person. Two separate entities fighting for the same outcome but not working as a team to bring it all together.

Could it be as simple as a lack of teamwork? I believe that to be true. It is a matter of teamwork. It is about being able to anticipate how each player moves to know their strengths and their opportunities and to encourage the things that they bring to the team that make it stronger and work on the nuances that can cause blockages and ultimately cause a breakdown in the efficiency of the team. Life is not a solo act. It is comprised of big, small, and medium “teams”. Families make up a team, work staffs make up a team, couples make up a team, siblings make up a team, friends make up a team, when we work together as a team, we can pool together each person’s strengths and together make what is an otherwise dysfunctional machine works. There is that old African saying that “it takes a village to raise a child” and that is true of everything. It takes a “village” to tend to a team, to raise a family, to succeed at work, to succeed at relationship.

We choose people in our lives that we can feel comfortable sharing life’s intimate secrets with. That we can rely on to be there when we need them. When a problem arises, we go through our list of connections to see who can best support us in our time of need because we know they will know just how to support us at that moment. Just like the strategies we help our clients develop so they have them to add to their mental health toolboxes, each person we choose to share our life and our energy with is hand-picked because they will be there to help us clear the blockages, we struggle to clear ourselves and most importantly there is reciprocity.

The last part of this is that sometimes we are our own “blockage” which means that we could have the best team in the world but if we don’t know how to lead them, how to encourage them, how to nurture them, to hear their needs, the team has no chance of success because there is a breakdown in leadership. The same applies to all the other types of teams I mentioned, when one person isn’t willing to be accountable for their part in the breakdown it makes it difficult to work together as a team. It forces the other team members to detach, to take a step away from it because it isn’t good for them in that moment. The hope is that with some time and most importantly repair everyone will come back together and as a team the difficulties are worked out and teamwork can resume.

I know I have some fine tuning to work on. I know that I am at times a solo player in my life. So, the same faith and trust that I put on my Saturday team to execute this day as flawlessly as possible while still leaving room for mistakes and setbacks, I need to apply the same attention to all the other teams I am a part of. If I could just figure that out consistently then I’d be back in business.