Mental Health Breaks and Cultural Challenges
“I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.” ― Keanu Reeves, The Matrix
If you haven’t had one yet, you’ve probably at least heard people talking about mental health breaks for professionals. These are not your average sick days or paid leave, or even vacation days, these are a kind of growing awareness and acceptance of the need to take breaks in order to deal with any mental and emotional demons affecting your ability to perform 100% as a professional.
Whether it’s someone who is struggling with anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, or perhaps respecting their own neurodivergence, everyone needs different time frames to step back and recoup because the ongoing dialogue is perfectly aware that burying yourself in work to get out of your head is not an effective way to achieve work and life balance. If anything, you aren’t going to feel better by being distracted from your thoughts and emotions, it’s the same as drinking a gallon of water and being told that you must hold it in no matter what.
By bottling up your emotions and ignoring the thoughts in your head, you can become a ticking time bomb, which ends up being bad for you and your workplace, which is why more and more employers are offering more compassionate arrangements for professionals who need to take a mental health break, whether it’s a little time off in the day, extended time off for a few days or weeks, or quietly disengaging without making a fuss in the office about it.
While the common challenge now is older professionals may be critical of or less open to accommodating people’s need for mental health breaks, there is also the added layer of cultural differences rather than generational. After all: it is not just Gen-Z and Millennials advocating for more balance with mental health breaks, some Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers are advocating it for themselves since they also recognize that everyone, regardless of age, should prioritize their safety and well-being–something that wasn’t available to them during the prime of their lives as young professionals, leading to burnout in their later years.
Outside of the North American lens, the concept is picking up interest as it is discussed in more progressive and global organizations, but being met with resistance due to work culture, such as with the 9-9-6 culture in the People’s Republic of China, or the salaryman culture of Japan. In these two specific examples, work culture largely revolves around putting aside any individual needs or aspirations because the company comes first, and there is a threat of being easily replaced by someone who is less needy or the loss of potential career advancement by appearing “weak”. Unsurprisingly, it is work cultures like these that have employees quietly or anonymously advocating for mental health breaks due to the enormous pressure to succeed.
When you have a global operation, you will inevitably run into people with differing views on mental health breaks, especially if an American colleague mentions that another is on a mental health break, while colleagues from India, the Philippines, Kenya, or UK will have their own opinions shaped by their national culture, work ethics, and individual personalities. One joke from a British citizen was that he believed mental health breaks were bad because it means if an employee is unhappy, then the management or company is bad, believing that employees should all be happy if there’s a smooth operation.
When you have these opinions clashing, it’s best not to impose, disagree, or try to agree to create and avoid conflicts unnecessarily. Instead, treat it all as dialogue and valid opinions, some worth considering more than others, but all good ways to gather information and develop your own views and eventually your own policy as management for everyone, with respect to individual needs, including any cultural norms that may stand in the way of offering your support to them. If you are not in a managerial position, the best you can do is offer both space to a colleague who looks like they need a mental health break or offer support, as they may not necessarily open up to you or be your friend–they may even antagonize you unknowingly and find you to be a contributor to their sanity. By offering space, you give them enough time and distance to work on their issue and in addition, give yourself space to deal with any possible existing or potential conflicts that could escalate. When offering support, you also let them know that you consider that whatever expression of their current wellness that is being taken out on you, you are trying to understand instead of retaliating, which has an added effect of de-escalating possible conflicts.
