PR Is Hard on Your Mental Health

18 Apr PR Is Hard on Your Mental Health

Posted at 14:53h in Burnout, Business, Coaching, Employers, Intelligent Thinking, PR, Uncategorised by Scarlet Thinking 0 Comments

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Why PR Is Hard on Your Mental Health

Public Relations is an amazing industry in which to work. However, PR can be hard on your mental health for many reasons. It doesn’t matter if you’re a PR agency founder, building the business client by client, or a humble junior or apprentice, there are stresses at every level. I should know, I’ve worked for a PR company, ran my own, and coached PRs at every level.

Masking

PR is one of those industries where it’s important to stay positive. No one wants to have a creative brainstorming session with someone who drags down every suggestion. Some PR workplaces even demand that you be “bubbly”, and goodness knows what a strain that can be. Of course, it has become more acceptable to talk about mental health within PR, but staying optimistic can be hard.

Clients

Clients are unpredictable things. Even those with whom we have great relationships can change their minds, move deadlines and even panic. We may be called upon to use deep levels of negotiation, people skills and even counselling at times. If you work closely with a client you find out a lot about them. The personal can often seep into the professional. Managing this can be difficult.

Rejection

PRs face constant rejection, over and over again. This might be bouncing around ideas, selling-in to journalists or influencers or even making a pitch for a new client. With each rejection inevitably comes the release of cortisol and adrenaline. These can impact our emotions and make it harder to be creative or even focus. We also have to put aside the brutal harshness of rejection and quickly pick ourselves up and move on with the next idea, or onto the next journalist. Additionally, we have to do this without letting it impact our performance.

Self-doubt

When colleagues reject your ideas or your press release gets zero atention, it’s natural to question our abilities. Self-doubt can creep in, and we have to work hard to stop this undermining our performance. If our resilience is low, or there are other stressful things going on for ud, we may be particularly vulnerable to questioning ourselves.

Being plugged in

For most PRs, it’s pretty vital to be plugged into what’s going on. We know what’s going on in the world through regular news updates. We check social media more than is healthy, and have to constantly pull ourselves away from flickering screens that have been designed to hypnotise us. All this takes mental energy, and at a time when mental health experts are telling us to reduce screen time.