Personal Stress Solutions: Case Studies: Marital Turmoil

Personal Stress Solutions: Case Studies: Marital Turmoil

Working spouses reduce marital stress after corporate layoff

Fred and Kate decided Kate would drop her career as a graphic designer when Fred transferred to Boston. As a corporate executive, Fred made much more than Kate, and besides, from his viewpoint, she was just working until they had children. Kate loved her job, but agreed to relocate because it made financial sense.

After they had their first child, Fred’s job disappeared in a corporate reorganization. Kate thought she could return to her career, but the best she could find was work as an assistant to a graphic artist in an advertising firm. She liked working again, but was disappointed to be starting all over again. Not only that, but now she could no longer rely on Fred to support the family. All he could find at his age was sporadic consulting work. Now she began to regret their move and giving up her career.

Kate was angry, scared and confused when she first came across the Stress Navigator Workshop. It made so much sense to her that she brought it to her psychologist, who was treating her for panic attacks. Together, they used Kate’s Stress Navigator Interpretive Report to identify the relationship between her sources of stress and her symptoms, and worked out a program of stress management and symptom reduction.

Fred took the Stress Navigator Workshop as well and shared his results with Kate and her therapist. By working together, they were able to focus on the specific stresses in their lives and resolve them with a little coaching from Kate’s therapist. Together, they were able to focus on the career issue from a different perspective, to look at their marriage as a primary career they shared together and to think of their individual careers as secondary and important only as they contributed to their relationship. They were able to ease the strain that their changing professional roles put on their relationship. It seems a small and simple thing, but the new perspective on stress turned everything around for them and put their marriage back on track.

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