Where To Go When You Can’t Cope Anymore
When You Can’t Cope Anymore
I could have headed this, ‘When The Way You Deal With The World Comes To An End’ but that’s probably not what you are feeling however the second heading is possibly more suitable. Consider this, as you grew up you built your personality around the environment you lived in. If it was a hostile environment you would have naturally built yourself up with behaviours that protected yourself as best you could. If conversely you were protected by your family and sheltered from some or all of the natural things that should happen to a growing person, you might find you didn’t need to protect yourself so much. And of course there are many variations in-between. Now project this forward to your mid life, at a time when perhaps things are changing for you that are hard to deal with. For example, your career is slowing down? Your partner is maturing and becoming a different person?
I see and hear many people experiencing this. For instance, let me introduce a man (I shall call him Roger) who was in a senior role in a large bank. He was a trouble-shooter who had achieved a good reputation for himself and developed up the career ladder to a position of authority and status in this large corporate organisation.
As a boy he was bullied a lot for looking odd, however he learnt that by sharing interesting facts studying hard people started to treat him with some respect. So, instead of the goofy looking kid, he was the geek, and that was ok. He became a geek and started to use his intellect to get him through life, influencing and protecting himself.
Roger had a successful career ten years ago, yet like many of us, he had some weaknesses in his personality that weren’t being highlighted in his life at that time but was there to cause him trouble when the situations aligned.
This maybe why you are where you are now. Perhaps you are in a situation that highlights your weaknesses or vulnerabilities. Another example of this is the young woman who never was strong enough to terminate her relationships when she felt they had run their course. Fast forward to her fifties and she has been married for 20 to 30 years to a man who also will not be proactive and terminate his sour relationship with her. Their relationship has lasted that long because they both don’t have the will power to do something about their relationship. Both wishing for a better life but an-able to accept the uncertainty of life and separate to find the life they really want. Depression has set in now and she is doing everything in her power to avoid taking that uncertain plunge. Why? Because she was well protected as a child and never really grew up with a strong ability to take control of her life herself. She looks to her counsellor to collude with her on her inability to make decisions herself and always asks her counsellor for his opinion. Her counsellor tells her its not for him to advise and realises that she is looking for a father figure in him to replace the father she lost a few years back. The lady is balancing on a edge, trying to find a way to replace the missing father that told her what to do and yet trying to separate from her husband yet avoiding it at any opportunity because the uncertainty of the situation is far from her comfort zone where mum and dad made everything right for her.
Back to Roger.
Roger chose to leave his large bank and go to work in a small bank. The differences within large and small organisations, as many of us know, are that you can be less ’specialised’, i.e. you have to do your own photocopying, you don’t have a tea lady coming around the vast corridors of your large corporate, you have to go to the shared vending machine yourself or make your own coffee. Such cultural changes seemed to have challenged Roger because he lasted 6 months in the job and left abruptly, never clearly admitting to what exactly happened but I would guess it was something around the cultural difference and that Roger was always keen to demonstrate a high level of status as we shall see further on.
Roger then chose to start up his own insurance company and opened up an office in the local high street. He employed a secretary and started to make money. However although the money started to come in, it flattened out very soon and begun to shrink. Over the following year all of Roger’s money went into the office, however, most was going out the computer in the back room as Roger had moved his desk out there and was now gambling. He told his relatives that he had devised a sure way to make profit from gambling. He tried to intellectualise (see A Thick Layer Of Denial) his way out but people were worried about what was going on, it felt very odd. His secretary sat there all day with nothing to do.
He continued to loose money until his family forced him to close down the office, sack the secretary and sell his house to pay his increasing debts. Roger had tried to re-create the world he felt comfortable in by creating an office and employing a secretary to do his tea and photocopying, i.e. to give him status. By recreating his world Roger was missing some important connections with reality, he was no salesman and he didn’t have a clue how to interface with customers because his corporate world kept him far away from the front office.
Eventually Roger became bankrupt, borrowed and lost $50,000 dollars from his brother, lying to hide where the money was going. Roger now works a couple of days a week although that is infrequent because he struggles with the low paid roles he has to endure when he feels he should be treated with far more status by being a manager at the factory where he works. He lives in a rented apartment in a cheap side of town and, whilst his wife is still with him, the strains on their marriage are showing as she is now having to work harder whilst Roger stays mainly at home and has taken up gambling again.
Roger is in complete denial. This situation is happening all over the world and effects people who on the outside are confident and intellectual, yet inside are vulnerable and are trying desperately to protect themselves from the reality of their situation.
Roger has avoided counselling, probably because he is worried he wont be able to cope with what he will have to face. Outside in the big wide world he has always been able to bullshit his way through by baffling the brains around him.
Think about yourself, what is the difference between the situation you are in and the situation you want to be in. Where does that desire come from? Is it about what you think ’should’ be? The word ’should’ signifies something important usually. By saying ’should’ you are looking at the rules that you run your life by. ‘Things should be done that way, not this way, but why? Is it what you were brought up to understand and now are trying to continue? Have your rules become unhelpful or obsolete as you move through life and your environment changes? Maybe its time to question your set of rules, your outlook on life, your needs and try to adapt yourself rather than try to continually look for the world that adapts for you?
You can apply this to many things. Not being able to cope is a very broad statement that can mean you are not able to cope with many things some that can be easier to deal with than others. For example a relationship that you have tried so hard to make work but are now at a point where you cannot cope with how hard it is. Well, its time to stop denying the reality of the situation and choose to adapt yourself, not the relationship. Adapt by acknowledging that the relationship is not working as you would like and either accept it for what it really is, or ship out and separate. Are your expectations within a relationship too high, or are you trying to believe the relationship can be what you want it to be?
Are you trying to cope against the flood of challenges you have by still needing the status that you had in your last job? Maybe you are looking for some respect that your position, the name of your role gave you. Now maybe you are in an environment where respect is gained less through the name on your role and more by your abilities to succeed much like Roger.
Maybe you can’t cope because you are overwhelmed by all that you need to do in your life. You have so many plates juggling. Again, time to realise that in your world you cannot juggle so many plates. Perhaps the plates have all started to wobble at the same time so you have far more to do. Or you have been juggling for so long that you are fatigued, and feeling that you now cant carry on juggling so many plates. Therefore its time to realise this, stop kidding yourself you can continue or that you must continue as you have in the past or you will be a failure. Its time to adapt your view on the world and accept that you need to change your expectations and simplify your life.
Guy.
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Filed under: Depression, Self-Esteem & Anxiety, Mid-Life Crisis, Philosophical
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