As we begin to turn a corner on the pandemic, people are beginning to think about their hopes for the future. Jane Rubin, Ph.D., talks about finding your purpose after the pandemic.
Are people feeling lost and lacking direction?
Not necessarily. As we slowly come out of COVID, I’m finding that the people I see are falling into two general camps. Some people are feeling anxious and uncertain about their direction, while other people are chomping at the bit to get back to the lives they led before the pandemic. With respect to this second group, I’ve seen that COVID has caused some people to become very reflective about their lives. As a result, they’re very clear about what they’d like their work and their relationships to look like after the pandemic. They know they want to go back to the office or they don’t. They know they need to leave their current relationship or they’re more committed to their partner than ever. But other people are feeling anxious, or even paralyzed, as they begin to confront the fact that things are beginning to open up.
How would you describe the second category of people?
These are people who used this time to put their lives on hold. They stopped looking for a new job. They stopped dating. Looking for work or for a partner caused them a lot of anxiety, and stop putting the anxiety on hold, at least to some extent. Over the last month or so, however, I’ve seen these attitudes begin to change. People who have been kind of hiding out from the world are realizing they need to re-engage. That means confronting the fears they’ve pushed aside for the past year, however difficult that may be.
What advice do you give these patient groups? Is it the same or different?
It’s very different for the two groups. For the first group, I think one issue going forward will be that none of us gets to have things exactly the way we’d like them. So they’ll have to learn to balance their newfound clarity with the inevitable disappointments they’ll experience as things return to something like normal. Some people may have to spend at least part of the week in the office when they’d rather be at home. Other people may have to be at home when they’d rather be in the office.
Another issue is that, at this point, we don’t know what the long-term consequences of our choices will turn out to be. For example, in the last week, I’ve read several articles suggesting that people who go back to the office will probably be recognized and rewarded in ways that people who stay home will not.
Does this mean that people who want to stay home should rethink their choice?
It’s way too early to tell. Will new forms of recognizing and rewarding people develop to account for the changes in the way we work? Again, we don’t know. So, I think my best advice is for people to balance the clarity they’ve achieved during COVID with some flexibility. We’re not coming back to the same world we left, and all of us are going to have to make adjustments that we can’t completely foresee at this point.
For the second group, in most respects, we’re returning to exploring the issues that preoccupied them before the pandemic. There’s definitely a new sense of urgency among people in this group. While putting their lives on hold felt pretty good in the moment, now they’re feeling like they need to make up for lost time. Yet, all of the anxieties that preoccupied them before the pandemic are still around. I’m hoping we’ll be able to make use of this new sense of urgency to help them feel that it’s worth it to confront their anxieties, however scary they may be, in the interest of having the life they want.
Do you have any final suggestions concerning Finding Your Purpose?
We’re in a time of tremendous uncertainty. I doubt our uncertainties will be resolved any time soon. So, I do think people need to continue to try to identify what they’d like to do and who they’d like to be while taking into account that things still feel a little precarious right now. It’s really an issue of striking a balance between urgency and patience. It’s not an easy thing to do, but I think it will produce rewards in the long run.
Are you struggling with finding your purpose? Please click to learn more about depression therapy and treatment with Jane Rubin, Ph.D. Jane Rubin, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in Berkeley, California. She works with individuals in Berkeley, Oakland, the East Bay, and the greater San Francisco Bay Area who are struggling with depression and anxiety. She also specializes in working with people who are trying to find meaning and direction in their lives.