Out Of Work

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

"If there is no love, work becomes a surrogate; if there is no work, love becomes opium." Alice Lutkens

The importance of work and professional activity in our life is incredibly great. In psychology, the term "unemployment neurosis" has become established as a symptom of the state of "unemployment". In this case, apathy comes to the fore in the emotional-sensual sphere of a person. A person who is in a state of depriving himself of professional activity becomes indifferent to what is happening around him and perceives the fact of the absence of work in his life as the absence of something very important inside himself. Apathy makes us empty inside, it takes all our vital forces and ferments them into an intoxicating drink of loss of meaning. A person without work, without professional involvement, feels like no one is needed, and he begins to think that his life no longer makes sense.

The apathy of unemployment grows from our mind into our body and makes it sluggish and frail, deprives it of strength and flexibility. And it is not always clear what exactly was the cause of the client and what was the consequence, because as you know, the state of mind and the state of the body are inextricably linked.

The unemployment neurosis could also be the cause of the emergence of unemployment. In this case, we will say that our client already had a neurosis, which led him to lose his job. Here we are dealing with the fact that a person perceives unemployment as a desired product of his neurosis, he strives to express himself in an unemployed state and ultimately achieves this by any means. Having passed into such a state, a person receives the necessary elements of his justification for all life's failures and losses in the form of lack of work (professional activity). Having entered a state of apathy, neurotics can responsibly declare to those around them that now there is little to expect from them, that nothing can be demanded of them, and that, naturally, they are not to blame for this. Here it is worthwhile to clearly understand the origins of this state and look for a solution to the situation in solving the very neurosis that served as the beginning of all this.

The neurosis of unemployment, like any neurotic symptom, appears to us in the form of a certain spiritual position or a kind of existential position. If we continue to adhere to existential logic, then we will come to the conclusion that in the end the person himself can and must make a decision as to whether to submit to him this fateful given of being in the form of unemployment or not. Submit and be in apathy or fill the seeming vacuum of existence with other activities and meanings. Be half empty or half full.

Many times I have met people who perceived the loss of their jobs as both a disaster and a holiday. Such different points of view! Although, I think that both are just a reaction to a lot of stress experienced along with the loss of a significant business, or simply a reaction to the fact that you were somehow rejected, thrown out of the process, etc.

Those people who are glad that they were fired or they quit themselves, perhaps, can afford this joy due to the fact that they can take responsibility for their future life. Perhaps this is what they wanted. They wanted to leave, but did not understand how they realized their exit tactics on a subconscious level.

In any case, a person who finds himself without work has all the conditions to independently decide whether he wants to go further or wants to be in apathy. This is his personal choice and his personal responsibility.

Unemployment makes us look at things we used to do in a new way. Next comes the revision of values and a new activation of forces to find a new job. A person who has drawn conclusions and accepted responsibility for his future life has much more competitive advantages over a person who has not done this. In the process of taking responsibility for ourselves, we can make our lives more meaningful and fulfilling. Feeling alive again is what motivates a person looking for a job or a way to return to professional activity.

What will happen if a person still cannot find a job and will lose this fullness of life, what will happen if a neurotic state suppresses our willpower and our I. Here you can go to the zoo and look at animals that were forcibly placed in an environment that deprives them of " professional activity". We can see and feel how life is slowly dying out in the tiger, which is unable to hunt and move in its large territory. And we will see ourselves. We will contemplate that disappearance of meaning, which every day will become our other meaning of nonsense.

But we are not in a zoo or in a cage.

Take responsibility and move forward. We can definitely do it.