Why ‘wellness’ isn’t the answer to overwork

No amount of yoga will save us from the effects of overwork
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Many of the people who visit me in my therapy practice spend time talking about work. How much work there is, how they never seem to be able to get it all done, how many hours they spend at work, how tired they are all the time and how fearful they are about losing their jobs. They’ve read articles telling them how they can improve their work/life balance. They’ve delegated and relegated, meditated and ruminated.

Women in particular come in suffering the effects of overwork, losing out financially in the longer hours marathon, or perhaps more frighteningly, sacrificing their work to help manage a male partner’s crazy schedule. And yet they persist in locating the problem internally. Is there something else they can do, they wonder, to manage it all better? Maybe there’s something wrong with them; they just can’t seem to live and work at the same time.

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Zoë Krupka
About the Author
Zoë Krupka is a PhD Student Faculty of Health Sciences at La Trobe University.