It’s normal to have parts of the work to feel less comfortable to do than others. Some may even be stressful or outright anxiety provoking. We may find ourselves putting certain tasks off or coming up with reasons not to do the thing – it’s not my job, the system sucks, it was better the way we used to do it. We might grit our teeth and get it done first, or over prepare, overdo it, leave it til last or see if someone else can do it.

There’s the common ones. Dealing with aggression, crisis or risk. Having difficult conversations or taking action someone else doesn’t want us to take. Speaking in meetings or in public. Then there’s the seemingly less threatening ones. Making phone calls, sending emails or filling in databases or government forms, going to team building days. It really doesn’t matter what it is, it’s just that we know we’d rather not do it.

It takes time and breathing space to explore the deeper source of discomfort so we can manage the impact on ourselves and others. And they can be trickier to catch than they first seem. There might be undercurrents of deeper, more ancient hurts that are harder to pin down with our conscious adult mind.

It’s work best done with others – in supervision, therapy, conversation with mentors, friendly peer discussions, spiritual retreats. We can also discover insights in the challenges we set ourselves and crafts we seek to hone. Wherever we push our edges, our fears will show.

And it’s a work in progress, likely to never be completely resolved. But if we can meet these moments with honesty and acceptance we can work with them, rather than despite them. We may not always see them at the time but we can still learn from reflection. And if we can sit with them with open minds and hearts, they can become our greatest teachers.

Many of our support systems seem to be set up as if trust issues are the exception rather than the rule. And if they’re there, it’s part of a pathology, something damaged by unfortunate life events – maybe they’ve been abused or are paranoid or mandated – but it’s seen as an extra complication.

And we generally don’t build our services with the expectation people have had bad experiences with other services. Or with our service. Or with us personally. At the same time we may have signs and barriers and policies in place that signal we don’t trust them.

Yet it’s normal to be unsure of strangers and the advice they offer. Challenges with interpersonal interactions and navigating relationships are common, almost compulsory. Everyone has been hurt by someone, whether from calculated cruelty or oblivious insensitivity. We often doubt, judge and criticise ourselves and others, and fill in the blanks with questions and assumptions. It’s what people do.

What’s more, if our interventions are to be successful we want people to think for themselves and make their own considered decisions because we won’t always be there. And in the scheme of a whole life we rarely are. We also want people to have healthy boundaries out in the real world and that real world includes us.

What if we set up systems with the expectation trust is not a given, and people have every right to be wary of us from the beginning? How would we adapt or adjust our intake and reception, our assessment and triage, our treatment and referrals? When we start from the position that trust is earned, we’re more likely to build in the processes that allow that to happen. For both of us. Trust is, after all, a two way street.

Efficiency is usually associated with being cost effective. Maybe quality is compromised or we lose the luxury of the nice like-to-have rather than need-to-have things. But the aim is to minimise wasted effort or resources.

Yet when it comes to providing support for people in need, it’s rarely a simple linear process that fits the efficiency equations. Sometimes the silos and streamlining create far more inefficient systems in the long haul.

Short symptom-focused medical appointments risk missing the broader context and potential underlying conditions. Assessment processes sliced off from treatment delivery make people tell their story over and over again because no form could represent their experience as well as they could. Treating pieces of people as if they weren’t attached to a whole life can leave us trapped in a cycle of endlessly repeating interventions that have no long term impact.

More holistic beginnings may take longer at first, but save time and lives down the track. Stories that may seem peripheral turn out to hold vital clues later on. Links and connections across services bring more puzzle pieces together.

True efficiencies in systems come from engaging the whole person rather than trying to tidy isolated details into an elegant but unrealistic flow chart. And that means building in flexibility to accommodate what’s needed rather than what was prescribed before the person turned up.

Writer, comedian and all-round human firecracker Catherine Deveny urges every aspiring writer: “Don’t die with your music inside you.” This was brought home hard when a friend and colleague ended his life three years ago.

David was a deeply empathic, big-hearted human with a brilliant mind and a radiant smile. He saw the gifts in others and let them know with a poetry and sincerity that was hard to deflect. The difference he made was profound and he had so much more to share but it was not to be. And it’s not for me to say how it should have been.

But you. You’re here. You’ve worked so hard to know what you know, to be able to do what you do. You have so much music inside of you too. Yes, the deepest learning is gained from experience that no one can shortcut for us and some of that experience downright sucks. That doesn’t mean the learning needs to happen in isolation.

We can still leave a trail of small step ups, handrails and ropes, never knowing who will discover them in a time of need. We can carve footholds and arrows in rocks, without seeing the greatness they maybe helped someone else to achieve. After all, we are the product of others’ generosity, from both those who know us well and from total strangers. So if you haven’t already, please, do come and join the symphony.

‘Enough’ can be a loaded word, associated with fears of not doing enough or being enough, a striving to cross a mystical benchmark of acceptability that is hard to pin down and seems to continually drift beyond reach no matter what we do. Even the affirming mantra of ‘I am enough’ seems a bit… well… stingy. Like we just scraped it in.

If I said “just give it seventy percent, that’ll be enough” it sounds like I’m asking you to lower your standards, take short cuts or compromise. And it sounds underwhelming in a society full of messages to be our best and maximise our potential.

But we can look at it a different way. What if we worked on lifting our seventy percent performance rather try to push ourselves to hit peak performance as often as possible? We can intentionally improve our skills and processes so they’re still solid when we don’t have our ideal level of energy or focus available.

When our seventy percent performance is genuinely, absolutely, good enough we have more room for the messiness of reality on the OK-ish days and the for-whatever-reason not good days. We can burn less energy on self-criticism or self-doubt. We might leave more in the tank for other parts of our lives and loves. And anything above seventy percent can become a source of satisfaction or delight, a delicious moment to savour rather than relentlessly pursue.

Even if we work one-to-one with people, there are many voices in the room, for both the client, and for us.

The person we are supporting may be mindful of the input of family members, friends, colleagues. Perhaps they have legal advice or fears of what might be said about them.

They might be hearing the voices of systems or social pressures. Or memories of that mean teacher in the third grade, bullies or abusers. Or the arguments of strangers on social media or people they admire.

And so are we. The voices we hear aren’t confined to our teachers, supervisors and managers. We don’t just take our professional self into the room.

We can be curious where our voices come from and what they’re really saying. We can wonder how valid they are for the other person or even ourselves. We can also choose voices of peers and supervisors to help share the load and the messy reality of the work.

And we want to amplify the voices that lift us up while making sure we still have kind voices that show us how to do better, be better, and be a positive voice in the rooms we are not in.

Many of us will be familiar with the phrase ‘the elephant in the room’ – the obvious problem or issue we know is there but aren’t willing to acknowledge, let alone discuss.

To discuss the elephant enters uncharted territory. There may be a risk of vulnerability, loss of control or retaliation. But avoiding the elephant risks superficial conversations that go nowhere, go in the wrong direction or make things worse. And the longer we ignore the elephant, the bigger he tends to get.

I feel for the elephant. We’ve all been in group conversations where we’ve felt ignored or someone makes eye contact with others but not us. We’ve all made contributions only to have them overlooked or forgotten. We’ve expended precious time and energy on things only to feel like it was for nothing.

So how can we normalise our elephants so they don’t cause such shock or surprise when they turn up? How can we make room for them so they don’t create so much havoc as they squeeze in beside the crystal cabinet because we’ve given them nowhere else to sit? And how can we talk about them with kindness so they don’t feel the need to defend themselves or fight back?

The problem isn’t so much the elephant, it’s the challenge of finding words for the unspoken. It’s sitting with discomfort and uncertainty. It’s staying curious and open to feedback. Because sometimes the real elephant in the room is us.

The phrase ‘work-life balance’ suggests that work isn’t a part of life and that perhaps an essential part of who we are is somewhere else, waiting for us to clock off. And yet so many of us find ourselves here, at work, feeling all the feelings and trying to juggle this bit with the other meaningful parts of our lives.

Like any balancing act, we are rarely in a state of harmony for long – it’s an active process of constant adjustment, overcorrection, ebb and flow. And it’s easy for the work part to get stuck in overdrive, sometimes from sheer necessity, sometimes driven by cultural expectations.

The benefits are easy to focus on and easy to desire. Income to pay bills and solve problems. A sense of meaning, of contribution. Perhaps status or security. A gift to our future self in career capital or savings. An answer to the question “So what do you do?”, which is all too often shorthand for “Who are you?”

When we slice work off from the rest of our existence, we risk creating unnecessary barriers and masks that are exhausting to uphold. It can become harder to access our full self, our full range of resources and insights.

Yet how we show up at work is how we show up to our life. It’s one more place where we learn a great deal about ourselves, about others, about how to navigate the space between. It can top up or deplete our sense of connection, competence or control. It can be a vehicle for pain and compassion, for resentment and love. Like the rest of life, work throws us challenges and opportunities, the unexpected and the utterly mundane. And perhaps these are the things we really want to keep in balance.

This work of supporting others can feel big. Big stories, big suffering, big hopes and expectations, and big demands on limited resources. Many of us come in with a strong sense of integrity and high standards. We’re often conscientious and expect a lot of ourselves.

Learning how to do the work may mean we need to learn what’s ‘good enough’, to do ‘our best under the circumstances’ rather than our best all the time. We need to prioritise our energy and triage resources – both our own and those of the system we work within. Something has to give.

And yet in the vastness of it all we don’t want to lose sight of the little things and how they add up, in both positive and negative ways. A lot of genuine, heartfelt smiles can create an enduring sense of welcome. Consistently taking a moment longer to listen leads to a much deeper understanding. Equally, it doesn’t take too many little corrections to undermine trust And if we interrupt by just a word or two often enough we shut people down.

We can be curious about the little habits we notice in ourselves. They may only take a second or two but we can ask what they might add up to if we repeat them often enough. We can weed out the little unhelpful things and free up some space and energy for both of us. And we can protect the little acts of kindness so they can create the safety net that supports the work. As our grandmothers taught us, a little really can go a long way.

We’ve probably all guilty at some stage of trying to soften a difficult message only to water it down into something more confusing. ’It’s not you it’s me’ is now a cliché because it’s been used so often. But we’re not immune from doing this in helping conversations either.

Normally I’d love to help. 
Now’s not a great time.
It’s not my decision, it’s the organisational policy. 
If you don’t have any luck with those referrals we can see what else is possible. 

When we think we’re being nice, we’re making it harder for the person to know where they stand, what’s on offer and what isn’t. Which makes it harder for them to make an informed decision about how to respond. And in the uncertainty lies fertile ground for false hope or energy that would be better directed elsewhere.

You want to help, I just need to persuade you that I’m not asking for much.
If I wait, you’ll become available.
You don’t agree with the policy, maybe I can change your mind.
You’re still an option. 

Because softening the message isn’t really about them. It’s about not wanting to be the bad guy or blamed for the bad news. In a way, we’re also handing over our own loose ends. And sometimes we’re just delaying the no or the boundary until later, when the hurt will be greater.

The most respectful thing we can do is be clear. Which means taking the time to work out the simplest, least ambiguous version of what needs to be said, where the boundaries lie and what is possible. And then we can look for the most compassionate way to say that. Not to dilute the message, but to deliver it with love.