Effective self-management and taking care of your mental health

March 4, 2025 by Reine

Dr. Alexander Schacht

I know firsthand how challenging it can be to manage a heavy workload while maintaining mental well-being.

In this episode of The Effective Statistician, I talk with Peter Wehmeier about the five key dimensions of self-management—building strong relationships, setting priorities, making decisions, and taking action.

We share practical strategies to reduce stress, strengthen resilience, and take control of both work and life. With insights from Peter’s upcoming workshops, this conversation offers valuable tools to help you stay balanced and productive.

Tune in to learn how to take charge of your future!

Key Points:

Workload & Mental Well-being
Five Dimensions of Self-Management
Relationships
Priorities
Decision-Making
Taking Action
Stress Management
Peter’s Workshops
Empowerment

Take control of your well-being and success by mastering self-management. In this episode, you’ll learn practical strategies to reduce stress, build resilience, and stay productive.

Listen now and start making positive changes today. If you found this discussion helpful, share it with friends and colleagues who need to hear it. Let’s support each other in creating healthier, more effective careers!

I’m thrilled to share that my book, “How to Be an Effective Statistician – Volume 1”, is now available!

It’s packed with insights to help statisticians, data scientists, and quantitative professionals excel as leaders, collaborators, and change-makers in healthcare and medicine.

Check out the testimonials and grab your copy!

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Peter M. Wehmeier, MD

Psychiatrist; Psychotherapist

Peter is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and expert in clinical research and pharmaceutical medicine. As the owner and CEO of SMST Wehmeier GmbH, he specializes in psychiatry, psychoeducation, psycho-oncology, and corporate mental health. A Fellow of the Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP) and a Certified Principal Investigator (CPI), he brings extensive experience in drug development, professional ethics, and self-management. With a background in psychotherapy and pharmaceutical medicine, Peter is dedicated to advancing mental health and well-being in both clinical and corporate settings.

Transcript

Effective self-management and taking care of your mental health

Alexander: [00:00:00] You are listening to The Effective Statistician Podcast, the weekly podcast with Alexander Schacht and Benjamin Piske designed to help you reach your potential lead great science and serve patients while having a great [00:00:15] work life balance

in addition to our premium courses on the Effective Statistician Academy. We [00:00:30] also have lots of free resources for you across all kind of different topics within that academy. Head over to the effective statistician.com and find the [00:00:45] Academy and much more. For you to become an effective statistician.

I’m producing this podcast in association with PSIA community dedicated to leading and promoting use of statistics within the healthcare industry [00:01:00] for the benefit of patients. Join PSI today to further develop your statistical capabilities with access to the ever-growing video on demand content library free registration to all PSI webinars and much, much more.[00:01:15]

Head over to the PSI website@psiweb.org to learn more about PSI activities and become a PSI member today.[00:01:30]

Alexander: Welcome to your new episode of the Effective Statistician, and today I’m super happy to have, an old friend and colleague of mine here on the show. Hi Peter, how are you doing?

Peter: Hi, Alexander. I’m fine. How are you?

Alexander: Very good. [00:01:45] However, I need to say I’m not always being very good. I definitely had some tough times when I was working, really being very much stressed and I would say at the brink of [00:02:00] burnout quite often.

And I know lots of people said do struggle with mental health during working time. You are as an expert in this area. I’m super happy to have you on the show to actually talk [00:02:15] about this and what we can do about it. From a company point of view, but if more what we as individuals can do about it.

But before we dive in to it, Peter, maybe you can speak a little bit about your career and how you have come [00:02:30] across this topic and why it is so important for you.

Peter: Yes, I’m a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. I’ve worked in the pharmaceutical industry for a number of years, but I’ve also worked in psychiatric hospitals.

At the [00:02:45] moment, I work in a psychiatric practice in Frankfurt, Germany, and many of my patients suffer from anxiety, burnout, and depression. And I’ve come to realize that this is a major problem, [00:03:00] not only in my patients, but also in ordinary people of the workforce that exposed to a lot of stress in their working lives, but also in their private lives.

So this is a very common problem. And it [00:03:15] results in a lot of personal suffering in these individuals.

Alexander: Can you expand a little bit on what are the symptoms that you see and what is that personal suffering?

Peter: The one of the most common symptoms is [00:03:30] anxiety. The mood goes down, the feeling of insufficiency, the self-esteem declines.

There’s tension. Sleep problems are often present, so there’s a whole lot of [00:03:45] symptoms that can indicate that an individual is suffering from anxiety or depression.

Alexander: Yeah, and the anxiety we are talking here about is not just a little bit of fear. It is really dis rehabilitating and has some [00:04:00] big influence on your life as such, and can hinder you from work or.

When you are still at work, you have this presentism that you are physically at work, but mentally just [00:04:15] not in a shape to actually contribute, isn’t it?

Peter: That’s right. So what we all know is absentism when you away from work on sick leave, but if you’re anxious about losing your job or if you’re anxious about not performing well, there’s a tendency to appear [00:04:30] at work and be present.

That’s where the word presentism comes from. You’re present at work, but actually because you’re impaired by the mental problems that you are having at the moment, that you actually cannot really do productive work. Moreover, it’s [00:04:45] not just about work, it’s also about your private life, because with burnout, anxiety, and depression, your private life is severely impaired and it has an influence on partnerships on your family life.

On [00:05:00] your free time, your friends, and there’s a strong tendency to withdraw, to reduce your social contacts, to retreat into a cave, into a [00:05:15] depressive cave, as it were, and be anxious about coming out and becoming active and connecting. With the people around you. So that can cause a huge problem for you in not only in your working life, but also in your private life.[00:05:30]

Alexander: Yeah. And that is results even into physical problems. So there’s also quite a lot of physical problems, somatic problems, so come with it.

Peter: Absolutely. More often than not, [00:05:45] depression is associated with physical symptoms. Usually it’s pain or quite often it can be pain like headaches, back pain, neck pain, muscle pain.

Those are typical [00:06:00] symptoms of depression. And the interesting thing is these seem to be physical symptoms, and they are physical symptoms in a way because the pain is real. The pain is there, but the cause is actually stress depression, [00:06:15] which in turn causes anxiety about your state of health. Anxiety about whether your situation will ever get better.

Often there’s the idea that this will never get better and I will never find a way [00:06:30] out of this terrible situation I am in.

Alexander: Yeah, and the hopelessness as a symptom is probably the worst thing, said you are in this depressed mood. This high state of [00:06:45] anxiety very stressed. You are, you have a feel a high tension in your body and with the hopelessness, you even think about it as a being constant for the rest of life.

And

Peter: [00:07:00] That’s right. That’s what I hear quite often the question, will this ever get better? And I try to reassure the patients that, yes, with treatment this will get better. The suffering is so bad and the situation seems [00:07:15] so hopeless that often patients will not really believe me, and I sense that, and I try to encourage them.

I try to show that eventually there will be light at the end of the tunnel, even if at this moment [00:07:30] they do not see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Alexander: Yeah. And I have been in such situation and I can tell you it’s, it is a very bad feeling and can even lead to suicidal [00:07:45] thoughts. And so that is, it’s really a severe problem.

How is it in terms of the prevalence of such symptoms, the prevalence of burnout and depression?

Peter: Basically, burnout is a fancy [00:08:00] word for depression. So in the psychiatric sense it’s the same thing. It’s a severe depression. The possibility for treatment is important, what you just said about suicidal thoughts that [00:08:15] underlines the importance of seeking treatment.

So even if you think there is no way outta the situation, I will never get out of the situation I’m anxious about. Asking for help. Anxious about speaking about the [00:08:30] terrible suffering I’m going through. It’s important to connect, to speak about it, to seek help. Talk with your relatives about it, mention it to your friends.

Seek help. See a [00:08:45] psychiatrist, see a psychotherapist, to seek help because there is help. Depression can be treated. It’s more common. And you are not alone if you are suffering from depression. Unfortunately, [00:09:00] depression is very common, more common in women than in men. That’s a statistical finding from many worldwide studies.

That’s a finding that is well established, but of course, the [00:09:15] suffering. That men go through with depression is the same severe suffering that women go through. So both women and men should take these symptoms very seriously and go and seek help because there [00:09:30] is help. There is help, and there is hope.

Alexander: Don’t wait. Don’t wait too long. Yeah. This is a disease. It is not a symptom that the signs that you are weak or insufficient or whatsoever. [00:09:45] This is a disease like any other physical disease you can have. Yeah. And don’t feel ashamed to seek help. That is, it’s not your fault that you have this disease. If you have such [00:10:00] symptoms, go seek help.

And if you know someone that has these symptoms supports them in seeking help, I think that’s a important point.

Peter: That’s a very good point. If you sense that someone is feeling [00:10:15] bad and may have depression, you will do nothing wrong. If you approach that person in a friendly way, in an understanding and compassionate way in a conversation, just the two of you, [00:10:30] and ask that person how he or she’s feeling.

Ask that person whether he or she has a problem or a sense of hopelessness, and I’m certain that person will appreciate the [00:10:45] question and may open up, and that could be the first step towards obtaining help and obtaining treatment in this terrible situation.

Alexander: Yep. Now, my perception is since [00:11:00] I started work more than 20 years ago.

The pressure and the demands in the workforce have definitely changed and I think they have a very much increase. Yeah. I would say is within all [00:11:15] the different companies, resources are not set freely available anymore like they used to be. There’s a lot more the. Doing more with less pressure that comes from the top is getting unfiltered to the [00:11:30] bottom people, the people in the do the heavy lifting in the trenches, so to say, and very often these kind of people’s needs then to decide what they do and what they deprioritize.

And so I think it is [00:11:45] very important that people look after themselves because they can’t assume that their management will take care of things. Often the situation is that, and I’ve seen that and talked to lots of people that they find being [00:12:00] frustrated, they wanna do a good job or maybe even a perfect job.

And I have the ability or have the feelings that they need to work very long hours for that. And even then, the to do list, [00:12:15] I think probably for some shorter period of time you can stand there, but sooner. I think things will, from a mental health perspective, in order to stay out of [00:12:30] that. I think one of the key things is of course, seeking help if it, if you have symptoms, but there’s also a couple of things you can do to prevent getting into that stage.

And the key words that we wanna talk about [00:12:45] today is self-management. Now Peter has invested quite a lot. Of time and to research about it, wrote books about it, have seen patients, hundreds of patients to help them, [00:13:00] and so I’m super glad that we can talk about this couple of different aspects of self-management.

By the way, Peter has also collated a long list of tips that we will put in the show notes, [00:13:15] tips that you can do. In your day to day work and also outside of your work, but especially in day-to-day work so that you take care of yourself and of self management. Okay. Let’s go through these [00:13:30] five big domains that you have identified as cannot areas of self management.

What is the first one that we should talk about?

Peter: The first one is self-awareness and true perception. I think it’s [00:13:45] very important. To realize what the situation is that you are in. It is also important to realize the reality outside what’s going on around you so that you have a good grasp on [00:14:00] reality, your own internal reality, but also the reality around you.

So you could identify problems and also identify more importantly solutions to your problems. Because Alexander [00:14:15] just mentioned a very serious problem. It’s a real dilemma. The increasing pressure we are under, increasing stress that we are exposed to, and increasingly less opportunities to cope with this [00:14:30] stress.

And so we’re stuck in a dilemma. And if we want to wait for the world to change, we can wait for a very long time. The world will not change. So unfortunately, we’re stuck in a situation [00:14:45] where we have to try and make the best of our situations. The good message is, of course, the good news. We have options to improve our situations.

These well, please may not be perfect. But we [00:15:00] do all have small ways of changing things, and that’s what I’d like to talk about in the workshop that focuses on self-awareness and true perception.

Alexander: Yeah. By the way, you will find links to the [00:15:15] workshop that Peter is talking about in the show notes. Peter will run five workshops together with the effective statistician as part of the medical data leaders community, which is a community that helps you to improve your [00:15:30] influencing skills.

And part of that is also to make sure that you’re in the right state and that you can actually influence. Because if you can’t care, take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of someone else. [00:15:45] Now, self-awareness, I think is a. Firsthand, it sounds like pretty obvious, but I know for myself that you can ignore things for quite a long time.

Sleep problems or [00:16:00] being stressed and some using techniques that are maybe not the best in terms of coping with stress. Yeah. Alcohol or let alone other drugs. Yeah that you take just to cope with the stress or. [00:16:15] Unhealthy behavior that lead may lead to short term relief from the stress, but longer term does have a price.

So that’s the first part. What is the next part that. [00:16:30] Important.

Peter: Yes. The second workshop is about personal relationships and social networks. We are not alone in the world. We have people around us in the work setting, but also in our private lives. There are [00:16:45] people around us. That are more or less close to us, colleagues, friends, our family, our partner and so on.

So the question is how do we communicate? How do we deal with other people [00:17:00] around us? How do we regulate our personal relationships? How do we react in times of conflict? How do we solve conflict? That’s the topic of the second workshop. Our [00:17:15] network of social relationships,

Alexander: I can see both that this network is important from managing conflicts in in such a way that it doesn’t have a negative impact on your [00:17:30] wellbeing, and the conflict does not necessarily means that says yelling and shouting and screaming.

Yeah. I have seen many conflicts where people don’t say anything and just try to eat up all their [00:17:45] frustration and their fears, their anxiety into themselves, which kind of just worsens the symptoms. The other part is of course, the positive relationships. These can be a huge resources for you for personal [00:18:00] wellbeing.

Peter: Absolutely. I’d like to underline, we all have to compromise, so it’s not about autism. We have to compromise. We have to communicate. First of all, it’s not enough, just not to communicate and hope the conflict goes away. [00:18:15] We have to solve conflicts, and usually both parties in a conflict have to move. They have to move towards one another in order to be able to solve conflicts.

So that’s one very important aspect. Solving [00:18:30] conflicts, communication, improving your communication skill. This also involves empathy. Of course, taking the point of view of the other person and trying to understand where they come from in the conflict. But [00:18:45] the other way around, also trying to explain why I think my perspective is valid and to be able to discuss the conflict and perhaps come to a solution.

Alexander: Yep. That [00:19:00] also speaks to negotiation. Which is another key element that we teach in the medical data leaders Community conflict very often comes in our world on different timelines or different expectations in terms of [00:19:15] the quality. Or that you need to negotiate about resources. You don’t have enough resources and you wanna get more resources.

Yeah. These are all conflicts that need to be resolved. And very often, yeah, that [00:19:30] will include negotiation skills. What is the third dimensions that we should take care of?

Peter: The third dimension, it’s about setting priorities and planning the future. We all live towards the [00:19:45] future and so it’s important to, to have an idea where I want to go.

What are my goals? Where do I want to be next year in 10 years time, but also tomorrow? What are my goals for tomorrow? So there are short term [00:20:00] goals. There are. Long-term goals. It’s about the future. It’s about my vision for the future. It’s all about the future. And without an idea of the future, I can’t have goals.

I cannot determine goals, [00:20:15] and of course, the goals determine my timelines. The future perspective, or my perspective on the future is very important for regulating myself and for my own self-management. [00:20:30]

Alexander: I think that is so important because it gets you out of this reactive mode. Yeah. If you, all the time at work, just try to react to the tasks that are thrown at you to the emails [00:20:45] that come into the chat messages that come into the meeting, invites that come into the expectations that are put on you.

You get into this reactive moment mood in that you basically stand with your back against the wall. [00:21:00] That is a very bad situation to stay in. Yeah. So this is very much about coming out of this reactive mode and becoming a designer of your life.

Peter: What’s very true, and I’d like to underline that, because [00:21:15] in determining goals, it’s the question, are other people determining my goals or am I.

Determining my own goals and of course an active mode. In an active mode, I determine my own goals. [00:21:30] Course I cannot dictate all goals. I have to meet demands, obviously, of ordinary life. In my working environment, I’ve superiors that I have to satisfy that there are goals provided by the company I happen to work in [00:21:45] or the organization I have to work in.

That’s clear. I do have freedom to determine very many other goals that are not determined necessarily by other people, and I would encourage you to explore [00:22:00] your own goals and your own idea of what a good goal is and meaningful goal is. Ultimately, it’s about the meaning. Of my life. You could see it in this way, the meaning of my life and my true goals that truly [00:22:15] fulfill me.

Goals that are fulfilling and not just only reacting on the demands made on me by my company or my organization.

Alexander: Yeah, we actually have a whole [00:22:30] process about annual goal, how to set this annual goal, how to make it. Make sure that your company goals and your own goal, your development goal, all these are taken into account.

And here’s, of course, not [00:22:45] just the business goals, it’s also about personal goals. What is the next dimension?

Peter: The fourth dimension is about choice, choosing among options and making decisions. So we make decisions. Almost every minute in our [00:23:00] lives, whether we get up or whether we turn off the alarm clock and continue our sleep.

Whether we choose tea or coffee for breakfast. Trivial goals, very trivial goals, up to very important goals in my life. [00:23:15] Partnership, choosing a partner. Buying real estate, buying a house, choosing a job, leaving a job, those are very important goals. So continuously in the short term, but also in the [00:23:30] long term, we are constantly confronted with options and we have to make choices and some options have to require quick choices, other options.

Leave us more time to decide. [00:23:45] But that’s the topic of the fourth workshop, looking at the options I have and making choices.

Alexander: Yeah, I think that is, just thinking about it, how it is the, what’s the opposite of this is you’re circling around, you can’t make a [00:24:00] choice because you fear of making the wrong one.

Yeah. And then you circle. And circle. And making no choice, of course is also a choice, but usually a pretty poor one. Yeah. And that [00:24:15] can drain a lot of energy from you if you can’t make choices in situations where, of course, usually you don’t have complete information. Yeah. In most decisions that you take, you don’t have complete information.

Yeah. [00:24:30] Will this new company be really better than the old one? Yeah. Will I find a new spouse if I now leave this one? All of these bigger problems, and if you are in a very bad mental state, [00:24:45] becomes more and more difficult to actually make choices. Yeah. Because just your personal energy level decreases so much that any energy to even make a choice becomes [00:25:00] insurmountable.

Being able to make choices is absolutely vital, and I’m very much looking forward to the fourth workshops that we will do about this one. Let’s go to the last workshop,

Peter: right? The final [00:25:15] topic is about meeting challenges and acting effectively. Eventually, there comes a point when I have to come to action, I cannot think about the options endlessly.

There’s a point where I have to [00:25:30] start. Moving and moving forward after having made a decision. The decision may be good, the decision may be bad, but eventually I have to start moving. Otherwise, I cannot change my situation. I cannot [00:25:45] do my work. I cannot contribute to a relationship. I cannot move forward in any way unless one point I start.

Acting.

Alexander: Yeah.

Peter: In a way you could say this is the most [00:26:00] important of the five dimensions. All the dimensions are important. They also interlink, they work together. But this just to say that the final dimension, the dimension of action is extremely [00:26:15] important. Otherwise, change cannot happen.

Alexander: Yeah. This reminds me of a LinkedIn post I’ve recently seen from Peter.

He asked to have five frogs sitting on at the side of the river. [00:26:30] Four decide to spring into the river. How many frogs are sitting on the side of the river? Five, because they just decided that doesn’t mean that they actually did it. That’s very

Peter: good.

Alexander: [00:26:45] Yeah. And this underlines the importance that there’s a big difference between deciding to do something and actually doing it.

Yeah. There’s probably lots of big things that you at one point [00:27:00] decided to do maybe on New Year’s Eve that you decided to do them, but did you actually do them throughout the year? Yeah. You persistent in doing these kind of different things and keeping to your [00:27:15] commitments is very important. Now, there’s also social interactions can help you with this.

Accountability partners forming habits so that moving forward and doing things that are good for you, [00:27:30] repetitively with less effort is habits are really important.

Peter: Yes, I agree. And one more aspect to action. The moment is now is the best moment to act. We only act in the present, the future. That’s our plans.

That’s [00:27:45] our decision may be to act, but we can only act now. So this is the moment to start moving forward.

Alexander: Yeah, and I’m a big fan of action because from action you also learn and you [00:28:00] can adjust. You don’t learn from planning so much, you learn much more from taking action.

Peter: Yes, and you will make mistakes and everyone makes mistakes, but the thing with mistakes is you can learn from the mistakes and you can, [00:28:15] as like you fall down, you can get up and move forward again.

So that’s what you do if you fail or if you make a bad decision, or if your action is not effective. You just start, get up and [00:28:30] start again or move forward again. Keep going. Don’t stop.

Alexander: Yeah. So now we went through the five dimensions of self-management, which will help you to better manage your [00:28:45] work, but also your private life, and help you to stay away from the bad symptoms that we talk about at the beginning.

Yeah. Depression. Or burnout and other kind of [00:29:00] euphemism of depression, anxiety, and other of these disorders that can really lead to big problems. I myself suffered from depression for many years, and it’s time, it got really bad that I [00:29:15] even went into a hospital, and I really wanna tell you, seek help earlier.

It is such important, do it for you, but also do it for your loved ones because they also suffer [00:29:30] very often from these mental health conditions.

Peter: I couldn’t agree more. So it’s important to seek, help, reach out and speak about how you’re feeling.

Alexander: Yeah. Take care of yourself. Yeah, follow these self-management [00:29:45] tips.

Check out the show notes where Peter shares. All of this, I think, notes 100 tips that you can have on self-management. Yeah. Thanks so much, Peter, for this very important episode is probably one of [00:30:00] the most important episodes that I ever recorded, and this more than 400 episodes. It was great to have here.

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the last episode.

Peter: Thank you, Alexander. Thank you for having me.[00:30:15] Alexander: This show was created in association with PSI, thanks to Rain and her team at VVS. Well with assurance, the background, and thank you for listening. I. Reach your [00:30:30] potential. Lead great science and serve patients. Just be an effective [00:30:45] statistician