Relieving Workplace Stress With Talkspace

Margaret was suffering from too much stress in the workplace. She had been teaching at the same elementary school for six years, having worked under two principals. The first principal was a strong leader and extremely organized but very hard on her as an individual. The second principal was more laid-back and generally not a micro-manager. She would leave Margaret to do her thing most of the time, and this hard-working teacher would only feel stressed during times right before her performance evaluation documents would become due. That’s why the principal would have to visit her classroom (as well as two assistant principals) and make subjective evaluations of her work. These were typically knee-jerk reactions to a few minutes observed in the class, not true reflections of her work. She and her colleagues would suffer from various amounts of anxiety not knowing when their evaluators would come by or what lessons or activities might be taking place during their visit. During the rest of the school year, it was possible to enjoy teaching and not worry about this evaluation process. Margaret had so much stress this year when her teacher started telling her about her new “weakness” in classroom management (for which she had always had high ratings before) that she sought confidential therapy from Talkspace.

How It Works

Anyone who suffers from acute or chronic anxiety can benefit from having someone who will not judge them and who will “listen” to their troubles. For a weekly fee, Margaret was able to correspond with a licensed mental health counselor about the problems at work all via text message through the Talkspace service. While Margaret had some conversations with other teachers in her department, she was very careful not to say too much. It felt like the principal was picking on her this year, but she was trying not to be overly paranoid. Talking to her assigned counselor after answering a preliminary questionnaire about her anxiety issues provided just the right amount of relief that she needed from workplace stress. Margaret could talk as little or as much with her assigned counselor. Some days, she found that she needed to message a lot about things happening at school, or it would be hard to make it through the day. The principal seemed to be visiting her classroom more often than others and to be particularly critical in her comments (which were submitted electronically to her employee performance management file). There were other days when Margaret felt that she did not need her counselor’s feedback at all. These were typically days when the principal was busy dealing with other teachers or school events.

Moving Forward

Now, Margaret is about ready to complete her year and her evaluation period has passed without any major problems. She was able to focus on her job and relieve her anxiety through text therapy sessions. The principal remains unaware of her high stress related to the entire evaluation process. In the future, Margaret knows that she can use Talkspace to work through other problems and to not use the service when things are going well in her life.

This is a sponsored post by Talkspace.

Featured image courtesy from Pexels

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