What Happens When Your Career Becomes Your Whole Identity

Hating your job is one thing – but what happens if you identify so closely with it that hating your job means hating yourself?

00:00 Many people with high-pressure jobs find themselves unhappy with their careers
00:38 Here are several reasons high-pressure jobs lead to this feeling
02:00 Losing your career can feel like losing your identity
02:15 Here are steps you can take to initiate change
02:30 1. Free up time
02:56 2. Start small
03:02 3. Rebuild your network
03:20 4. Decide what's important to you
03:40 5. Look beyond your job title
03:56 The takeaway

Psychologists use the term “enmeshment” to describe a situation where the boundaries between people become blurred, and individual identities lose importance. Enmeshment prevents the development of a stable, independent sense of self. While identifying closely with your career isn’t necessarily bad, it makes you vulnerable to a painful identity crisis if you burn out, get laid off, or retire. Individuals in these situations frequently suffer anxiety, depression, and despair. By claiming back some time for yourself and diversifying your activities and relationships, you can build a more balanced and robust identity in line with your values.

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[andreagrumpeenlate]

So true. I wish I had this video before I burned out and crashed my career.

[HiMyNameIsKim]

This is such an important topic; every high schooler and undergrad student should learn it. It’s hard to unlearn once you’re there.

[bunniewood]

My ex was like this. All he did was work. I was an amazing gf to him but he only cared about work all the time. Now I have a family but he is alone

[saurabhbhambry]

it’s a little ironic that Harvard, an institution whose degree defines the identity of most of it’s alumni, is posting a video about how not to let solely your career define your whole identity 🤷🏻‍♂️

[jblackacre]

See: Adult Children of Alcolohics - Al Anon. For many, the traits of perfectionism and isolation also line up pretty close to these symptoms. If this matches your situation, consider sitting in on some meetings. They help.

[danielgiraldo]

No many are talking about this... but it’s still a serious issue

[phoenixiguidez]

Timely and relevant ahahahaha kinda scary

[emmanuelmatuco]

2024 April 25- Answer to the Next Season Post. Why that smile?

(Summary - Psychological Profile of the Daimyo Yabushige)

All his life Yabushige dreamt of "walking" in that stratified plane, only the likes of a Toranaga or a Nobunaga can attain. "What does it take to get there? How do people belonging in that plane think?" Try as he might, their "entirety" remained inscrutable to him. Always at a distance beyond one's intellectual grasp. Like there is a solid thick steel door forever closed to him. Though all these years.

To Yabushige, that meant he will always be the lesser man. Always a vassal. Never an equal. Still Yabushige risked everything, like it was a lifelong dream. And now, on that edge of life and death, when the agonizing pain dealt by the knife's edge was about to reach its zenith, the solid iron door of that inscrutable plane opened up for him. He can now fully see, the entirety of a Toranaga, and all the other great ones. What they truly are and how to be like them. Yabushige, the once lesser man, through that newfound understanding can see the totality of what was about to unfold in the future. But most important of all, at last, he, Yabushige, is now their equal. Jubilation inside shoved away the pain of the knife. Yabushige smiled at Toranaga. Finally, we are equals.

Toranaga smiled back respectfully acknowledging Yabushige's achievement.

To honor what his equal, his ally, his enemy, his friend's feat of finally achieving the impossible, he saw to it, the katana blow that cut-off Yabushige’s head was perfect.