Making a career change

Developing a strategy for pursuing work-Life poals: Overcoming resistance to making a career change

This is the third part of a three part series on identifying and pursuing your Work-life goals. Part I and Part II dealt with:

1. What do you want to do with your life?
2. How do you develop a strategy for doing it?

Part III addresses four topics:

1. Roadblocks to pursuing the well-codified plan for making a career change.
2. How do you begin to understand your resistance to pursuing your career goals?
3. Steps for overcoming roadblocks to making a career change
4. Interventions that might prove helpful should you find yourself stymied in making a career change

1. Roadblocks to pursuing the well-codified plan to making a career change

What if you know what you want to do with your life -- you know that you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a web designer or a political scientist or a teacher or something so novel that it doesn't even, yet, have a name. You have articulated a strategy for pursuing this goal. You have found a dedicated mentor or you have joined a Work-life group. You have read about your field of interest. You are well-informed. You are learning more and more about the field everyday. You feel that you have found the perfect fit.

Yet, despite your best laid plans to tenaciously pursue your career goals, you find yourself immobilized. You can't seem to put one foot ahead of the other. Or, once you get started, you can't seem to maintain your efforts to make a career change. What then? What gets in the way? If this is your situation, you may want to attempt to understand your "resistance" making a career change.

Resistance

If you are having difficulty implementing your plan, you should pay attention to your "resistance". What is resistance? How can it be understood? Resistance simply refers to the idea that if you are not doing what you set out to do then there is a reason for it. That is, you have some conflict about doing it. And, that conflict can be discovered and understood. The good news is, however, is that understanding your resistance frees you to overcome it.

Unfortunately, many of us treat our own resistance like the enemy. We react to it with brute force. Faced with resistance, many people take the seemingly most logical step in the world, they use their "willpower" and try to catapult themselves over the obstacle. They operate like the wind-surfer, who faced with a gust of wind, attempts to counterbalance it -- but, of course, ends up, inevitably, falling on their derriere. The wind is simply stronger than the wind-surfer. The wind-surfer would be better served to take stock of the wind and lean into it.

So too with resistance. Many people assume that reason will triumph over emotion. Thus, they give themselves a "pep talk" and exhort themselves to take action. When they fail, they criticize themselves for having no "willpower". This is unfortunate inasmuch as resistance is an important warning sign that all is not as it appears. Like the wind-surfer, they would do better to work with the resistance rather fight it. For resistance, like the tip of the iceberg, signals that there is something large lurking beneath the surface. Thus, it should be respected and understood, not ignored. Unfortunately, this task is not easy as resistance often operates outside of our awareness.

2. How do you begin to understand your resistance to making a career change?

There are several steps that you might take and questions that you might ask yourself:

1. Examine the advantages to maintaining the current status quo.

It is easy to identify the benefits associated with pursuing a life dream, goal or a career change. That is, perhaps you are certain that you will love your proposed work. Or, that it will be lucrative. Or that you would welcome the status associated with the position. It is much harder to think about those aspects of "success" that trouble you. This is because quite often these types of thoughts/feelings are out of ones awareness. Try to examine to "downside" of achieving your goals.

2. Ask yourself: what benefits do I derive from not pursuing my goals?

This seems like a bizarre question. Yet, it has been my experience that people who are not pursuing their goals typically derive some benefit from that inaction. So, ask: "What are the advantages to not making a career change?

3. Is this what I really want to do with my life?

That is, for example, "I say I want to be an attorney. But, is this really what I want to do with my life? Or, am I trying to please someone else such as my parents or my spouse? If I am trying to please someone else, who are they and why are they so important that I would subordinate my own goals and interests to their goals and interests? Am I trying to prove something? If so what am I trying to prove? To whom? Why?" This is important to assess because people who are "trying" to do something that they do not truly want to do often find themselves moving very slowly.

4. Am I afraid of commitment? If so, of what am I afraid?
5. Besides myself, who does my failure to pursue my career objectives or make a career change, hurt?

Are you unconsciously failing to follow through on your career goals because you don't want someone else, such as a parent or a spouse, to be gratified by your success? Most people do not consciously sabotage their own success in order to deprive others of the happiness that it might bring (except for perhaps adolescents!). Yet, sometimes we are affected by feelings that are outside of our awareness.

For example, take the college student who is very angry at his father for trying to tell him what to do or how to do it. Such a son, might feel, "if I am successful, it will make my father look good or show him that he is right". Thus, the son might, albeit, unconsciously, sabotage his own success. In adulthood, these feelings may persist. But because they are incongruent with our perception of ourselves as adults, or are intolerable in some way, the feelings go underground, where they continue to exert their silent but potent influence over our behavior, while remaining outside of our awareness.

6. Who am I protecting by not pursuing my career objectives?

Another question to ask is: if I succeed, who will I make uncomfortable? For example, many women may be unconsciously fear losing or damaging their marriages if they outstrip their husbands professionally. For example, decades ago, I had a student who asserted that she wanted to become a clinical psychologist and, indeed, she completed all of the necessary requisites to do so. However, she was dragging her feet through the application process.

I encouraged her to list for herself the benefits associated with not applying to graduate school? After considerable reflection she became aware that she was concerned that if she were accepted, she would out earn her husband. And this, she felt, would jeopardize her marriage.

Similarly, the student who is the first in their family or community to earn an advanced degree may experience a sense of loss and/or isolation associated with each achievement, they may be protecting their family and friends as well as themselves from experiencing the loss inherent in making a career change or pursuing a career goal.

Steps for overcoming roadblocks to making a career change
1. Give yourself a deadline, perhaps six weeks, to attempt to answer the questions outlined above and to develop a plan for getting on with the pursuit of your work-life goals.
2. Make use of some of the popular books available toward this end such as: Dick Bolles', What color is your Parachute? And, Barbara Sher's, Wishcraft.
3. Talk over these questions with a trusted friend. Doing so may provide you with the insight into your difficulties.
4. If these efforts prove ineffective make use of the resources described below.

3. Interventions that might prove helpful should you find yourself stymied.

What if you have asked yourself the questions listed but the answers prove elusive? What if you have participated in a work-life group but found that you were unable to follow-up on goals, even with group support? Or, what if you were able to identify some of the sources of your resistance but were uncertain as to how to completely understand your conflict? How might you deepen your self understanding?

As an adjuvant to your efforts, consider an evaluation to learn whether psychoanalytic therapy or psychoanalysis might be useful to you. Since most psychoanalysts practice both therapy and analysis, seeking an evaluation from a psychoanalyst will enable you to clarify whether either of these treatments would be helpful to you -- in clarifying the roadblocks that have interfered with your efforts to pursue your work-life goals.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy

There are many types of psychotherapy available which focus nearly exclusively on behavioral change. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is somewhat unique in that it focuses on deepening ones awareness of ones unconscious processes. That is, it is devoted to helping the individual to become increasingly more aware of feelings, motivations and thoughts that may exist outside of their awareness. This, in turn, helps individuals to become more aware of maladaptive patterns that interfere with achieving personal and professional goals. Therapy takes place on a once, twice or three times a week basis.

Psychoanalysis

Although psychoanalytic therapy can be helpful in addressing many difficulties, some people prefer a more comprehensive approach to resolving repetitive, conflictual patterns that interfere with their getting the most out of their lives. They seek an approach that will enable them to alter their life trajectory. In this intensive treatment individuals meet, four or five times a week, on an ongoing basis with a psychoanalyst with the aim of understanding their issues and conflicts in greater depth.

For those that can not afford this type of treatment, it should be noted that Washington has an unusual number of low fee resources available. Thus, inability to pay need not be a deterrent.

This is the 3rd article in a 5 part series. Read the rest of the series, here:

The site does not provide psychological or work-life advice to any specific individual. Rather, the content is intended to be for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns regarding a psychological or work-life difficulty, seek professional evaluation. Do not disregard professional advice or delay in seeking it because of anything that you have read on this web site.

Seeking a consultation with Washington DC psychologist Dr. Friedman? Feel free to give her a call at: 301.656.9650

5480 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, MD, 20815
(1/2 block from the redline, Friendship Heights Metro)



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