A big problem in our society is the erroneous belief that your paid employment somehow defines who you are.
I think many of us buy into this myth, on a conscious or subconscious level, whether we want to or not.
It is hard for many of us to obtain paid employment that reflects who we are inside. Some of us settle for any job, just to survive. Some of us settle for jobs that partially reflect our interests, or partially use our skills and abilities, because that's as close as we could get to what we wanted. There are a lucky few who feel completely at home in their work. I always longed for that feeling. Mostly I only found it outside of paid employment.
In a bad economy, the problems of job mismatch, underemployment, being "overqualified" and work alienation affect vast numbers of people.
One of the factors contributing to ergophobia is the sense of being in the wrong job, and feeling that this makes our life somehow "wrong," and that we are therefore inadequate.
When I find myself feeling that way, I need to remind myself that there is more to me than what I am doing for a living at any given time. My job is not who I am.
"You are not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world."
-Tyler Durden in the movie "Fight Club"
Monday, February 11, 2013
Fear of Loss of Self in Work
One of my recurring fears relating to work is being afraid that jobs will cause me to lose my self. Let me try to explain.
What this looks like for me: When I spend a fair amount of effort in any kind of repetitive work-like tasks, such as data entry, accounting, database searches, etc., I often feel that my own thoughts are vanquished, and somehow my self, or my me-ness, or identity, is lost.
I then feel like I don't exist during those periods.
I have a hard time returning to my own thoughts and sense of existence and identity after prolonged periods of external work, particularly if the tasks aren't intrinsically interesting to me. I go blank and feel mentally drained, sometimes physically drained also.
It can feel like losing my life a little at a time. Depression feels similarly to me. There's a sense of mental blankness and feeling less than fully alive. I feel like I am "not present."
I don't understand why this happens. Nor have I heard other people describe feeling this way about their jobs.
It's been happening to me again lately, now that I'm working. The more I work, the more I have these detached feelings of unreality. It's a very weird feeling and it's not one I feel I can fully describe or understand. Perhaps I will tell a therapist about this, or try to research what the hell this is.
What this looks like for me: When I spend a fair amount of effort in any kind of repetitive work-like tasks, such as data entry, accounting, database searches, etc., I often feel that my own thoughts are vanquished, and somehow my self, or my me-ness, or identity, is lost.
I then feel like I don't exist during those periods.
I have a hard time returning to my own thoughts and sense of existence and identity after prolonged periods of external work, particularly if the tasks aren't intrinsically interesting to me. I go blank and feel mentally drained, sometimes physically drained also.
It can feel like losing my life a little at a time. Depression feels similarly to me. There's a sense of mental blankness and feeling less than fully alive. I feel like I am "not present."
I don't understand why this happens. Nor have I heard other people describe feeling this way about their jobs.
It's been happening to me again lately, now that I'm working. The more I work, the more I have these detached feelings of unreality. It's a very weird feeling and it's not one I feel I can fully describe or understand. Perhaps I will tell a therapist about this, or try to research what the hell this is.
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