WORK STRESS THERAPY IN LIVERPOOL AND ONLINE
Therapy for professionals who feel overwhelmed, under constant pressure or unable to switch off from work
Is work taking more out of you than it used to?
Perhaps you’re:
Finding it harder to switch off. Work stays on your mind in the evenings, at weekends or even when you’re away, making it difficult to properly recharge.
Feeling more overwhelmed. Decisions that once felt manageable take more effort, your workload feels relentless, or you find yourself wondering how much longer you can keep going like this.
Losing some of your confidence. You may be questioning yourself more, worrying about making mistakes or feeling as though you should be coping better than you are.
Running on empty. You’re tired, irritable or anxious, and work that once gave you satisfaction may now feel like something you just have to get through.
Finding that work is following you home. You may be physically there with your partner or family but still thinking about work, with less patience, energy or attention left for the people and things that matter to you.
From the outside, you may still seem to be doing well. You’re meeting responsibilities, getting things done and keeping everything going. But maintaining that level of functioning can come at a cost.
Over time, constant pressure can affect more than how you feel about work. It can leave less energy for relationships, exercise, sleep and the things you used to enjoy. You may find yourself becoming more anxious, self-critical or withdrawn, or simply feeling that you’re no longer quite yourself.
You don’t have to wait until work becomes unmanageable before taking the impact it’s having on you seriously.
Work Stress and Burnout
Is this work stress or burnout, and when should I get help?
Work stress and burnout are closely related, but they aren’t the same thing. You can be experiencing significant work stress without being burned out. However, when pressure continues for too long without enough chance to recover, your usual ways of coping may become harder to sustain.
One sign that this may be happening is finding that time away from work no longer restores you in the way it used to. Even after a weekend or holiday, you may return to work still feeling depleted, with less energy or capacity to manage the same demands.
For high-achieving professionals, it can be difficult to judge how much work is affecting you when you’re still functioning well on the surface. Being able to meet deadlines, make decisions and keep up with your responsibilities doesn’t necessarily mean that the pressure is sustainable.
You don’t need to decide whether what you’re experiencing “counts” as burnout before seeking support
Nor do you need to wait until you reach breaking point. If work is regularly affecting your wellbeing or life outside it, or you recognise that the way you’re managing pressure is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain, that is reason enough to take it seriously.
Therapy can give you space to understand what is happening and make changes before work takes more out of you.
Here’s what we’ll do together
Feel in control again, without having to push yourself harder
Therapy can help you find a more sustainable way to manage the demands of work, so you can still care about doing your job well without feeling as though it has to consume so much of your time, energy and attention.
Together, we’ll understand what’s contributing to the pressure you’re experiencing and what may be keeping it going. We’ll then focus on practical changes that can help you manage pressure differently, set clearer limits and stop work taking so much out of you.
Feel more able to handle the demands of work
Work can start to feel more manageable again, with greater confidence in your ability to make decisions, prioritise what matters, and navigate competing demands without becoming overwhelmed.
We might work on setting clearer boundaries or changing patterns such as perfectionism, overthinking and taking too much responsibility, so you can recognise when pressure is building and make changes before it becomes too much.
The aim isn’t to make you care less about your work. It’s to help you meet its challenges without relying on constantly pushing yourself harder.
Switch off and have more left for life outside work
We’ll work on creating greater separation between work and the rest of your life, so evenings, weekends and time away can feel like genuine time off.
That can mean being more present with your partner or family, having more energy for the things you enjoy and being able to rest without your mind continually returning to what needs doing next.
Feel more like yourself again
When you’ve been under pressure for a long time, it’s easy to start questioning why you’re no longer coping as well as you used to. Therapy can help you understand what has changed without blaming yourself or concluding that you should simply be trying harder.
As work begins to feel more manageable, you can start to feel steadier in yourself and your decisions, clearer about what matters to you and more able to recover when things don’t go to plan. You may also rediscover some of the energy, satisfaction and enjoyment that work, and life outside it, used to give you.
The goal isn’t a life without pressure. It’s being able to handle the pressures that matter without work taking over the rest of your life.
Areas of expertise
Understanding the pressures behind professional success
Having spent more than a decade providing therapy to professionals in the City of London, I have particular experience of supporting people in demanding roles where responsibility, expectations and the consequences of getting things wrong can feel significant.
Work stress is rarely just about having too much to do. I’m interested in understanding both the pressures of the environment you’re working in and the ways you have learned to respond to them. I tend to work particularly with high-achieving professionals whose strengths and ways of coping have helped them succeed, but have become harder to sustain under increasing pressure.
Pressure in demanding professional roles
Senior and high-responsibility roles can bring difficult decisions, competing priorities, deadlines, and others' expectations. You may be responsible not only for your own performance, but also for colleagues, clients, a team, or an organisation.
Sometimes work really is difficult. There may be unreasonable demands, uncertainty, difficult workplace relationships, organisational change or genuine consequences attached to the decisions you make. I won’t assume that feeling under pressure means you are misinterpreting the situation. We can look at both what the role genuinely demands of you and how your response to those demands may be adding further pressure.
High standards and the pressure to keep performing
Being conscientious, ambitious and setting high standards can contribute substantially to professional success. The difficulty can come when it becomes hard to know when you have done enough, when mistakes feel particularly significant, or when you respond to increasing demands by working harder still.
For some people, professional achievement can also become an important measure of competence, confidence or self-worth. This can make setbacks, criticism or periods when you are not functioning at your usual level feel particularly difficult, without meaning you need to give up your ambition or the standards that genuinely matter to you.
Taking too much responsibility and finding it difficult to set limits
You may be the person others rely on, used to solving problems and keeping things moving. Over time, that can make it difficult to delegate, say no or recognise when you are carrying more than is reasonably yours.
You may find yourself taking on additional work, avoiding difficult conversations or prioritising work and other people’s needs at your own expense, even when you recognise that the amount you are carrying is becoming difficult to sustain.
Overthinking and staying mentally at work
Work may continue long after the working day ends. You might replay conversations, anticipate problems, think through decisions repeatedly or find yourself mentally preparing for what could go wrong.
Even when you are physically away from work, part of your attention may stay there, making it hard to properly switch off, be present with other people, or feel that your time away is genuinely your own.
When success is taking too much out of you
You may still be performing well enough that others don’t realise how depleted you feel. Perhaps you are relying increasingly on effort, discipline, or adrenaline to keep going while your energy, motivation, patience or enjoyment gradually decline.
The impact may show up outside work too: less energy for relationships, less time for yourself, difficulty being present, or evenings and weekends becoming extensions of the working week. Therapy can help us understand what keeps this pattern going and find more sustainable ways to work and cope.
HOW I WORK
How CBT can help you manage work stress
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a practical, collaborative approach that helps you understand the connections between how you think, feel, and respond to the situations you’re dealing with.
With work stress, the pressure you’re under is often only part of the picture. Patterns such as perfectionism, overthinking, taking too much responsibility, finding it difficult to set limits, or continually pushing yourself harder can help you succeed, but can also make it harder to switch off and recover when demands increase.
Together, we’ll look at how these patterns tend to show up when you’re under pressure and what happens as a result. This helps us identify where making changes could make the biggest difference.
When perfectionism is part of the picture, we’ll explore how your standards support you, where they create pressure, and whether meeting them has become a measure of your worth. We might experiment with how you decide when a task is complete or with how you respond to mistakes. We can also explore what you value about yourself beyond your achievements. This can help you pursue the standards that matter to you with greater flexibility and less self-criticism.
CBT is an active process
Rather than simply talking about what is stressful, we’ll develop practical strategies and try different ways of responding, both in sessions and in your everyday working life. We’ll review what helps and adapt our approach as we learn more about what works for you.
The aim is to help you respond to the demands of work in a more sustainable way, so you can feel calmer under pressure, switch off more easily and have more energy for your life beyond work.
Therapy for work stress can help you:
Switch off from work more easily
01
Spend less of your evenings, weekends and time away thinking about work, so you can properly relax and recharge.
Manage stress and pressure more
02
Find ways to handle demanding periods without becoming overwhelmed or automatically pushing yourself even harder.
Become more comfortable saying no, protecting your time, being assertive and having difficult conversations when needed.
Set and maintain healthier boundaries
03
Develop more realistic expectations of yourself
04
Recognise when the standards you set yourself are adding unnecessary pressure and begin setting expectations that feel more realistic and sustainable.
Feel more confident in your ability to cope
05
Trust yourself to handle difficult emotions, competing demands, uncertainty and setbacks without them taking as much out of you.
Create a better balance between work and the rest of your life
06
Make more room for relationships, family, rest, and looking after yourself, rather than continually letting work come first.
Change is possible
You can feel calmer under pressure, less consumed by work, and able to enjoy your life beyond it again
FAQs
COMMON QUESTIONS
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Yes. Therapy doesn’t depend on changing your job or removing all the pressures you’re dealing with. Some demands may be an unavoidable part of your role.
We can look at the parts you can influence, including how you respond to pressure, the expectations you place on yourself and where you may be taking on more than you need to. The aim is to help you manage the demands of your work more effectively, without them taking such a toll on you or the rest of your life.
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Yes. I work with many people who are ambitious, care about what they do and don’t necessarily want to step back from their careers. Therapy isn’t about telling you to work less or become less driven.
Instead, we can look at how you pursue what matters to you and whether patterns such as perfectionism, overthinking, taking on too much responsibility, or continually pushing yourself harder are making an already demanding job even harder to sustain.The aim is to find ways of working that allow you to remain effective without paying such a high personal cost.
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No. While I won’t necessarily know the specifics of your profession, I have extensive experience understanding the pressures that can come with demanding professional roles.
I spent more than ten years providing therapy to professionals working in the City of London, where there can be considerable pressure, responsibility and expectations. Your particular working environment will still be important, and part of our work will be understanding the pressures, culture and demands you are dealing with rather than making assumptions about them.