Returning to work
Medically cleared, and not actually back.
Everyone can see that you have returned. What nobody can see is that some part of you has not come back to the same place it left from.
Coaching after a health crisis is a specific job, and it is not the same job as physical rehabilitation.
This is the gap that return-to-work processes leave to chance, and it is the specific thing Ola is mandated by a Swiss public institution to work on.
Why a clean bill of health is not the finish line
The body healed. The encoding did not.
After a serious illness or an accident, the physical recovery gets attention, milestones and a discharge date. What does not get any of that is what the event wrote into your nervous system — the moment of it, the helplessness of it, what you thought while it was happening.
That material does not resolve on its own and it does not respond to being reasoned with. It shows up as an unreasonable reluctance, a tightness on the commute, a competence that will not come back online, a sense of being slightly behind glass in rooms you used to own.
After burnout it is the same mechanism with a different origin. The workplace itself has become an encoded trigger.
How the work is shaped here
Specific situations, one at a time
Name the actual situations
Not “returning to work”, which is too large to target. The first morning. The specific colleague. Telling people what happened. The task you used to do without thinking.
Reduce the charge on each one
Each session takes one and works until revisiting it produces no activation. That is the measurable unit of progress here.
Name what kind of help this actually is
Coaching after health crisis events is not rehabilitation and it is not therapy. It is focused work on what the event left encoded, so that coming back stops costing more than the job itself does.
Include the event itself if it is still live
The accident, the diagnosis, the day you stopped. These are frequently still carrying most of the load, and they can be targets like anything else — without you having to narrate them in detail.
Rebuild at your own pace
There is no pressure to move faster than your system integrates, and no homework asked of someone who is already spending everything they have on getting through the day.
Back at work
What changed for them
“I consulted Ola after a bad professional experience. I doubted my abilities and felt constantly under pressure. Now, I no longer have negative feelings towards my former employer. I regained my calm and my confidence, and my anxieties disappeared!”
“My difficult past with my father cast a shadow over most of my life. I was constantly confrontational, or defensive. From the first session, I found a sort of confidence I didn't know I had. Today, I'm more open in my relationships and I believe that life can be good to me.”
“My experience with Ola has been very positive. From the first session, she allowed me to free myself from a blockage that prevented me from fully realizing my potential. A huge thank you to her for this release!”
For employers and case managers
If you are arranging this for someone else
Ola works with institutions as well as individuals, and holds a mandate from a Swiss public institution doing exactly this: helping people going through burnout or long-term illness restore nervous and emotional stability so they can resume work. Since 2023, more than 120+ post-burnout situations.
Session content is confidential without exception. What the funding organisation receives is scope, attendance and progress against the objectives set at the outset.
Start here
Being back is not the same as being back.
Fifteen minutes to talk about what is actually still in the way, whether you are arranging this for yourself or for someone on your team.
A free, confidential 15-minute conversation. No obligation, and nothing to prepare.