Denial and its consequences

When one of my clients began talking to me about how unpleasant it was to look for a job, and after I’d asked “Why?”, he explained that this was because he had no hope of success and therefore was not to motivated to do very much, and therefore it would take emotional energy he felt he didn't have.

He had been out of work for more than a year, with no interviews at all now, and he considered himself on “the fragile list” (his words), so therefore it wasn't easy to keep plugging along. In short, he explained (with quite a bit of insight, I thought) he had had lost confidence.

In addition, he talked about being concerned about how, if he did take a job and didn't like it, it brought up the bigger question of finding what you want to do as opposed to finding a job. I thought that was an excellent question namely, "How do I go about finding what I want to do as opposed to finding a job?" Another reason, no doubt, for not exerting the energy to find a job.

It was a litany I’ve heard regularly from people who have been out of work for some time, and this type of hopeless attitude creeps up on people insidiously. I believe, unless reversed, it can seriously decrease your chances of finding a job and it can furthermore destroy your chances for functioning normally in a job again.

So what’s all of this about? Well, my analysis runs like this:

1. Most people don’t know how to look for jobs. They’ve never been taught how to do this. Their training and life experience hasn’t prepared them for it. What they know is how to do the work they were doing while employed. However, they think that they “should” know how to find a job as if it were an everyday, quite ordinary skill – which it’s not. Especially in a very competitive job market.

2. Most people also aren’t accustomed to rejection. There is a natural tendency to withdraw when faced with it. Only sales people, and perhaps a few others, can persist in the face of it. A few ‘No’s is all it takes to get someone to drop any further attempt to pursue whatever it was that they wanted. But hardly anybody wants to acknowledge this because it’s too painful and, therefore, it’s very difficult to get over.

3. An awful lot of people thought the job they had was a sinecure, even if it wasn’t held that long. If not for life, it was a “career” or a “profession”. (The individual I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, for instance, had been with one company for twenty-odd years.) And, if they’re laid off, after they’re laid off, they’re angry about it, resentful, because they feel (wrongly, I believe) they’re “owed” a job.

4. Denial is operative with such people. For example, they often haven’t made a budget to see how much time they have before the funds run out.

What bothered me initially about my talks with this client was how he had filled his life with "errands" that took up so much of this time, as opposed to job hunting activities and his avoidance about confronting how important such activities were, as if a job would be presented to him, instead of him being responsible for finding and getting a job himself.

When I began talking about getting started, he often began to tell me about all the other things he had to do. When I asked him to do a series of specific tasks, like updating his resume on the on-line systems, finding jobs on such websites as monster.com, and working on cover letters, he at one time gave me an estimate of three weeks to complete this, while in the same breath telling me that he had resources for only two months. A sense of urgency was lacking, obviously. I can only put this down to that dreaded word denial.

I’m happy to report that this particular client now has an offer to work on a contract basis, using some of his skills acquired over his twenty-odd years. This came about because:

1. We created a completely re-written resume that sells him and, after being posted on the on-line services, pulled responses from recruiters. He also has gotten favorable responses from employers, including interviews because of this resume.

2. We coached him on interviewing, so he knew how to present himself positively and knew what to expect when he was interviewed.

3. We talked through his resistance, denial and the incorrect things he believed. None of this was completely dealt with, obviously, but enough to help him to be functional again.

The fact that the world has been responding to him has of course raised his morale and helped him to deal with many of the negative thoughts he’d been thinking. My prognosis is that he’ll take the contract work, perhaps be hired by them on a full-time basis or, if not, find another job similar that makes use of his not inconsiderable talents.

In terms of finding the type of work he really loves, that’s another story that I’ll be glad to discuss in another posting because it is, as I told him, a really good question.