There is another truth that, IMHO, bears heavily here.
For a generic married couple, one partner changing themselves can change the entire dynamic of the marriage. For so many, the goal ends up being to change the partner.
But life is a bit like math:
Changing one part of an equation will generally result in a different outcome or result. The outcome of an equation is determined by all of the terms and operations within it. Altering any part, whether a number, variable, operator, or constant, will affect the final result.
As well described upthread, there are some circumstances that you’re facing that you may be able to change. There are also some circumstances that may be beyond your control. Generally, though, we have some ability to manage our reactions to these situations, these events.
And meditation, therapy, exercise, and any number of other modalities can often be helpful in changing how we respond to life’s challenges.
I hope that you find something that can help you in your current circumstances.
Yeah… I mean… sometimes it’s that your thoughts are bad… and sometimes you are legitimately in a bad situation and your thoughts are telling you you need to do something about it.
It feels to me like a lot of this is centered around your family situation (which honestly at your kids’ ages ought to be getting better, not worse, as they get more capable). What does your wife say when you tell her about what you are feeling? Does she know how much it’s bothering you? Have you guys done any marital counseling?
Also, what are your thoughts about trying to get a new job? As your job also seems like a stressor.
I was in a not-great place with my marriage in 2020-2021, which okay, yeah, there were no-brainer reasons why everyone was on edge, plus which my husband’s mother (who was wonderful) had died the preceding fall and I know there was a lot of grieving going on which was only exacerbated by the pandemic. I know it was really rough for my husband, but at the same time I did need him to be there for the kids and me – not that I even needed him to take on a major role or anything, I just needed him not to shut us out all the time as he was doing and only interact with us to complain something wasn’t right. I was pretty stressed and depressed at this point in time. And I am not proud of this, but at one point when he got grumpy at us because he didn’t know about something that was going on (I don’t remember what it was now), I just flat-out yelled at him that I couldn’t take this and that furthermore he didn’t know about whatever-it-was because he never spent any time with us!
Things got better after that. My husband is a great guy and did some internal reflection, and we are in a great place now. But the point is that I was stressed out and depressed not because my mind was feeding me false narratives about the world. In this case, it was feeding me entirely accurate narratives about the world; in a stressful situation, the person who was supposed to support me had his own issues and wasn’t. And fixing the problem (talking to my spouse, although I could definitely have gone about it in a better way, and coming up with a better way forward) fixed the stress and depression.
I get that it’s a hard situation, and that sometimes in hard situations, our thoughts lead to good solutions. I’m really talking about when, in objectively hard situations, our thoughts make it harder to get out of those situations. Sometimes we can’t get out from underneath a problem until we stop the negative stream of consciousness that piles onto the overwhelm. It’s like your brain is constantly putting you into crisis mode and we can’t really think effectively when we are in that stressed physiological state all of the time.
This question was actually addressed in the podcast I linked to earlier, where the host pushed back and said, “What about people who are just in a really bad situation?”
The researcher shared an extreme example where a woman was in an abusive relationship and completely overwhelmed and unable to see how to get out of it. When she started restricting her rumination time to 15 minutes a day, she was actually able to get the clarity to figure out how to leave.
I fully believe that there’s no situation our thoughts can’t make worse.
Now in your case, your thoughts resulted in some much needed communication, that seems like a win to me. My impression, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that the OP’s problems aren’t problems that can be fixed with a few candid conversations. These are deeply entrenched issues with no obvious solution. His wife is unwilling to hear him or change. His medical problems may or may not improve, but they aren’t going away right now, and there’s no obvious solution. Our country is going to hell in a hand basket and nothing any one individual does is going to move the needle. We might actually be living in a fascist state ten years from now. Millions of people are going to die due to the climate crisis and we have a government actively hostile to trying to solve it.
It’s not like any of us can call up Trump, talk candidly about our feelings and be heard.
They want us to feel stressed, depressed, and helpless. That enables them to more effectively take away people’s rights. I think in a sense, rumination prevents us from accepting reality and dealing with reality as it is.
Thich Nhat Hanh founded Plum Village in part to pursue climate justice. He told his students that the first thing they needed to do was accept that a lot of people are going to die because of climate change. And it might even destroy humanity. That’s the starting point. Because you can’t think clearly or take skillful action when you’re in a doom spiral. You never saw so many staunch activists as these monks. Because they are clear about the situation and how to address it, and they are at peace with what is.
In my life, the thing I most needed to accept was that I had a lifelong mental illness. I wrestled and ruminated so much with trying to find the cure. I finally found a therapist brave enough to tell me, “This is probably not ever going away.” What a relief! I didn’t have to dedicate so much mental space to it anymore. And paradoxically that enabled me to make more intentional choices about my therapeutic goals and to largely be in remission for five years now.
The more conditions we place on our happiness, the more fragile our sense of well-being. There’s a mantra that I find really comforting.
I am of the nature to have ill health I am off the nature to grow old I am of the nature to die
I have many chronic medical conditions that are worsening with age. When I can remember “oh, this is not some aberration but a fundamental part of the human condition,” I do better.
The other thing I didn’t mention was meaning. People can endure all kinds of hardships if they have a sense of meaning. To begin to wrap your head around this idea, I recommend Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a trauma psychologist who was forced into a concentration camp by the Germans. He lost his wife, family of origin and unborn child in the camps. He came away with a lot of very good ideas about how people endure difficult situations. He founded an existential therapy based entirely around interrogating the meaning of one’s suffering.
This is my favorite Frankl quote: “What is to give light must endure burning.”
So if you really value your kids, a meaningful step might be working on building that relationship stronger. Or same for marriage. Or writing a letter to your representative. It doesn’t have to be a big thing to resonate with meaning. And meaning is how we survive hard things.
My team is rolling off what is widely regarded as a shitty and stressful client. So one way or another my job will be “different” in a few weeks.
I may have to find a new job anyway with the way things are going at my company. But I think that’s one of the things I find stressful. Most of my friends, classmates, and professional peers seem to eventually find someplace where they can settle in and build careers. Spectacularly so in some cases. Meanwhile I seem to be stuck constantly making lateral moves doing more or less the same thing. Even when I find a place that seems like a good fit where I can settle in and do my job, it doesn’t seem to last.
I suppose what stresses me out is that so much corporate work seems like total bullshit and I’m not sure how I fit into it all to find a new profession. But it’s also the only sort of work that pays well enough to afford to raise a family in the NY Metro area.
I saw something online the other day which sort of resonated with me as it relates to anxiety and depression. Basically (and I’m oversimplifying a bit) it presented a theory equates “life” to where you are impacting your environment and “death” to where you environment is impacting you.
Sort of like a tree growing through the sidewalk vs a rotting truck slowing turning to mulch.
According to the theory, feelings of dread, anxiety, and depression are equated to similar feelings of pending death. Perhaps not literally death, but more like forces beyond your control slowly eating away at things that make life worth living.
Which makes sense to me. A few years ago, even though I was annoyed about my wife buying a second home in the hick town where she grew up, overall I was much happier. My client work felt like I was doing work that was at least important for my clients. The business unit I was a part of felt like we were actually working to build our business through sales efforts, training our consultants, and actually managing the group as a business. My wife and I were actively pursuing activities both with the kids, each other, and for ourselves. Even around the house I would find projects to fix things up. We also felt more engaged with our friends and neighbors.
In contrast, I think the combination of my recent medical problems, the shitifacation of my job, my wife’s job becoming more stressful and demanding, her parents health problems, not to mention constantly battling with my wife about the constant clutter in our home leads to a feeling of having no life to speak of. Just a big pile of figurative (or literal in the case of the clutter) garbage just building up and threatening to overwhelm me.
There’s also a difference between “good” stress and “bad” stress. Good stress is stuff like being nervous before a big presentation or your kid’s first day of school. Bad stress is maybe being given high demands at work with no way to meet them or pushing your kid to chose law, medicine, or Wall Street as the only viable career paths. I would compare it to being in a dogfight vs waiting for a drone to randomly strike you out of the blue. One is a clear identifiable challenge which one can prepare for and attack while the other is just a constant unease about something that may or may not happen that you can’t do much about.
So one of the main challenges is keeping “bad stress” from overwhelming you such that it prevents you from taking action to improve your situation.
Also preventing stress from causing you to make terrible decisions. IMHO, while “good stress” can help you focus and drive you to action, “bad stress” tends to make problems all encompassing so that’s all you can focus on (while distracting you from actually solving them).
Interestingly, I feel a lot less stress now. For the past couple of months, I’ve been going to several doctors regarding my blood pressure and eye situation and am starting to see noticeable results. I’ve started exercising again (ran 4 miles today) and cut way back on caffeine and alcohol. Lost like 20 lbs (although most of that was probably due to stress).
Also my whole team rolled off this shitty assignment I was on.
I have mixed feelings about that as I’m now back on “the bench” (consultants not assigned to a billable project). Which means there is now pressure to find a new client project. But I did actually like training the replacement team for the past month on all the work we were doing for the client. Maybe they’ll have better luck (given I didn’t have “me” to spend a month spoon feeding me, in detail, 5 major strategic projects for one of the largest investment banks in the world).
But I guess what I’m trying to figure out is how to prevent situations from creating that heightened sense of frustration and anxiety.
Like last year, I had an even worse client who was always yelling and abusing her team. To the point that several people up and quit without jobs lined up. But why should some little bitch cause me anxiety? Certainly not the fear she might physically harm me. We’re on Teams or Zoom calls and she’s 5’ tall anyway. I could pick her up like a small child. I could certainly find a new job because I always find a new job.
Mentally, I’ve also reframed my job so the idea of getting fired and looking for a new one isn’t as troubling. My view of our firm as a pretty good place to work has slowly devolved into one of a shitty, n-th tier consultancy that does mostly boring back-office bullshit work for mid-level empty suits at big banks and that hasn’t given me a raise in the 4 years I’ve been working there.
Last fall I was in a bad space mentally and physically. I felt like there was 25# pressing on my xyphoid process, my guts were a mess, and my arthritis was acting up. We went to Fiji over the election and turned off the phones for 2 weeks. It all went away. Pretty diagnostic, if you ask me.
So, in addition to cancelling our Times and Post subscriptions and lowering my online presence dramatically (I can’t even read the Trump threads here anymore), I’m on 45mg of [buspirone] (Buspirone (oral route) - Mayo Clinic) which has made an immense difference. Sometimes you need meds…
And yes, taking concrete steps to change the reality also changes the sensation of reality. Whether that’s you getting your medical issues treated, or your management moving you and your team elsewhere.
This is huge. One of the things that most stresses out humans is a perception of being trapped.
I too spent a few years in a job I hated, but perceived I could not leave for … reasons. Massive stress and depression ensued. Then enough shit happened and circumstances changed a bit then one day I girded my loins and quit. The stress and depression were gone the next day. Yes, I now had a new problem: replacing that job. But boy was that an easier problem to handle psychologically.
I’m not suggesting quitting is necessary to fix your issues. But getting out of feeling trapped by reframing your situation will be massively helpful.
It’s a bit like the hackneyed serenity prayer: Knowing the difference between the things you can change and those you can’t. Beating your head against the unchangeable is a losing game in every way. And is especially pernicious if the reason it’s unchangeable is only that you’ve assumed / decided it’s unchangeable.
Too many options can create stress and anxiety as well. One can also feel trapped by unemployment and financial burdens as well.
I don’t hate my job (or at least I don’t hate the firm I work for), but my last client was very stressful to work for. The root of that stress isn’t that my client might yell at me or make me feel sad. It’s that they might kick me off the account which can then impact my career at my firm (which ostensibly I’d like to keep).
So in a way, the stress of possibly being kicked off my account has been replaced with the stress of the reality of being kicked off the account and having to find a new one.
There’s also the matter of my group at my firm being dissolved and having to find a new manager/coach in a new group. Which kind of sucks because I liked my group and my manager/coach. Although it’s not actually that big a deal as it’s not that rigid a structure anyway.
But I just sort of see these as logistics problems to solve. Not life-shattering events.
That client was annoying AF though. Like I would rather have needles shoved in my eyes than go back there. And I know this because I spent all morning last Friday looking forward to leaving work early so I could have a literal needle shoved into my eyeball by my retina specialist.
I’m also due for a colonoscopy. I might put that off until I get on a “rather have a pole shoved up my ass” client.
Generally I don’t find “the problem of replacing a job” any easier psychologically. It’s not a “nice break” for me. It feels like being trapped with a dark cloud of mediocrity and failure hanging over my head.
I’m curious what made you hate your prior job and why you felt you couldn’t leave.
I’ve been thinking about my various mental health challenges a lot lately (obviously).
I grew up in a pretty stable home. Two educated professional parents who were together their entire lives. We only moved once for my dad’s career, which was at the same Fortune 500 company the entire time. We were comfortable financially but not particularly spoiled. No obvious problems there.
My Mom and her side of the family often had anger and depression and other issues, so part of it may be simply being genetically disposed to it. There is a possibility I have some form of ADHD and maybe some challenges processing auditory information. Tests have been inconclusive.
But in terms of actual things that literally keep me up at night, I think back to seeing the 1993 movie Falling Down with Michael Douglas when I was studying engineering in college. I found the concept of that movie somewhat terrifying. That an otherwise intelligent, hard working person might find themselves economically irrelevant in an otherwise affluent by indifferent society. Whatever the cause, it was such that they couldn’t recover and their entire life falls apart. I supposed in retrospect Death of a Salesman struck a similar chord earlier when we read it in whatever grade of school.
Even back then there was a lot of discussions around America becoming a society where “only the rich get richer” while everyone else just sort of stagnates and Gen X being the “last generation to have a better standard of living than their parents”. This wasn’t just some abstract academic concept. I could see the differences firsthand at my largely affluent elite university compared to the economically disadvantaged local population whose income was largely dependent on a defunct nearby steel mill. I could also see it in the various summer jobs I had ranging from light industrial and office work where you just had these people stuck miserable in these shitty boring jobs forever.
It also didn’t help that I wasn’t a particularly good student, nor did I have a really clear idea of what I wanted to do other than “make money”. I’ve managed to work my way into some pretty good jobs at some pretty good companies, but for whatever reason my performance is usually inconsistent (largely dependent on the project or my manager) and those jobs never last more than a few years. Like everyone I’m good at certain things and not so great at other stuff.
So I think that drives a lot of my fear and anxiety. That my wife and I managed to carve out a reasonably good life for our family but that it could be taken away at any time through the vagaries of economic forces, technology disruption, “aging” out of the workforce, some executive’s whim, or simply my own mediocrity.
Which then compounds everything as it causes me to see my kids as a financial and emotional burden who only want to spend their time watching social media videos, playing Fortnite and asking to have shit bought for them. It also causes me to feel trapped to my wife as a second stable income stream whose job is tied to living near one of the most expensive cities in the world and is completely adverse to any sort of change. While I’m sure she views me as some idiot she married who can’t hold a job.
It also doesn’t help that nearly all of our friends have moved out of the NY area. So our only “support system” is really her elderly parents and aunts. But in reality they are additional burdens, not support.
So I’m not really sure what to change. The world is how it is. I’ll probably should find a new job and will probably have to anyway. I don’t really want to get a divorce as I don’t think that will solve anything. Other than that, I don’t see a ton of levers to pull.
I know this sounds cynical, but I’ve learned something the hard way after working regular jobs for 40+ years: likability trumps performance. Meaning, it’s more important for my management and my clients to like me on a personal level, and for me to befriend key players in management, than for me to perform well at my job. This is why golf courses exist.
I’ve been through similar things - lots of it work-related; at times, it seemed like life was literally pointless as my job was just consuming every waking hour and every drop of my mental resources and the thing about crushing, inescapable weight is very familiar to me.
You didn’t ask for my advice, and well-meaning advice isn’t always appropriate, so this isn’t advice, but these are some of the things that helped me to get through it: I stopped waiting for life to get better so I could feel better, and instead decided to do things that make me feel better, even if life was still generally terrible. - basically, it was a realisation that the choice was not between bad life vs good life but was really either all bad, or just mostly bad, with a little bit of good mixed in.
However, it turned out that mixing in a little bit of good, despite the bad stuff, had its own effect that made me want to seek more good stuff and it began to turn things around.
There were still times when it all piled up and felt hopeless and that it would be pointless even to try to do anything to make myself feel a little bit better, but somehow I had resolved to do it anyway - it’s almost like I had to remember my calm, happier self, ordering my weary, stressed self: “Do this anyway; I know you don’t think it will help, but do it anyway.”
It worked. I frequently didn’t believe it would, but it did.
Advice is always appreciated (one of the reasons I’m posting online). And it’s good advice.
The thing is, I don’t really feel we have a “bad life”. I just hate it. I’m utterly miserable all the time. I can’t relax or enjoy myself, even trying to do stuff I enjoy.
