Do you ever find yourself struggling to say ‘no’ when it comes to work? It certainly is a familiar feeling here, especially when you set your own hours and you are self employed. Making decisions about how many working hours per week are enough and how much downtime we need is not always an easy task. It’s not always simple to turn down work or postpone it. And what’s the big deal about one little extra hour? Surely it wouldn’t throw our whole work/life balance out of sync, right?

Except, what if that hour turns into a little more, and then something else pops up which we could squeeze in…where do we draw the line?

It has been interesting to discuss this with colleagues. Our Practice Founder, Dr Judith Sullivan, shares her own thoughts below!

‘It is difficult as a psychotherapist to say no to a client request for sessions. Yet, we need to be aware of our own diaries and where we have space, so that we don’t become overloaded and then not offer a good service. I have always found striving for this balance to be really difficult as, like many in our field, I am fundamentally a Rescuer and want to help and feel useful. I am struck by how
brave our clients are in making that initial contact for help and find it hard to say no to their request for an appointment. However, clients deserve the best we have to offer and if we are fatigued or overwhelmed we are not going to deliver this. I have found that the best way is for me to respond to a client immediately and say “I am sorry, but I don’t have any space at the moment for new clients” rather than invite an explanation as to why they have made contact – if this happens usually the empathy kicks in and I can be prone to forgetting my own therapeutic boundaries. Self care is vital. Even at this late stage in my career I am still learning in this area.