21/03/2018
During the last few months the partners have been in contact with many coaches, psychologists, consultants, teachers, trainers and other professionals working with women toward achieving balance between personal and professional life. The information gathered will be a part of the report that will be elaborated and published in the following stages of the project. Meanwhile we will share with you some interesting opinions we have gathered from the participants.
Today we are happy to present to you one of the participants in the research phase - Dr. Stefanka Tomcheva, PhD, with more than 22 years of work experience as a psychologist – psychotherapist, more than 12 years as a career counselor and more than 10 years as a master-trainer of Positive and Transcultural Psychotherapy.
The Bulgarian team has interviewed Dr. Tomcheva and below you can find some of the things she has shared with them:
“Working women constitute a significant part of workforce and they are expected to manage all the roles in their lives perfectly, creating a balance between their work and family responsibilities. The social set up is still traditional; women have to be responsible for the household, upbringing, and take care of the education of children even if they are contributing significantly to household income.
As a Positive and Transcultural psychotherapist I have been trained how to work with the life balance model. So, I have kind of training in case that this correlate to the mentioned specific issue, but the psychotherapy is “one side of the coin” focused on deep unconscious emotional processes. Many women I work with, need just to learn, to be trained how to use their potential and develop their abilities and skills. In this point of view, the trainings that could be useful are related to the topic as: Problem solving; Adapting to change; Managing difficult situation; Time and Stress Management; Values and Value Clarification; Self-esteem; Vision and Goal Setting; Decision Making; Assertiveness, Self- presentation, etc.
Some women I work with are feeling overwhelmed and struggling to find “balance” with work and life in general. They are not sure how to find balance or feel more content with their overall life. Some of them are planning to start a family soon but worry about how this will work out with their career plans.
Employment in my country depends on many factors. Generally, it depends on where the people live (how big the city, area is), what is the economic and social situation in district, what is the investment plan for development of the region, etc. My practice is situated in a district with a high level of unemployed people. Many of women I am working with have high educational level, but they do not find opportunities for realization. Because of family and children, they aren’t able to be mobile, so they have chance for work as: tailors, waitresses, hospital attendants, nannies, saleswomen or seasonal workers in the hotel and restaurant industry, or to work abroad (that force them to sacrifice family life).”
We will share more from our activities. In the meantime feel most welcome to like our page in order to follow our progress and learn new interesting and useful things!
