"Don't Talk To Me About Work"

Here's an inspirational song by the incomparable Lou Reed. It's called "Don't Talk To Me About Work."

"How many insults do I gotta take in this one life?"  - Lou Reed

                                                           

Underemployment

The term "underemployment" describes the situation in which a person is working at a job requiring lower skills or credentials than they possess, or is working fewer hours than they need or desire.

I wonder how many people of ergophobic histories, if able to work, are working in jobs below their capacities. I would suspect that this is often the case. It has been true for me.

Of course, in an economic climate of high unemployment, many people consider themselves fortunate to have any job at all.

There is a widely-held belief that people with mental health concerns are better off working in less demanding   jobs. The idea is that these jobs are less stressful. While this may sometimes be the case, I think that sometimes there is actually more stress in working at a job below one's capabilities. This stress comes in the form of boredom, physical or mental fatigue caused by repetitive tasks, lowered self-esteem, coping with problems associated with lower socioeconomic status, and other difficulties associated with low-paying or low-status jobs.

Here are links to articles on underemployment. These articles may or may not address the relationship of underemployment to work satisfaction or ergophobia.

22 Million Americans Are Unemployed Or Underemployed

Study Says Many College Students Underemployed After Graduation

Overeducated and underemployed

Face of the new economy: the underemployed

Do You Have a Job That You Like?

If there is anyone out there that has a job that they like, I want to hear from you!

What is your job, how did you happen to choose this type of work, and what is your work life like?

I'm Going to an Assertiveness Workshop Tomorrow

Voc Rehab has kindly paid for me to go to an Assertiveness Workshop tomorrow. I need this badly. I hope it helps me.

I need to be more assertive around the dumbasses, doofuses, and bozos of the world. And everybody else, too.

I Still Have Ergophobia & It's Delusional

Although I'm working now (up to 30 hours a week), I still have a wide range of ergophobic symptoms that plague me on a pretty much daily basis.

I used to think that it was mainly people with psychotic disorders that were delusional. Well, I have found that I can sometimes be delusional in various states of depression, anxiety, and phobias.

It's probably a delusion that people don't like me.

It's probably a delusion that I'm not particularly good at my job.

It's probably a delusion that everyone can tell when I'm feeling depressed or anxious.

It's probably a delusion that people are deliberately saying things to hurt my feelings.

It's probably a delusion when I tell myself I'm lucky that anyone would even hire me at all.

Your Job is Not Who You Are

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"

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.