When a loved one is going through a rough time, it can feel impossible to focus on your work or purpose. If you can't concentrate at work due to family problems, you are not alone.

This year, this question has come up repeatedly with clients, friends, and family members who are struggling with balancing work and a family crisis.

Sometimes, this suffering is caused by collective situations (for instance, wars). Other times, it’s individual: it could be a child with a mental health crisis; a husband recovering from an assault; or a parent dealing with a scary health diagnosis.

Take my client Nathan (not his real name; details have been change to preserve his privacy). When his wife was going through a mental health crisis, he felt a huge toll. While she was thankfully in excellent professional hands, he was left feeling guilty for working when his family was struggling, yet he was currently their main breadwinner.

It's So Hard to See Loved Ones Suffer

It always feels profoundly difficult to see someone you care about in pain. That feeling of powerlessness is a heavy burden to carry, and it naturally leads to wondering how to work when you feel helpless.

I remember when my family spent Christmas on a Nile Cruise and my mother broke her wrist. The ambulance never came, and she was in excruciating pain. It was excruciating for me to see her suffer, without being able to do anything about it.

Since this was a vacation, I didn’t have to worry about work. But what if you do? Like Nathan, who felt called to do meaningful work but was overwhelmed by his family's crisis.

Our Work Culture's Blind Spot: Emotional Exhaustion

This brings me to a crucial point:

💡 Emotional work is also work — and it can lead to burnout.

The effort it takes to support a loved one is a real form of labor that results in emotional exhaustion from caregiving. Yet, our culture often teaches us to downplay our emotions. The modern, capitalist mindset subtly treats humans like machines, and machines don’t have feelings. It pushes us to figure out how to compartmentalize feelings at work, as if our grief or worry has an "off" switch.

This constant pressure to perform while suppressing genuine pain is a recipe for what healthcare professionals call compassion fatigue—a state of deep emotional and physical exhaustion caused by caring for others.

Ironically, while our work culture pushes humans to be more machine-like, our entertainment celebrates machines that develop human feelings. This contradiction suggests that emotions are far more valuable than our work culture acknowledges. So, how about we embrace them instead?

How Holding Space for Feelings Can Restore Your Focus

Here’s how you can practice validating your feelings in order to find more clarity and capacity:

• Acknowledge your range: You are a vast being and can hold two different emotions at the same time. You don’t have to choose between compassion (for loved ones) and focus (on your work). They can co-exist.
• Center into your heart: Imagine breathing in and out of your heart. You can even put your hand on your heart while you do that.
• Name the conflicting emotions: Get clear on what the situation brings up. For instance: motivation and grief. Or passion for your work and worry about a loved one.
  • For example: “I really want to move forward in my work, but I feel so distracted thinking about Sally. What if she’s not okay?”
• Validate all of your feelings: Acknowledge your feelings without judgment. Say (out loud or in your head): “I am a vast being and can hold all of this at the same time.”
  • You might realize: "I've been trying to push one emotion away, but I can be sad about Sally and passionate about my work."
• Acknowledge the toll: Give yourself compassion for how hard this is. This isn’t about being “soft” on yourself; it’s the first step toward a more sustainable way of being productive. This practice of combining compassion with gentle forward movement is what I call “Kindability” (kind and compassionate accountability).
  • You could start by saying: “Wow, this has been so hard. No wonder I’ve been struggling with how to be productive when I am grieving.”
• Acknowledge your heart’s capacity: Tell yourself: “My heart has space for all of this.” This practice of holding space for difficult emotions is expansive.
• Notice what has shifted: From this new place, it will be easier to decide what choices you would like to make regarding your work.
  • For example: “It feels a bit less heavy. If I do some work now, I won’t feel like I’m overriding myself.”

It’s important to give yourself grace during this process. If you find it’s hard to show up at your usual level, know that you’re in good company. I explore this idea in my article on embracing "good enough" when you can't be at your best.

And even after giving yourself that permission, you might still face another challenge: actually finding the motivation to begin. For those moments when you're struggling to get started, I recommend trying the German wisdom of the 'Appetite While Eating' approach. This gentle framework can help you take that first small step, which is often the hardest part.

Bringing It All Together

What all these challenging feelings have in common is something beautiful: love. ❤️ The fear, grief, or sadness you are feeling is simply the flip side of that love.

Yes, human feelings sometimes make productivity harder... but they make life richer. I imagine Nathan feels the exact same way.

Oh… and Nathan’s wife—and my mother’s wrist—are both doing much better these days