It is not instinctive to think that the state of our emotional health shapes the way we choose, engage with and sustain a career. Yet work is never only about income, title or progression. It is also an arena in which our self-esteem, identity and unresolved patterns are at play.

Increasingly, younger generations in the workforce approach their employers as if they were extended families and their managers as enlightened parents. The company is expected to be not only a place of work, but also a primary source of purpose and affirmation, a container for professional and even emotional needs. While this reflects a welcome recognition that work affects the whole person, it risks placing an impossible burden on organisations and managers.

An emotionally healthy person will not seek to repair through their job what belongs elsewhere. They do not look to a role, a team or a company to resolve personal insecurities, heal childhood wounds or validate their worth. These needs, left unmet, make us vulnerable to overwork, poor boundaries and unhelpful compromises.

Equally, they are not trying to extract from work the entirety of their purpose or meaning. They may find their work meaningful, but they do not depend on it to supply a sense of life satisfaction in every respect. They recognise that purpose can be distributed, held partly in work, partly in relationships, creativity and personal growth.

Freed from these burdens, work becomes what it is best suited to be: a place to contribute skill, solve problems and create value without the unspoken hope that it will also act as a lifelong therapist or substitute parent. This clarity tends to make for both healthier careers and healthier people.