Don’t Panic While the World is Burning Around Us (part 1)

A lot of folx have been wondering, how do I market myself? How do I keep doing my everyday tasks? Engage in friendships and play board games? Go on vacation? All while there is mass suffering around us?

We are in a dark time, where dictatorship and authoritarian rule is looking more like the norm and the various genocides around the world are lasting longer and popping up more frequently.

This reality isn’t different than our ancestor’s realities, but the major difference is that it is all being live-streamed through social media and we have 24-7 access to it.

As mental health clinicians, we are built and wired to be compassionate and empathetic human beings. Sometimes, our empathy can bring us to a place where we want to quit our jobs and just spend all of our time organizing or going to the front lines and protest or help families impacted by genocide directly.

Sometimes our empathy causes us to see our mundane tasks and workplace struggles as “nothing compared to what others are experiencing”. Sometimes our progressive clients, who might be in more lucrative jobs, such as tech or finance, might also want to quit their careers and do something more “meaningful” and “helpful” with alleviating the world’s suffering.

This is so valid and very understandable. I, also, have fantasies of wanting to quit everything and try to move towards the picket line and devote all of my time towards working with groups that are actively and more directly alleviating the suffering of others.

I also have a few things to say if quitting is not a choice:

1) participating in revolutions require resources, like time, energy and money. Your salary and the benefits of having some time and energy to organize is not to be underestimated, even though it can feel so limited.

2) your profession is not the same as your artistry. what you do to get paid might not necessarily be your role in how you contribute to revolutions and it doesn’t always have to line up that way. You can still do your profession and lean fully into your artistry. Your artistry is what your greater life calling is. Most people can’t make a decent wage combining their profession and artistry. The American dream has us believe that we can do “anything” and the millennial American dream has us believing that we can “do what we love, monetize our artistry/hobbies, and find meaning in our jobs.” This only works for a small population and it is not a personal failure if it all doesn’t line up.

3) The part of you that wants more alignment with your personal values and your job is a part that believes that if your paid job lines more up with your values, then you will have more relief and your soul will be less dead on a day to day basis. There is some truth to that, but I know that our ancestors lived meaningful and full lives, and contributed to activist movements while doing menial labor. They saw that there was no ethical labor under capitalism and they saw their professions as a means to an end, not an end in of itself.

4) the part of you that wants more alignment with personal values and profession has perfectionistic tendencies that might be unrealistic and is chasing something that might not be there to begin with— such as fulfillment in our jobs. Our jobs can give us a sense of fulfillment, but so can so many other things. The reality is that most neurodivergent people might feel like it is too difficult to do anything after our workday is over. Most ND people might have used all of our “spoons” to do hard tasks and it’s hard to do anything “meaningful” after work. This is a reality. And there are ways to increase our executive functioning capacity. There are ways to still stay in our professions, while staying true to our values.

This third way, might not be permanent. You might have to stay in your job until you find something that is more aligned. Don’t stop looking for what is more aligned. In the meantime, work with someone that can support you to stay in the trenches until you find your next move that can hopefully merge your profession with your artistry.

Find some support to stay in the trenches because that transition might take 6-9 months, but it also might take years because the unfolding of our artistry and finding a way to merge our professions with it happens organically, through a process similar to unschooling, which is led by self directed curiosity and self directed education.

stay in there. hang tight. the best is yet to come.