Lost Highway Blues

Crossroads: A Self Esteem Test

jane — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:40:15 +0000

“Twenty thousand roads I went down, down, down/ And they all led me straight back home to you.” Gram Parsons, Return of the Grievous Angel

No matter how many roads you’ve gone down in search of your life path, I believe you can find the one that’s right for you. But, when you’re feeling stuck, it can be very hard to have the faith that any of the roads you’ve taken is ever going to lead anywhere.

In earlier blogs, I alluded to some ways that you might get stuck when you’re trying to find your life path. You might feel conflicted about making the decision that you know is right for you. You might never have experienced the kind of passion that would lead you to your life path. You might feel like a failure even though you’re really doing something that’s just not a good fit for you.

In my next few posts, I want to talk about each of these ways of getting stuck—about where you might be in your life and how you might have gotten there. In future posts, I’ll talk about how you might find ways to move on.

Crossroads

“I got the crossroad blues this mornin’/I’m sinkin’ down.” Robert Johnson, Cross Road Blues

Are you at a place in your life where you want to change direction? Do you have a sense of where you want to go? Are you having trouble making the change, even though you’re pretty sure it’s the right thing to do?

If your answer to these questions is “yes”, you’re having what I call a “crossroads” experience. You’re standing at the intersection of your old road and your new one. The old road has taken you as far as you can go but you can’t get yourself to start down the new one.

How did you get here? Why can’t you get on the right road?

There is no general, one-size-fits all answer to this question. You are a unique individual. You’re here, at your own crossroads, for your own reasons.

But, when you’re feeling stuck, it often helps to know that you’re not alone. So, while none of these examples might perfectly describe you and your situation, here are some ways that I’ve seen people get stuck. What they have in common is that they all present a kind of self-esteem test: Can you feel good enough about yourself to make the change you want to make? These crossroads self-esteem tests take two basic forms:

The scarcity self-esteem test: Sometimes people can’t make the change they know is right for them because they’re afraid there isn’t enough out there. If you’re thinking of leaving your salaried job for self-employment, you might be anxious that there won’t be enough work for you. If you’re in a creative field, you might worry that there’s too much competition for the work that is available. No matter what you want to do, you worry that there won’t be enough to go around.
The failure self-esteem test: If worries about scarcity are rooted in the feeling that there isn’t enough to go around, fear of failure is rooted in the worry that you are not enough—that you’re not talented enough, smart enough, attractive enough, something enough—to be able to take the path you know is right for you.

If you recognize yourself in one of these descriptions, how do you change your sense of yourself? How do you move from a feeling of scarcity to the feeling that you’ll be able to get what you need? From a sense that you’re failure to a sense of self-confidence? From feeling like a fraud to feeling authentic? In future blogs, I’ll talk about ways of moving past the crossroads and down the road that’s right for you.

Lost Highway Blues Rules Of The Road: BE A MISFIT (NOT A FAILURE)

jane — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 02:26:36 +0000

I experienced writer’s block for the first time when I finished graduate school and started teaching at Indiana University. When I got to Indiana, I was expected to revise my dissertation for publication. After a year and a half of work, I had revised less than half of it. By the middle of my second year at IU, my senior colleagues were expressing concern that I was falling so far behind schedule that my chances of being recommended for tenure were in jeopardy. I began to feel like a failure.

Mixed-Up Confusion

When I look back on that time now, I realize that I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I knew I was supposed to write articles. I saw my colleagues, who had been hired at the same time I was, writing and publishing all the time. But I didn’t know how to do it. I couldn’t think of topics to write about. I couldn’t figure out how to break down large topics into manageable ones. I didn’t have any sense of who my audience was. I felt like I had hit a wall and was banging my head against it over and over again.

When I started thinking about leaving my job and becoming a therapist, I decided to do some kind of volunteer work in mental health to see if I enjoyed it. I began working at a suicide prevention center. Even though I had no background or experience, I loved the work from the day I started. I loved connecting with people, learning about their lives and helping them get through the night. I loved learning new skills. I loved talking with my co-workers about our work. Even though, at that point, I was much more skilled and had much more experience as an academic, I felt trapped by academic work. On Thursday nights at the suicide prevention center, new possibilities for connection and learning were constantly opening up in front of me. Twenty-one years later, working in my own practice, I feel the same way every day.

“There’s no success like failure/And failure’s no success at all”.

Once I was working at the suicide prevention center, I no longer felt like a failure as an academic. Instead, I realized that academics was a bad fit for me. I was a misfit, not a failure.

One way to know that you’ve found your life path is that you experience a sense of possibility on a regular basis. It’s very hard to describe this experience in words. You might think of it as the experience of new horizons continually opening up or the next step on your path constantly revealing itself. One crucial aspect of this experience is that it feels effortless. It’s the opposite of banging your head against the same wall over and over again.

If you regularly experience this sense of possibility in your life, chances are good that you’re on the path that’s right for you. If you don’t, you might think about whether a change is in order. And, if you feel a change is in order but you feel confused about how to make it, psychotherapy can help you get on the right road.

As always, thanks to Bob Dylan for the song title (“Mixed-Up Confusion) and the lyrics (“Love Minus Zero/No Limit”).

Lost Highway Blues Rules of the Road: DON’T WRITE A RESUME

jane — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:41:32 +0000

In my first blog post, I talked about how I don’t like to write and how I discovered this when I took a creative writing class my freshman year in college. As is usually the case, the story is actually a little bit more complicated.

I very much enjoyed writing some of my college papers. In my junior year, for example, I took a class on the psychology of the unconscious. I didn’t particularly like the class but I loved writing the final paper. I was interested in how contemporary psychological theories understood an old religious question: Do we come to feel good about ourselves by doing good works or do we need more direct ways of transforming painful feelings like guilt and shame?

Because I chose a topic that was of great personal interest to me, I got very involved in writing my paper. I read a lot of books and wrote until I felt I had answered the question to my satisfaction. As a result, the paper was much longer than the assignment required. When I turned it in, the professor complained about the length and accused me of turning in a paper I had written for another class.

Why am I telling this story here? Often, when people are trying to find their life path, they’re encouraged to think about what is sometimes called their “skill set”. The idea seems to be that if you make a list of your skills-e.g. good at communication, good with computers-you can then use this list to figure out what you want to do with your life. If you’re good at communication and computers, you might want to be in sales or management. If you’re good with kids, you might want to be a teacher, and so on. The idea seems to be that, if you can capture your skill set in a resume, you’ll be on the path to finding your life direction.

I don’t think the story about writing my college paper is unusual. I think many people have had experiences like this in their lives. But they often don’t understand how to use these experiences to help them find their life path. So, let me begin that process by introducing the second Lost Highway Blues Rule of the Road:

DON’T WRITE A RESUME (to figure out what you want to do with your life).

Writing my paper was a great experience. But it wasn’t a great experience because it allowed me to use my writing “skill set” (a skill set I didn’t even think I had.) It was a great experience because writing it really mattered to me. It mattered so much that

1) I was willing to put in a lot more work than was actually required for the course;

2) I was willing to give up other things that were important to me-time with my friends, going out, free time-in order to spend time on my paper;

3) I was motivated primarily by internal satisfactions (wanting to answer my question), not external ones (like wanting to get a good grade);

4) I was willing to take risks, such as getting a negative reaction from my professor;

5) I chose to do something-writing-that I would not have chosen to do in another context (such as writing a research paper, which I managed to avoid throughout college).

If you’re struggling to find your life path, don’t write a resume. Instead, think about things you’ve done in your life, in both work and play, that had one or more of the qualities I’ve just listed.

FINDING YOUR LIFE PATH MEANS FINDING WHAT MATTERS TO YOU.

If you’re willing to do one or more of these five things, you’ve found something that matters.

If you start thinking along these lines and come to the conclusion that you haven’t had any experiences that mattered to you in this way or that they’ve been too few and far between to be useful to you in finding your life path, psychotherapy may be able to help you. People sometimes hold themselves back from having experiences that could matter to them because they feel these experiences could be dangerous. For example, they may feel afraid to take a risk because they’re afraid of being shamed or humiliated. Or they may not be able to make time for a meaningful activity because they are afraid to say no to a friend or partner who wants their time.

I’ll have more to say about these issues in future blogs. In the mean time, I welcome your comments and questions. I review all comments before posting them and will not post anything that I think will make this an unsafe place to post your thoughts. Until next time…Jane

Lost Highway Blues Rules of the Road: DON’T DO WHAT YOU’RE GOOD AT

jane — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:38:50 +0000

For me, the most daunting challenge of starting a website was facing up to the fact that I’d have to write on a regular basis. I don’t like to write. I consider not having to write one of the perks of my work as a therapist.

I struggled for months over how to communicate regularly to my subscribers. I thought about a podcast. I thought about using other people’s articles. Neither of those alternatives felt right.

One night as I was falling asleep I realized that the struggles I was having with writing might be related to the struggles of finding a life path. I thought that if I wrote about my writing struggles, I might be able to say something useful about finding your life path. Thus was born

LOST HIGHWAY BLUES RULES OF THE ROAD

My friends know that I have certain principles for living my life. One of them is Rubin’s Principle of Vacations. This principle states that, when I go on vacation, I never go from a warmer place to a colder place.

When I think about how I found my life path and how the people I work with have found theirs, I realize that I have developed some general guidelines for this, as well. In this and the following editions of this newsletter, I’ll talk about some of these principles and how they might apply to your life. So, here is the first Lost Highway Blues Rule of the Road:

DON’T DO WHAT YOU’RE GOOD AT (Just Because You’re Good At It)

When I was in junior high school, I didn’t know how to talk about my deepest feelings. I began writing poetry as a way to express them.

I turned in some of my poems for English class assignments. My teachers loved them. They submitted them to writing contests and had me read them in class. Before I knew it, I had become known as a writer.

The problem, as I discovered over the next few years, was that I didn’t like to write-not on a regular basis, at least. I had started to write out of emotional need. When the need was less urgent-because I had people to talk to or music to listen to or activities that felt emotionally meaningful-I had no desire to write. But I kept on writing because I expected it of myself and others expected it of me.

My writing probably helped me get into college. So, even though I was most interested in studying religion, I took a creative writing class my freshman year. I found the class very difficult. When other students read their work in class, I felt that writing came naturally to them. I was laboring at it and still not doing very well.

After much internal struggle, I decided to give up creative writing. I had to deal with many emotions-a sense of failure, a loss of identity, a worry that I had disappointed my English teachers. Mostly, however, I felt a tremendous sense of relief.

You should feel relief, not grief.

Are doing what you’re doing just because you’re good at it and not because you’re passionate about it? Are you thinking about giving it up and doing something different?

One sign that you’re making the right decision is a sense of relief. If you feel relieved about what you’re giving up -not that you really miss it, not that you’re longing to get back into it, not that you’re envious of the people who still do it-there’s a good chance that it’s not your path.

“I want to do something different. I know it’s the right decision. But I don’t feel relieved.”

If you’re pretty sure you’re making the right decision and you don’t feel relieved, there may be other issues involved. You may feel guilty. You may be worried that you will disappoint other people. You may be anxious about giving up something that you know how to do for something less certain.

There are many reasons that people can make a decision that’s right for them but not feel good about it. If you genuinely believe that you’re making the right decision but you still feel conflicted about it, psychotherapy can help you resolve your conflicts and feel good about your decision.

“I’ve quit things before with a sense of relief only to regret my decision later. I don’t think the feeling of relief is a trustworthy guide to making life decisions.”

You’re absolutely right. The sense of relief is one sign that you’re on the right track but it can never be the only one. In upcoming articles, I’ll talk about other ways to figure out if you’re heading in the right direction to finding your life path.

That said, however, I think it’s usually a mistake not to question whether you want to keep doing what you’re doing if you’re dissatisfied and your main reason for continuing to do it is that you’re good at it.

I welcome all comments and questions. Though you will have to provide an email address, your comments can be anonymous. I also screen all messages so this will be a safe place to post.