How a Crisis Can Bring About Positive Change in Your Life

Sooner or later in life, everyone has to cope with a crisis.  It doesn't matter how much you try to avoid crises, they are an unfortunate part of life.  Sometimes, you can see a crisis coming in advance and prepare for it.

See my articles: Fear of Making Changes

Standing at the Crossroad: Fear of Making Major Life Decisions

Preparing Emotionally For Major Changes in Your Life  

Other times, a crisis occurs when you least expect it.  But in many cases crises can be opportunities to make changes that are, ultimately, for the better.

How a Crisis Can Bring About Positive Change in Your Life

People who are able to reframe crises into a possibility for an opportunity are better able to get through the chaos that crisis often brings (see my article: Developing a Positive Perspective About Reframing).

Let's take a look at some fictional scenarios, which represent common occurrences, that illustrates these points:

How a Crisis Can Bring About Positive Change in Your Life

Jim

Jim worked as a senior manager for his firm for over 25 years.  He had a good relationship with his boss and with his colleagues, who praised his work.  He thought he would ride out his last years at this company until retirement and then he planned to start his own consulting business.  But a few years before Jim planned to retire, he was laid off due to budget cuts.  His boss and his human resources director assured him that it had nothing to do with the quality of his work.

At first, Jim was paralyzed in fear.  He wasn't sure what he would do.  So much of his identity was tied up with his job (see my article: When Job Loss Means Loss of Identity).  When he told his wife about the layoff, she encouraged Jim to start his consulting company now and "Go for it!"  Although he was afraid, at first, within a year, he was making more money in his consulting business than he made at his former job, and he had more time to spend with his family.  So, what he initially experienced as a crisis turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Betty

Betty was in a stagnant relationship that was going nowhere for a few years.  Although she wanted to get married and have children, she was afraid to leave her current relationship because she thought she would never meet anyone else.  Her rationale was, "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know" and so she remained in this unhappy relationship (see my article: Are You Too Afraid to Leave an Unhappy Relationship?).  One evening, over dinner, her boyfriend, Ted, told her that he wanted to breakup.  He accepted a job out of state, and he didn't want to have a long distance relationship, so he thought it was better to end their relationship.  At first, Betty panicked.  Even though she was dissatisfied with the relationship, at least she had someone to have dinner with and to go to the theatre.  Now, she would have no one.  During the first few months after the breakup, Betty mourned the end of her relationship.

How a Crisis Can Bring About Positive  Change in Your Life

Shortly after that, a close friend introduced her to someone new, John.  After dating for a few months, Betty and her new boyfriend decided to be exclusive, and she realized that she was happier in this relationship than she had ever been.  Had she and Ted remained together, she would never started dating John.  What initially felt like a major crisis in her life turned out to be a positive change.

Donna

Donna had always enjoyed good health for most of her life.  But shortly after her 40th birthday, she had a mild heart attack and was hospitalized.  After she was discharged, her cardiologist spoke to her about her stressful lifestyle, including a stressful job that she hated and an unhealthy diet where she mostly ate on the run.  He told her that she would have to make changes to her lifestyle or she could have a massive heart attack, especially since there was a history of heart problems in her family (see my article: How Medical Problems Can Change How You Feel About Yourself).

Donna spoke with her husband about the changes she was thinking about--including leaving her stressful job.  Her husband encouraged her to do what she had always wanted to do--become a yoga teacher.  So, when she quit her job, and when her cardiologist gave his approval, Donna began a yoga training program.  Soon after she completed the yoga training, she began working for a local yoga studio, a job that she loved.  In retrospect, she realized that she probably would never have quit her stressful job to do what she really wanted if she had not had the heart attack.

Conclusion

Making changes in your life, even under the best of circumstances, can be challenging.  We often become comfortable with what's familiar, even if it's not what we want.

Making changes during a crisis is even more challenging because we're often not prepared for the crisis.  It can be like a tsunami that comes upon us suddenly.  

Being flexible, being able to reframe a crisis into an opportunity (if possible), and having emotional support can help you to make positive changes. 

But there are times when the crisis is so overwhelming that it is traumatic.

In other words, it's beyond what you can handle, and you might need help from a skilled mental health professional to help you to get through the crisis and come out of it more resilient than before.

Getting Help in Therapy

Everyone needs help at some point in his or her life.

Sometimes, friends and family, who are well-meaning, aren't helpful because they're part of the crisis or they're fearful of change so they can't see opportunities or alternatives.

When you're overwhelmed by a crisis, you could benefit from working with a skilled mental health professional who can help you to recognize your strengths and help you to regroup (see my article: The Benefits of Therapy).

Rather than struggling on your own, if you feel overwhelmed by a crisis in your life, seek help from an experienced psychotherapist who can help you to overcome the current obstacles so you can live a more fulfilling life (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

I have helped many clients to overcome their problems so they could maximize their potential and live the life they want to live.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Midlife Transitions: Reassessing Your Life - Part 1

In a prior article, Living Authentically - Aligned With Your Values, I discussed that people come to therapy because they're living lives that aren't aligned with their core values.  In this article, I'm focusing on a particular time in life, midlife, when people often reassess their lives and discover that they're not living the life that they want to live, and they're faced with the challenge of making changes so that they'll lead a more fulfilling life (see my article: Making Changes).

Midlife Change

Some people refer to this stage in life as "a midlife crisis" and for many people it does feel like a crisis, but not everyone responds to it in that way.

For many people, midlife, roughly defined from about age 40-60+, is viewed as a transitional time to assess how they're living their life now and how they want to live the rest of their life, especially if they're unhappy with where they are now (see my article: Navigating Life's Transitions)


Defining Midlife Transition
Let's start by defining what we mean by this transitional time in midlife, which can include:

• Questioning the meaning of life
• Questioning how you've been living your life and major decisions you've made in the past, which could include relationships, career and other major life decisions
• Questioning your faith/religion or lack of faith/religion
• Being preoccupied about aging and death
• Feeling confused about how you see yourself, others, and life in general
• Feeling bored and dissatisfied with life as it is now, including relationships, career, and overall lifestyle
• Feeling a general sense of restlessness
• Feeling a yearning to do something new and different
• Daydreaming about living a different kind of life, possibly in a different place with different people
• Feeling generally irritable and anger, which is not part of how you usually feel
• Noticing age-related changes in your body, including weight gain, hair loss, wrinkles, menopausal symptoms and other age-related changes
• Feeling less attractive
• Feeling a loss of confidence
• Acting out with alcohol, drugs, gambling, overspending, food or with a sexual affair
• Lack of libido with your partner or spouse
• Feeling nostalgic for a time when you were younger
• Daydreaming about "the one who got away" (a former romantic interest)
• And other related reactions

Not everyone who has some of the experiences listed above is going through a midlife crisis.

Much will depend on how you respond to the need for change.

Some people experience it as exhilarating and filled with new possibilities.

Other people respond with fear (see my articles: Fear of Change and Making Changes Within Yourself to Live the Life You Want).

Why Do People Go Through Midlife Transition?
Going through a midlife transition is a natural part of being human.

For some people, it occurs because of a major change in their lives or a major change in someone close to them, which could include:

• Losing a job
• Coping with a major illness
• Coping with a problem with a spouse or partner, including infidelity or other forms of betrayal
• Going through a divorce or breakup of a relationship
• Death of a parent or sibling
• Death of a spouse or significant other
• Death of a child
• Losing a close friend
• Considering reconciling a relationship with a parent, sibling or former lover or friend
• Shocking personal news 
• Financial crisis
• Other major losses or changes

For other people, it comes naturally at a certain age or time in life when they're faced with the reality of their own mortality.

Realizing that time is precious, they question how they want to spend the rest of their life so that they don't look back with regret about what they "could've" or "would've" done and didn't do.

Even though going through a midlife transition can be challenging and confusing, the alternative, which  would be living life in a mindless way without taking time to reassess your life, is more challenging in the long run and can lead to regret in old age without recourse for change at that point (see my article: Moving Out of Your Comfort Zone).

I'll continue this discussion in my next article with a scenario that illustrates some of the points that I've made in this article (see Part 2 of this topic).

Getting Help in Therapy
A midlife transition is usually a process.  It's not a change that's usually made in a day or a week.  It often occurs in stages and it's a normal part of life (see my article: Being Open to New Possibilities).

If you're struggling with midlife questions and issues, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional who can help you to navigate through this challenging time.

Rather than struggling on your own, a licensed psychotherapist can help to facilitate this process by assessing your life so far, where you are, where you'd like to be, what you would need to do to get there and how to overcome the emotional blocks that might get in the way of your taking action.

With help, you could be navigate through this change and lead the life that you want to live.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many individuals and couples going through a midlife transition.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 or email me.

When Job Loss Means Loss of Identity

Aside from the financial loss, job loss can also mean the loss of an important identity for the person who has lost his or her job: One day, you're the head of accounting in a prestigious firm, and the next day you're an unemployed person sitting at home wondering what happened, who you are, and what you will do next.

When Job Loss Means Loss of Identity

As I've mentioned in other posts, prior to being a psychotherapist, many years ago, I was involved in other fields, including banking and finance. Being in the banking and financial field as a human resource manager, I had many occasions to see people laid off from their jobs due to mergers, cutbacks, and "downsizing" (a euphemism that I have never learned to like).

Even though I had seen many employees lose their jobs (through no fault of their own), nothing prepared me for when it actually happened to me.

A few months prior, I had received an excellent performance evaluation and there was no reason to think at the time that I would be laid off. But I can still remember how my mouth went dry and my brain was slowly trying to catch up to my boss's words when she told me that she was truly sorry to be letting me go.

She had tears in her eyes, assuring me that it was nothing that I had done (or not done), she offered to give me an excellent letter of recommendation, and help me in any way that she could.

But, based on company protocol, which I knew well, I had to pack my personal belongings and leave by the end of the day. That protocol, which is generally observed for security reasons (the idea being that an employee might get angry and engage in sabotage) is one of the most dehumanizing experiences you can go through.

I think some part of me went on automatic and I gathered my things in boxes. There was no time to say goodbye to colleagues (and I don't even know what I would've said to most of them at the time). But, before I left, I called one colleague that I had a close collegial relationship with to tell her that I had just been "let go." She knew and admired my work, and she was shocked. Months later, she told me that she was so surprised when I called her that she didn't know what to do or say, so she just put her head down on her desk.

Afterwards, as I was taking the train home, I was so distracted that I got on the wrong train and only realized it when I had traveled a distance from my home.

I felt like I was in a fog. I was fortunate to have a good emotional support system, and that night, I made up my mind to do what I had been thinking about doing for a long time--completing my undergraduate degree, going to graduate school, and changing careers. So, I was able to channel my emotions into advancing my new plan with determination.

But it wasn't easy at all. Even though I had this new determination, I still went through most of the feelings that people go through when they lose their job: shock, denial, sadness, and anger.

I also come from a family with a very strong work ethic, which has generally been beneficial to me. My grandparents lived through the dark days of the Great Depression and their attitude was: "If you have a job, no matter what kind of job you do, do it with pride to the best of your ability, and be happy that you have a job."

My father, grandfather, uncles, and cousins were all hard workers. Although my cousins and I knew that our grandparents suffered during the Depression, we never dared to ask them about it directly. We heard oblique references to it at times and how hard it was, but that was it.

And, as children, we knew that there were two things that you did not ask my grandfather about because it was too upsetting for him: 1) Did he miss his family in Italy, a family that he was very close to, and that he never saw again after he came to the US by himself when he was 17 years old, and 2) What happened after he lost his job during the Depression?

Of course, by the time my cousins and I arrived on the scene, they were okay: My grandfather had a job as a janitor for the post office that he was very proud of. He talked about the post office a lot when the whole family got together every Sunday for dinner.

Having gone through the Depression, we sensed that it was like a badge of honor for him that he had this secure Federal civil service job. And, through a lot of hard work, before my cousins and I were born, my grandparents also eventually achieved the American Dream of buying their own home: Be it ever so humble in a part of Brooklyn where goats still roamed the streets at the time when they bought their two-family house.

Since both of these topics were so taboo and shrouded in a dark mystery, as children, we grew up feeling that losing your job would be one of the worst calamities that could ever happen to you. Even though I was living in a very different time than when my grandfather lost his job and I was not a child when it happened to me, I still had a sense (as distorted as it might have been) that this terrible thing happened to me, and I was somehow at fault. This is a common initial reaction for many people who are laid off as they try to sort through in their minds what happened to them.

At this point, I'm fortunate to be able to say that losing that job was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I went on to complete my undergraduate and graduate degrees, and obtained postgraduate training. I can honestly say that I've never had any regrets about it. But that's jumping ahead in the story quite a bit and, at the time, I didn't have a crystal ball that would predict a good outcome, so I was worried.

Aside from losing a daily routine that gives so much structure to people's lives and losing the day-to-day affiliations with coworkers, when people lose their jobs, they often lose their sense of identity. No matter how much you might like to say, "I'm not my job" or "I'm not my title," it's the rare person who doesn't go through this kind of loss of identity.

In my case, I went from being a full time assistant manager to being a full-time student. I'm a naturally curious person and love learning.

But, aside from losing a regular income and knowing that there was no cushion of a second income, it was a hard adjustment to being a returning college student as a middle-aged person among people in their late teens and early 20s.

So, to cope with this adjustment and the accompanying doubts and fears, I had to learn to keep very focused on my goal, which was years away for me at that point. I took whatever part-time work that I could find (we were going through another recession at the time, so work was not plentiful), took out student loans, and reigned in my spending immediately.

Tips For Coping With a Job Loss

Even though this occurred to me many years ago, I still remember how it felt for me, and I have a lot of empathy for people who are going through it now. Of course, everyone's situation is different, but in general, to sustain yourself emotionally, I would recommend:

• Stay connected with your emotional support system: Allow your spouse or partner, close friends, and other family members to be supportive of you. As tempting as it might be to not pick up the phone when a friend calls, this is not the time to isolate.

• Stay in contact with former colleagues and supervisors. They are often a valuable resource for references, tips about job openings, and what's going on in the field.

• Join business networks like LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/) to pursue career opportunities.

• Find meaning and value in the other aspects of your life: You're still the same person that you were before you lost your job--father, mother, son, husband, wife, Little League coach or whatever other roles you might have.

• Don't blame yourself if you were laid off due to cutbacks. Chances are the decision to lay you off, which is, of course, very personal to you and your family, was made based on financial decisions. And if you were terminated for cause (for something that you did or did not do), learn from whatever mistakes that you might have made.

• After you go through the initial shock, denial, grief, and anger, work towards accepting what has happened and mobilize yourself to take action. Avail yourself of whatever resources there might be in your local library or State Department of Labor. Take advantage of whatever funds there might be through Unemployment insurance for additional educational training.

• Recognize that you're going through a crisis and take good care of yourself. This is not the time to skimp on medical and dental visits, especially if you are eligible under the new current Federal COBRA law, to extend your health benefits at a reduced rate, if you qualify. Engage in stress management techniques that work for you (like meditation or going for regular walks).

• Remember other times when you went through other crises and you came out of it okay--maybe even better than okay. Maybe you'll be able to make changes in your life, as I did, that you might not have made if you didn't lose your job. Also, remember, that we're often more resilient than we realize.

Stay Connected With Your Emotional Support System

About Me

I am a psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist in New York City who works with individuals and couples to help them lead more fulfilling lives.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 or email me.