Professional Pressure vs. Personal Processing in 2026

Professionals Slowing Down to Process is a new series by Author, Artist and Blogger Emily Imani Rose Quartz.    Career wise I’ve stepped mostly away from social service even though I still maintain contact with employers in the field and if the right clients and hours showed up within walking distance of my house- I might slide back over to the softer side of social work. Because what happened is I had an opportunity to bring my skills and passion into the corporate world (working for a good cause I hope 😏)- and I’ve noticed that outside of social services workplaces tend to be insane “lol”- in that even before the benefits kick in employees must become fully submerged & embedded into the fiber of their corporations mission. If sales, contracts, a.i. or trackable metrics are involved- you better be prepared to go hard or go home. Most of the staff have backgrounds in everything but psychology- unlike social service organizations; these people haven’t attended endless soft skills training, conflict resolution courses, they aren't forced to renew annual certifications in de-escalation techniques, or understand ethics violations.  In the corporate world listening skills are mostly  just a technique for extracting useful data from clients. Now I'm not saying employees in corporate environments don’t get some training in these areas and I'm definitely not saying they don’t study these topics in their own time- I'm really just saying that it’s a very different work culture and ultimately regardless of what field you work-  many of us are laced up on caffeine & creatine, acting as if we are under too much pressure to open our hearts and lounge wantonly  in the emotionally healing presence of ourselves - the hint of deadlines swirls around in our personal time as the count down to Monday ( even if you love your job) can feel like a noose around the neck or at least like an uncomfortable scratchy wool sweater. And it may not be the work place causing this presence of tension - it may be the mortgage rates, it may be a high risk tenant asking for another rent extension- it could be that our drinking water  may be poisoning us- whatever it is- it has the effect of us spending more time staring at screens and looking over our shoulder- wondering what’s next- than we spend looking within. Whether you’re spending time in social media or working under a point system- we’ve become cornered and trapped within endless loops of validation vs. no validation- whether we seek it or not. What does this mean? It means we are not taking the much needed time to float, to look within, to feel the relentless backlog and to process our emotions. So I decided to begin this blog series for myself as much as for anyone else.   - Emily Imani Rose Quartz is an Author,Book publisher and Artist , A spiritual teacher of dance and movement who also has maintained a career through contract positions, grant based projects and regular employment because “there’s parts of me I only meet in the workplace - and because every job is a priceless education,  the best part ? You get paid  to learn”- Rose Quartz 🪷🙌