Professional/Workplace Issues

It may be surprising to learn that issues in the workplace represent the most common topic I discuss with my patients session to session, whether it may be their primary area of concern or not. A person’s professional trajectory reflects his or her ongoing negotiation of ambitions, desires, conflicts, and key dilemmas. The life of work mirrors the life of the mind, and, whether it is consciously recognized or not, all of us create and enact our core problems, unresolved traumas, and difficult memories through the work we do and the people with whom we work.

This is not to say, of course, that an individual is responsible for all the challenges that may emerge in his or her professional life. Sooner or later, each of us encounters difficult personalities, toxic team dynamics, dysfunctional work cultures, and narcissistic, demanding or otherwise unfair managers/bosses. How we facilitate our movement through these situations, and to the extent that we do so productively, often has a significant impact on our ultimate career progression; opportunity for advancement, responsibility, and earning potential; and work self-esteem.

A substantial literature describes the forces at play which imbue the workplace with family-of-origin qualities. Our professional peers symbolically represent our siblings, and those managers with authority over us are our parental surrogates. From this perspective, the workplace becomes ripe for the unconscious acting out (“enactment”) of unresolved psychological and emotional issues from our past, often originating early in development. While this view does not necessarily apply to all professional issues, the fact that rivalry, competition, jealousy, power dynamics, favoritism, triangulation, manipulation, projection and over-reactions are ever-present in the workplace provides a clue as to the strong underlying current of these psychological forces.

Given my background in organizational and human resources consulting, as well as my ongoing work as an executive coach and corporate team consultant, my expertise lies at the intersection of work and psychology.

For most of my patients, there is a great benefit in learning to identify and understand the psychological factors involved in the workplace systems in which they are embedded, and the specific interpersonal and relational processes they are playing out with their bosses and teams. As this awareness unfolds and evolves, feelings of insecurity, irritation, helplessness and/or anger typically recede; the patient begins to locate internal sources of self-agency that promote pragmatic solutions to problems that were once deemed irresolvable. Moreover, the patient finds ways to divide and separate his or her personal psychology from the workplace; this delineation facilitates a more moderate, less charged experience of work and clarifies what needs are not being met in one’s life outside of work.

Visit Dr. Tobin's Office

15615 Alton Parkway
Suite 450
Irvine, CA 92618

Hours
Monday: 8am - 8pm
Tuesday: 8am - 8pm
Wednesday: 8am - 8pm
Thursday: 8am - 8pm
Friday: 8am - 8pm
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed