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”).