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Introduction
Stuck, directionless, detached, confused, self-doubting, hopeless – how many of us feel after almost three years of a global public health crisis that few of us were prepared for that disrupted our lives in ways unimaginable. The pandemic with its social isolation, lost opportunities, fears, illness, and its traumatic effects on home life derailed many of our dreams. “What did you want to be when you grow up,” has been replaced by “What did you want to be before Covid 19 struck,” followed by “What do you want to do now?”
As a psychologist working with individuals, groups, and organizations to help people cope with continuing trauma (termed “peri-traumatic”) and sensitive to blocks that interrupt career development, I observed many struggling to stay on track during the pandemic and find their track as restrictions lifted. Working at home, and not sure what was ahead, delayed, if not destroyed plans, and caused serious declines in motivation. So many felt trapped in helplessness and uncertainty.
Working remotely, college and graduate schools shut-down, or reduced to Zoom classes, reduced contact with colleagues and classmates, children quarantined and scared, threatened mental health. It was hard to stay focused on anything else but survival.
Since this was a community trauma, I too felt threatened with what was happening. I hadn’t felt the possibility of a major work disruption since 9/11, which turned out to be finite for most. I needed to quickly switch from in-person to telephone and Zoom sessions. I did not know how this radical and quick shift would work out. Would I be able to continue my work in a very different platform than I was used to? How long would this new arrangement be necessary?
More than two years into the pandemic, with much of the world is opening up, we all need to take a deep breath, understand the experience we have gone through and its impact on our future direction, including the way we make a living.
I invite you to participate in a conversation about what it takes to find or refine a career direction and feel motivated to fulfill an ambition that reflects who you are and what you want to be. I provide background, follow-up questions or a case study to structure our dialogue. My goal is to help you develop insights about the process of renewal to enable you to reset your ambition. I look forward to beginning our work together.
How has the pandemic with its emotional stress, health threats, and uncertain course affected your career goals and motivation to succeed?
The Great Resignation? The Great Resignation has begun. As offices, stores, restaurants, and resorts open-up, and workers are invited back, more and more choose not to return. In August, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported: The number of quits increased in August [2021] to 4.3 million (+242,000). The quits rate increased to a series high of 2.9 percent. Quits increased in accommodation and food services (+157,000; wholesale trade (+26,000); and state and local government education (+25,000)…. The number of quits increased in the South and Midwest regions. The prospect of returning to the same old job turns off many workers. Seeking more pay, better work conditions, a more equitable work-life balance, greater satisfaction and strengthened long-term fulfillment, resignation seems to be on a lot of minds. The safety net of additional unemployment benefits for some enabled millions to go without work while considering an exit scenario. My work as a psychotherapist with a focus on work-related issues has brought me into contact with people who feel ready to leave their current field and explore other options. Is this a “mid-life crisis,” a healthy response to the new normal, or a post-pandemic response to trauma? Working remotely led to months of social isolation that blurred the lines between work and non-work, Zoom fatigue, sickness, fears of getting sick, concern with time running out, and having to cope with loss and mourning everywhere. Without reflecting on what they have been through and trying to make some sense of the past year-and-a-half, some will make hasty decisions about their career path and be unclear about their motivation for seeking a change. Because of the trauma of the pandemic and the social, economic, and personal disruptions that followed, it would be useful to reflect on the last year-and-a-half, what we learned about ourselves, and ways to create the life (and career) we now want. Should we stay on course, make a moderate mid-course correction, or abandon pre-existing ambitions and life-style choices for very different ones? Consider a person in her mid-forties who would describe herself as ambitious. She states that she has pursued a set of goals for years that she hoped would fulfill her dreams. But during the pandemic, and working from home, she began to evaluate whether she was happy with the current trajectory her life was on. Working very long hours, not being able to spend quality time with family and friends, often feeling on the verge of burn-out led her to reevaluate her goals. Networking with colleagues and potential mentors helped her reality-check interesting opportunities and eventually prepare for a career shift. She used the pandemic detour to reset. In contrast, another person in mid-life, couldn’t face going back to the office. Having to commute, feeling under-appreciated and under-paid, and already feeling burned-out, he decided enough was enough. He informed his boss that he was resigning, effective immediately. While he was sure that quitting was the right thing to do, he became anxious that he didn’t know the next steps to take. The pandemic, then, has caused many to ask what they want their future to be, but how to get there needs to be spelled out. Otherwise decisions about work and life style could be flawed. Here is a process that will help the undecided gather information about their motives for changing and the realism of their choices. First, determine if the desire to change is realistic and consistent with an objective view of who you are and what you would like to be. Determine the extent to which your desire to change is a function of pandemic fatigue, job burnout, or an escape fantasy. Were there any signs of wanting to change direction before Covid-19? Revising ambitions could be impulsive and a mistake. For some, the better path forward might be to work towards improving current job conditions, or seeking a similar job in a better company, or re-balancing the ratio between work and family. Consider returning to school to prepare yourself for promotion and greater responsibility and rewards in your current field. If you find that the wish for change is realistic, enter a fact-finding stage. Seek informational interviews with people already in the jobs you are considering. Find out what they like and dislike about the work, available opportunities for securing a job and upward mobility, and how they seek to maintain the work-life balance. Consider what you now want out of work that will increase your feelings of self-worth and confidence. Try to calculate the financial risks and rewards of the contemplated career move. Discuss the pros and cons with your significant others. Finding a mentor in the new field would be a real plus. The mentor can be a sounding-board, a role model, and a source of leads for the information-gathering and job-hunting stages. Mentors can sometimes be found in professional organizations in the new field. Try to attend their industry conferences to get insight into the field being explored. Begin to create a network for yourself. If you decide that the risk-rewards ratio is favorable to changing careers, map out your detailed strategy along with a timeline. Try to include markers for what a successful completion of each major step would look like. When mistakes are made, allow time for revising your strategy. Keep pursuing your goal after a disappointment. Mentors and supportive friends and family would hopefully cheer you on. If instead you choose to recommit to your current career path, seek ways to enrich the workday. Discussions with colleagues and supervisors could yield positive results. Preparing for promotion, negotiating changes in responsibilities, seeking a salary increase, or requesting a new work schedule might significantly improve current conditions. If the results are not satisfactory, but you still feel committed to your current career choice, look for opportunities with other employers. Should you remain very confused or extremely anxious about how to proceed, seeking professional assistance would be a big help. You will learn more about yourself in the context of career and life-style choices and be less likely to regret the decisions you make. A post-pandemic self-reflective process could result in post-traumatic growth. We have all been through a lot but understanding the meaning of this traumatic experience and its impact on us can lead us to options we might not have otherwise considered. Entering the post-pandemic period with a well-thought-out plan for strengthening one’s quality of life is far safer than hastily deciding on major changes and leaping before looking. How might this transitional period lead to a better quality of life? What would the ideal balance between work and other activities look like? How could you construct a career path that would increase the likelihood that you could achieve that ideal? What could get in the way?
A good many of us have been spending much of our time in quarantine trying to figure out how we want to spend our post-pandemic time. To go back to our old jobs, to plan on retiring, to seek out new opportunities, to relocate, return to school, or coast in whatever way we can until something better comes along, are all options on the table. For many, the same old same old lacks appeal. Confronting our mortality, and the clicking time clock, we have learned to value our time more than we did before Covid.
Adding to our uncertainty is the increasing division in society – all societies. Not necessarily a product of the pandemic, but certainly a factor. Thinking about conflict at work or within industries is another turn-off. After what we have all been through, peace and quiet seems far better than rough and tumble.
If you have lost someone to Covid, you are more likely to be thinking about change. If you were very sick yourself, you might feel that you’re living on borrowed time – better take advantage of it.
While it’s understandable that thinking about the future after the pandemic trauma, we need to look out for making the wrong decision out of frustration, fear, or fantasy (“the grass is greener…”). Such decisions under pressure are likely to add to your problems. I am hoping that adopting a psychological perspective on what you’re feeling and considering will give you a better sense of what are realistic, what only look good and are not in fact viable options.
Too many are turned off by the prospect of returning to the workplace. They describe themselves as lethargic, unmotivated, burned out. All this makes them anxious. Career interrupted. If they don’t go back, money problems will add to their problems. Worse: not seeing a way forward could block their efforts to get back on track. What to do?
My work as a psychotherapist with a focus on work-related issues has brought me in contact with people who feel lost. Many ask whether this is a “mid-life crisis”? I reply, “This is a post-pandemic response.” Months of social isolation, blurring the lines between work and non-work, Zoom fatigue, sickness, or fears of getting sick, and above all, loss. Loss everywhere. We are collectively mourning, perhaps even not realizing what we are going through. Without acknowledging that we are processing loss – lost time, deaths, health problems – we can’t move on unburdened.
Somehow, we need to reflect on what we have experienced during the pandemic, truly a peritraumatic (extended) ordeal. And then we have to determine how this deadly and deadening period wiped out so much drive, and how restore our motivation. Otherwise, it’ll feel like we are dead in the water, further blocking our reentry.
Just reading about this “life crisis” will do little to reduce feeling and being lost. Connection with others, a set of real-life experiences in real time, can heal. Careful action will bring you closer to a path that will energize you and give you a sense of relevant direction.
The activities recommended are designed to promote and guide reflection: considering what the pandemic was like for you to free you from the chains of unprocessed trauma. Once you have examined the personal meaning of the public health crisis you will turn to identifying, evaluating, and revising assumptions born during the pandemic and holding you back after the pandemic.
Validating maladaptive thoughts is a key component of cognitive psychotherapy: identifying irrational assumptions that lead to anxiety, unsound decision-making, and self-defeating behaviors. What I’ll add to the mix is a way to develop insight into what makes it so difficult for many people to think more realistically and objectively, and change your action plans to make them more self-enhancing, instead of self-defeating.
How is all this to work? My aim is to present an approach for identifying, validating, and revising assumptions that, if not corrected, will hold you back from taking affirming steps or misdirect you. We’ll examine “cases” where an individual is stuck in a post-pandemic freeze and needs to unlock from a restrictive and self-defeating pattern of behavior.
My hope is that you’ll discover your blocking pattern through evaluating the assumptions held by the hesitant people presented. Evaluating your shared blocking pattern would likely free you up to move forward in a sound direction.
As we consider what holds people back from returning to the workplace with a degree of enthusiasm, let’s look at a way of understanding the obstacles that block many. I call this approach thematic Introspection. We look at a person’s self-reported experience in trying to get back to the office and try to determine the unsupported predictions that arise and inhibit the worker. Introspection – looking inward -- should reveal what the emotional obstacles might there be. Once the emotional barriers are identified the individual could confront and reduce their power.
In your experience, what predictions are likely to produce anxiety and hesitancy over returning to the work place include:
Not meeting expectations;
Running into interpersonal conflict;
Blurring boundaries between work and non-work roles;
Feeling powerless;
Not finding meaning in the work;
Insufficient energy;
Little hope that things will work out.Now is the time for self-reflection. I suggest you think about how the pandemic influenced your thoughts and feelings about your pre-pandemic goals.
What did I expect to gain by pursuing my earlier career goal?
Am I still interested in achieving these outcomes?
Do I still feel that I could obtain these benefits by pursuing this goal?
How could I find out?
Would a renewed effort to resume my previously-held career goal lead to the outcomes I remain interested in?
Is there a new or modified goal that would be easier for me to pursue and attain the benefits I remain interested?
Review your answers for themes:
1. What is my degree of interest in my pre-pandemic goal?
2. Is the effort required to resume my pursuit worth it?
3. What obstacles would I need to overcome to relaunch my pursuit?
4. Do I have the motivation to try?
5. Does an alternative goal stir up greater motivation?
6. Would the effort to pursue and achieve that alternative likely be more pleasurable?
Becoming motivated again…….
Just like many are vaccine-hesitant, others are proving to be return-to-work hesitant. Their desire to return is blocked by fears, a preference for the more convenient status quo, a failure to see the long-term implications of not going back to the workplace, and a general malaise that makes every step forward too draining and so likely to result in new disappointments that are likely to resonate with those experienced in the past. Compounding the block is the support of others for avoiding the workplace and searching for a better place to be.
“We’re all in this together -- look for happiness, not money or status! The office is an unkind setting that will destroy the one life you have. Don’t sell yourself out for money.”
Fatigue is the result of being restricted for a year and a half, and not knowing when the pandemic will end. Life is on hold. Feeling (and being) powerless brings you down. Others can offer little hope. Resignation envelops us. The boat is sinking.
The more resilient among us have likely had experiences where they found their power in what seemed to be a hopeless situation. Perhaps others helped them find their way out of the despair.
Stepping back, finding wisdom from those we trust could provide the insights and courage we need. Power restored. Fatigue lifts.
Take Away: Fatigue is an indicator that we feel powerless. Having a sense of self-efficacy means that we believe we can influence what happens to us. Coming up with a feasible plan to get us out of the hole we’re in restores our energy. We can then mobilize our resources to reduce the despair that tires us out.
Let’s take a deeper dive into the pandemic’s impact on your pre-pandemic career goals.
Since the beginning of the pandemic….
1. Reaching my previously- established career goal has become less important to me
2. I have increasingly questioned the career goal I had before the pandemic
3. I have spent less time planning the next steps in my career
4. My career has become less important to my sense of who I am
5. I have decided that in the future I will spend more time focusing on the quality of life outside of work than previously
6. I have become less interested in career advancement
7. I have become less concerned about how impressed others are with my career achievement
8. I have been less motivated to work as hard as I could at my job
9. I have spent less time connecting with work colleagues either in person or remotely
10. I have been less interested in connecting my supervisor/manager at work to review my job performance
11. My working hours and or income have been reduced as a result of the pandemic
12. I think that opportunities for achieving my previously-held career goal were reduced?
13. Caregiving responsibilities (child care or elder care) have made working at my job more difficult?
14. My physical and emotional well-being have suffered
15. I have been badly affected by loss within my family or circle of close friends
Review your responses. Try to understand what these stressful reactions mean to you. Take your time to process memories of concerning these unforeseen developments. Is it possible that you can learn from these difficult times. Try to give yourself some credit for getting through these challenges. We refer to these as signs of post-traumatic growth. Talking with trusted and empathic friends, counselors, or professional mental health practitioners would likely aid you in coming to terms with the pandemic and build your readiness to revisit and relaunch your career development.
9175-544=8847 ©2018 - 2022 BY DR. JEFFREY KLEINBERG, LICENSED PSYCHOLOGIST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.