Mental Health Blogs

Seriously, it’s not that I don’t have any original stuff. There’s a deeper essay waiting for the pen, all about food being the thing women, men, too, obsess about most– weight, to be more specific– and how money rivals this.

But let’s just settle for one out of the two, okay. It’s summertime.

Have you seen Up in the Air? If you haven’t, think twice before reading on. Not that it’s a must-see, but maybe it should be. For Up in the Air is an emotional vehicle. We hear what have to be real stories told by actors who appear to be real people, stories about the torment of unemployment: the initial impact of losing a job; the mental anguish of facing foreclosure, the loss of status and purpose, bankruptcy and shame; suicide. Required reading? Walter Kirn wrote the book. Maybe.

If you’re me and you travel a lot, the opening sequence is captivating– aerial photographs like the ones I’m always snapping with my phone. Some of us really, really like flying, despite the hassle, the aggravation in line, the paranoia of security, the wait. The cancellations. I’m taking off for a couple of days this week, that’s the plan, and my excitement is palpable. Some of the twitter in my belly has to do with being up in the air again.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) loves flying, likes the feeling of living out of a carry-on, paring down his possessions to what he can pack into a light-weight vessel on wheels. He is a motivational speaker, talks ad nauseum about the backpack, how if you filled one of these with all of your possessions, all that you have, all the things you own, packed in all of your friends, your family, your people, you would find that you are mightily burdened.

All of this, he implies, the weight of living as a social animal, being grounded, is a burden.

Live like Ryan Bingham and set yourself free.

Has he got OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Sure, maybe. Or is he Schizoid or Avoidant disordered, fearful of people to the degree of self-imposed isolation? Nah. He speaks to people for a living, empowers them to be good with a solitary independence, tells us to look forward, unafraid. And he has relationships with women, is handsome and so socially fluid; he even falls in love. (The female supportive actors make the movie, by the way, Anna Kendrick, Vera Farmiga)

Ryan has an agenda with that backpack metaphor, even if he believes in it. What he is really doing, when he tells people that life as a social animal is a burden, a life full of possessions is too hard, is a verbal equivalent of slight of hand, a con.

He works for an outsourcing company. You may be familiar with these. They take the pinch out of unemployment, present you with the package, the severance, point to the finger to other sources of employment. Ryan has the ugly job of having to tell people,

“You’re fired.”

He doesn’t say it like that, he says it nicely. He relabels the experience as, “All great people have been let go.”

Or, “Now you have the opportunity to do what you’ve always wanted to do.”

Or, “Now you can be great, meet your aspirations.”

If you’ve ever treated anyone who has lost a job, the same words, maybe, have come from your mouth. They can be soothing, they can be true. They are a Bandaid, you both know this, but you’re not applying it unless the patient has opened with the concept first, alluded to relief and desire to pursue a dream, sees the possibility. You both know that being let go means there’s a likelihood you may lose everything, certainly much of the life you’re accustomed to living, the one you have grown to know, maybe even love.

You don’t lose your family, however. You don’t lose your soul. You don’t lose your goodness, all that is you, or you shouldn’t, when you lose your job. We hear this in the denouement, at the conclusion of the film.

Real people, people who just couldn’t be actors, speak into the camera to tell us the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say. This air of documentary makes the film so appealing, so real to those of us who don’t mind a little reality in our escape. Escape is therapeutic. The movies can be therapeutic, some more than others.

That’s what happens in therapy. Real people tell real stories, and when the story is about job loss, we talk primarily about how job loss can change one’s role in life, identity. But that is changing all the time, identity, anyway. Change is sometimes inspiring, often painful, and in this case, the change of role, the challenge is gut-wrenching, a test of one’s mettle. We shrinks subtly suggest:

Don’t let the test destroy you. Stay alive, stay well for your family, if not yourself, but do it for you, too. They can’t take that away from you, who you really are, your essential goodness

This is a crossroads. Things will change. You will survive. What was that Spock line?

Oh yes. And prosper.

Perhaps.

And yet, to minimize what has been lost? Unfathomable, unconscionable, very bad technique. Platitudes are a condescension on the part of the therapist, or the employer, assuming the hatchetman is thinking he can really minimize the pain, that by waving a magic wand, speaking with snake oil, that we’ll will fall for the politics. Now you can be great.

Now you will be broke. How is that great? How at all is that great?

When it comes down to money, everyone obsesses. Thus the job of therapy, when money is the crisis, is to increase denial, distraction, help a person draw upon resources and finding new ones, problem solve, and most importantly, stay clear of self-pity, for this eats a person up from the inside out. We might suggest that one of the resources is spiritual resolve, too.* Attention to anything outside oneself, if not just anyone, be stabilizing. (Be careful here, pick your charities wisely).

We don’t say it, but we tiptoe around it.

It’s not all about you, is the truth. Get out of bed. Do something. Anything. You’ll be more tolerable to live with if you do.

Job loss is stress, in no uncertain terms, and managing it is the art of good problem solving, coping strategies, and most of all, maintaining supportive relationships.

So nurture these, I tell people. And while you’re nurturing, grab some dinner with friends. Maybe share a salad.

therapydoc


*Spiritual stuff-  I originally put up some of the cognitive therapy that goes into this, but took it down, sorry. 

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