Navigating the Invisible: Supporting Employees with Hidden Conditions | Stress Awareness Month 2025

Imagine waking up every morning and feeling your stomach lurch before any thoughts come into your mind.  You feel wet with sweat. Then your mind starts racing: How will I get through the day?  Will the pain stop me from sitting at my desk again? How do I tell my line manager that I can’t get that excel spreadsheet completed? Who could take my children to school?  Will they be OK?  I hate for them to see me like this. I’m useless and pathetic and broken.  How will I even get up to have a shower?  It hurts.

 

How would you cope with the daily and relentless stress of living like this? Add to this, the fact that as an onlooker you may not even ‘see’ it. Such is the nature of hidden conditions.    

 

During stress awareness month, the focus is understandably on mental health and how we can support people who are struggling.  But what about those 26 million people living day to day with a hidden long-term condition, 8 million of them of working age?  They need airtime too.  Living with pain or fatigue or brain fog or panic attacks is stressful.  In a work context, how does this group of people cope with toxic work environments, the cost-of-living crisis, increasing job demands and decreasing control over workload or poor line management? 

 

We have been advised in the past to ‘ask twice’ if someone is OK and not to settle for the initial ‘I’m fine’ answer.  Its good advice, but when the ‘I’m ok’ response comes back twice, What then? Perhaps offer the ‘I’m here if you need me’ response.  People aren’t always ready to talk right there then, but they will be reassured to know that you are there for them when they do.  

 

If you’re a line manager reading this article, take time to reflect on this, because you can help.  Think about your team.  Have you noticed anyone struggling recently?  An increasingly hard thing to do with remote working, yet possible.   What can you do to make their life just a little bit easier? Do you know what support they need from you to help them deliver their workload? Does that excel spreadsheet really need to be completed today? Have you heard about wellbeing action plans? (Google it if you haven’t!) 

 

But what about you, line manager?  Where are you going for your support? You are not a clinician; you can’t treat your colleague who experiences persistent pain.  You also have to have boundaries to maintain your own mental health.  So, ask for help and get what you need to both help your colleague and yourself. In the clinical world we call this supervision.   Not talked about much in the working world, but when you’re supporting others, it is important to get support for yourselves.  So, who to go to for this? HR, occupational health and perhaps a vocational rehabilitation practitioner are a strong start.  We can all help you, to help your colleague in pain and help to manage the stress experienced by both of you.  

 

We often get asked for less data and more tools and techniques.  I hope this is article has been a little helpful, but do reach out if you need more advice. Contact us here.