In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we talk about what happens when your career becomes your identity. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!
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When Your Career Becomes Your Identity with Dr. Angélica Pérez-Litwin, The Great Unraveling
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Has your career become your identity? You know the feeling: you can’t turn the work off. Your job becomes your source of validation & motivation. This is not burnout. It’s something different. And, lots of feelings usually coincide with this, despite the achievement. So how do you disentangle yourself from your career? We wanted you to learn from an experienced expert in the space, so we welcomed on Dr. Angélica Pérez-Litwin. She’s spent over 30 years as a therapist, and is the Author of The Great Unraveling: The Silent Crisis of High Achievers and the Path to Career Harmony.
Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:
- Distinguishing career identity fusion from burnout
- When you sense of self and worth becomes fused with achievement and titles
- Anne’s own experience with career identity fusion from her P&G years
- A major warning sign is no longer knowing what you love or how to rest
- The impact of over-identifying on relationships
And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.
Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:
Show Notes
- When Your Career Becomes Your Identity with Dr. Angélica Pérez-Litwin, The Great Unraveling
- [0:29] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
- [01:23] Welcome to the show, Dr. Angélica Pérez-Litwin!
- [02:43] Distinguishing career identity fusion from burnout
- [06:00] When you sense of self and worth becomes fused with achievement and titles
- [07:26] Career distress isn’t disliking work, it’s overworking to manage anxiety and prove worthiness
- [08:45] Roots in childhood conditioning where achievement equaled love, validation, and worth
- [10:37] Anne’s own experience with career identity fusion from her P&G years
- [11:36] Career distress response as a vulnerability activated by high-pressure, competitive work environments
- [13:01] Organizations that pit employees against each other worsen this dynamic
- [17:24] A major warning sign is no longer knowing what you love or how to rest
- [20:19] Burnout means depletion and can’t function; career distress means still high-performing but internally dysregulated
- [22:15] Physical toll of prolonged career distress
- [25:27] The impact of over-identifying on relationships
- [28:20] Leaders with unaddressed career distress role-model unhealthy behavior for their teams
- [29:43] The importance of diversifying your “identity portfolio” beyond work
- [32:05] Dr. Angélica’s own recovery as a “recovering high achiever”
- [33:26] The four pillars of Career Harmony
- [37:45] Does this always lead to quitting?
- [41:41] Dr. Angélica’s big thing is launching “Career Health” as a new field and research study
- [43:20] Learning to rest and embracing creativity after years of left-brain overuse
- [45:19] This isn’t anti-ambition, the problem is when ambition becomes your identity
- Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
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What is Strategic Counsel?
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Transcript
Please note: This transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team and your business. Now let’s get to it.
00:29
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast. I am Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we’re going to talk about how to disentangle yourself when your career becomes your identity. Now, yes, this isn’t burnout. If you’re interested in discussion about that, check out our episode with Dr. Rebecca Hubbard going to burnout in that episode extensively. we do. This is different. This is when your job becomes your source of validation and motivation and when you struggle to turn the work off.
00:56
Yes, lots of feelings usually coincide with this. Many feel like they’ve lost their internal compass, that it’s the job that guides their choices. And many say they feel like they’re achieving, but then it also feels like a grind and that despite the achievement, they have a feeling of emptiness inside. So today we are going to address all of that. Yes. And we have a very special guest who is an expert here, Dr. Angelica.
01:23
Perez Litwin, author of The Great Unraveling. So Dr. Angelica, do want to introduce yourself and give the listeners a bit of your story? Of course. First of all, thank you for having me today. I’m just very humbled and honored to be here talking to both of you. So yes, my name is Angelica Perez Litwin. I am a clinical psychologist. I’ve been a therapist for about 25, maybe 30 years now. So it’s been a long time, but in private practice, I’ve been a therapist for 20.
01:51
And so I have had the fortune of working with really interesting people, highly accomplished professionals, physicians, entrepreneurs, executives, leaders, attorneys, lots of attorneys. Well, that’s interesting. Although I could see it. And it’s been a wonderful journey. I’ve learned so much about this thing that we’re going to be talking about today. And I was compelled after…
02:17
having worked with them for 20 years and also experiencing the same thing myself to write a book, The Great Unraveling. So I’m happy to talk about that here today. That’s wonderful, wonderful. We’re going to have such a great conversation today because there’s so many people who I know can relate to this. And I know I have in my past as well as April. Same and lots of our clients too. And lots of our clients. 1000 % will be using this episode a ton.
02:43
So Dr. Angelica, let’s just sit the stage a bit. Talk to us about how this, you call it this career identity fusion. How does this happen between a person and their career? What’s going on? Sure. So let me give you a little bit of a backstory to all of this because I think you’ll contextualize my answer a little bit better. Over the last 20 years and more like the last 10 years, I started noticing a pattern that I would get new patients coming in and they will say, I feel like I’m burned out. I’m so…
03:13
I’m drained, I don’t feel like myself. And they would just, you know, talk and talk and talk about what work was doing to them. And the more I spoke to them, I started noticing that whatever they were talking about and the patterns and the symptoms really didn’t fit what we know and understand as burnout, what burnout is. Burnout, and I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit about that too, but burnout really is, happens when a person’s ability to cope with like chronic stress at work just
03:42
it’s just not enough. The demand is higher than what the resources are in that person. And so it causes a lot of chronic exhaustion and they get depleted, they disconnect from work and their performance suffers. But what I was seeing with these accomplished professionals was that they were really at the top of their games. They were showing up, they were doing great.
04:08
But underneath that, there was so much struggle. They couldn’t turn off their mind from work. They were constantly on. These were the people that would go on vacations, and they’ll go into the bathroom and hide and answer that email because their whole family was so upset at them for never turning off. And so they couldn’t sleep at night. They’re ruminating all the time. Anything that happened at work, like a small moment or something or the loss of a promotion, would really feel like such a personal thing to them.
04:37
And so they were chronically activated at work. And I sort of thinking, well, there’s something else going on here. And I became really interested in the clinical psychology piece of that. And what I noticed, what I started noticing in general was that these individuals were very much identified over attached to achievement. Their identity and sense of self and who they are and how they felt about themselves and even emotional security was attached and fused
05:07
to how well they were doing at work, their achievements, their accomplishments, their titles, their roles. And so if a day went well at work, they were feeling good. If it didn’t go so well, that would just taint and overshadow their whole day. So there was this regulation among six different areas that I started to see as a pattern. But at the core, to answer your question, at the core of all of this,
05:32
there is this architecture, this psychological architecture, and that is career identity fusion. So a lot of these individuals are abused. Their sense of self is fused with their achievement and their success. And that’s the piece that actually activates the nervous system for them to always feel like something could happen at work that could feel like a threat to themselves. so identity, career identity fusion is actually
06:00
a concept that I’m borrowing from another social psychologist who identifies something called identity fusion with groups. I’m borrowing the concept to bring it in into the workplace. And so it’s career identity fusion. No, I mean, I think this is crazy interesting. you know, we said before we got started and knew that I was going to love this one. I do a lot of the coaching, but also, I mean, we said we’ve both been there before as well. And
06:29
I think one of the things that I’ve observed a lot recently, which hurts my heart frankly, is all of these people that are the high achievers you’re talking about, but that have a skewed negative feeling about their jobs. And it’s something we are constantly working through, right? And it could be a lot of different symptoms. So as you were talking, I have to imagine that there’s some of this going on here within them, where like you said, something happens
06:59
that’s good, it’s a good day, something happens, it’s not, it’s not a good day. But I think because so many of these corporate cultures are not right, there seems to be an overwhelming negativity, at least from where I’m sitting and the clients that are coming to us. So would love to get your perspective on that. Yeah, I think that you’re referring also to something that the Burna literature refers to as cynicism towards work, right? And so I see that a lot more towards
07:26
like within people who are experiencing burnout. So they start disconnecting from the workplace. sort of like, they don’t want to be there. They don’t want to, they want to call in sick. What’s really interesting, however, about like these individuals that I’m talking about with career distress response, which is the framework that I have sort of coined, is that basically, actually, they do like their job.
07:49
But they like it maybe not for the reasons that we normally say like your job, like meaning and purpose. They like their jobs because it really makes them feel good about themselves when they win. So it’s a different type of like, right? And so, and there’s so much pressure for them to be on all the time. So the way that they deal with like the anxiety and the mood and the emotional like being unraveled all the time is by overworking.
08:16
So that’s the only way they can reduce the anxiety. So in many ways, again, it’s a psychological thing going on where the nervous system is activated all the time. And in order for people to feel more like in control, they have to send that one more email or they have to make sure the slides are good because there’s the fear fundamentally is that something is gonna fall apart. I’m not gonna do a good job. They’re gonna know I’m not perfect, right? And all of this just to kind of set of hint.
08:45
at this and we can talk a little bit more about this. All of this really comes from this conditioning early on in childhood where achievement and success and being useful and being kind and being good and perfect was very much attached to love and validation and your matter and enoughness and all of that worthiness. And so a lot of these individuals try to find worthiness at a very basic level.
09:15
through the work they do. Now, there’s some people also that perhaps they did not have necessarily that experience growing up, but something happened in their life, maybe during their early adulthood or maybe when they were an adult and they completely leaned into the work. And that’s how they were able to cope emotionally, cope with loss or grief or some sort of like not feeling good about themselves and they pour all of themselves into that. work.
09:44
also then started feeling like work is me, I’m work. I am what I do. I am what I, you know, what I owe my wins. I feel like this is gonna be a therapy session for me today. I know. was just thinking about how my coach is always like, April, I need you to be a human being, not a human doing. We’ve all been there. I’ve been there. Yeah.
10:08
I mean, every time I think I’ve kind of gotten past my 20 years at PNG, we have these conversations and I realize a lot kind of like still lingers on. If you want to talk about career identity fusion, you just have to walk into PNG and I would say 9.9 out of 10 people have that. And I was going get into that a little bit later, but I feel like what you’re saying resonates so much with me, so much so that
10:37
when I have been, now that I’ve been out been, oh geez, eight years now, and people ask me, what are your dreams? Like, you we talk about our big things all the time. And I’m like, I heard myself say this to somebody the other day. I’m like, I don’t know how to dream outside the context of what I used to work in. Right? So when I was in PNG, like the goals were set, the ladder was set, the expectations were set. I knew what my goals were. So,
11:06
the achievement was the title, the achievement was the bigger like opportunity or the new like role or you know, whatever that, that looked like. Now that I’m outside of that, like people are like, what do you want to do? Like, what is your choice? I’m like, no idea because there’s no context for that. So I, I can see like just because I’ve been on both sides, like you kind of are conditioned internally in these environments to achieve according to a set paradigm. Yeah. I mean,
11:36
Your thoughts on that? Oh my God, I love what you just said and thank you because it really brings us to a conversation that I always like to have when I talk about this. The reason why I was very intentional in terms of calling this career distress response, I want to make sure that we all understand that this whole career identity fusion piece, you can have that as a vulnerability. if you come in and if you come in feeling like,
12:02
thinking or having this value system that I am what I perform, I am what I do. And you go into an environment that activates that, right? That’s the response. The response you can have is this career distress response. And they actually are corporate environments and medical environments where this is on purpose. they literally will put you against your colleagues, have a chart of who’s doing best and who had the highest sales this quarter, right?
12:31
Oh, yes. And it is for that reason, because people do not want to lose themselves. Like they don’t want to let putting those numbers becomes who they are. Right. There’s a lot of shame around that. And so the response piece is really important. And so I actually talk in the great unraveling. I talk about that at least six triggers work environment triggers that activate this career identity fusion, because I want people to understand like the dynamic that’s happening at work.
13:01
Because sometimes it’s easy for them to think it’s them. know, lot of my patients come to me and they’re like, something is wrong with me. Like I have the big house. I have a beautiful wife. My kids are healthy. I make a lot of money. I have a nice car. Like what’s wrong with me that I’m not happy, that I’m not, I’m just suffering and they’re torturing themselves. I can’t sleep at night. And it’s really that, like they are in the wrong environment.
13:25
with a vulnerability already of this high achiever that needs validation, external validation. And if they can understand why this is happening, why they have this pattern, that is the first, very first thing. In fact, my career harmony sort of, I have a career harmony practices as part two, which is like what to do about it. And that’s the very first thing to do. Like just see the pattern, just look and take like.
13:52
Just distance yourself and see how you’re reacting to the workplace. And so absolutely, I think the workplace is one of the biggest triggers for these kinds of individuals.
14:05
We can’t change the environment, but we can learn to change how we’re responded. And that’s my goal with this book. Like answer, it’s going to be therapy for both of us as high achievers in our careers. But I think it is really interesting when you say that the environments are created that way, because I can remember, right, a boss who, you know, erode that within me, right, that I was young and I was going to work all the hours and I was hungry and I was going to do all of those things. And one of the things that I’ve talked to a lot of companies about through our work is that
14:35
We always think that we have to manage the problem children or the low performers or the right. So they get the spotlight on them. And then what happens is with the high achievers, we just keep driving them. And because we, those of us that are high achievers thrive on that, we don’t see it as a problem and they don’t see it as a problem, certainly. And so I’ve gone into organizations and talked about the fact that the same way you have to manage those that aren’t doing their job, you have to help the people that are the high achievers.
15:03
tone that down and realize that it can get to that unhealthy level. Totally. And I think that, well, it’s not a popular opinion all the time, I’ll say that. But I mean, that was coming up for me as you were talking. And so guess my question is, is it typically always the high achievers that end up in this space or is it others as well? Yeah, that’s a really good question. I see it more around, this is actually where I see them most. And perhaps I’m a little biased because those are the patients that I get.
15:33
The individuals that I have at least seen this pattern very clearly are individuals who are in high pressure careers, Like medicine and law and they’re executives. So have a lot of pressure. They have a lot of demand. Making laundry detergent. Speaking from experience over there. they have, their titles are very…
16:00
big and they have a lot of pressure to maintain that persona, that title, those responsibilities. So I see it there, but you know what’s interesting? Those individuals navigate towards those types of jobs for the same reason, right? Because since they were little kids, they were like, oh, I need to get into the tough school and I need to get whatever, and I need to get to the best company. And they have all this pressure. They end up in these environments that actually milk that, you know? They’re like completely…
16:28
you know, take advantage of that. So there’s also this sort of workplace conditioning that happened too. And it’s almost like the family dynamics gets sort of like played out in the workplace. So they idealize their supervisors and the supervisor becomes kind of like the parent figure that they want to please, you know. The other day I actually had a client that I was coaching and she said, I really, really want my supervisor to like me. I want him to like me. And I was like, why, right? And so like,
16:56
These are the things that she puts so much pressure on herself for these supervisors to like her. Like, I’m sure he’s an idiot, right? And so like, they don’t see it, right? Because they’re bringing in all these ideas and perceptions around people who have influence and power and who can validate them. But I wanted to go back to one thing before, and that you mentioned, and that was, I tried to answer and I completely digressed, but you said something about like not knowing what you want to do or what you like or something like that.
17:24
One of the things that I have noticed too, when I have a new therapy client, a new patient, I’ll ask at the end, like, what do you love to do? Like, what are you passionate about? And they look at me like I’m really crazy. Like, what? I just go to work. And that speaks to one of the six ways that career distress shows up. One of them is personal disconnection. So a lot of these individuals are very disconnected, not just from their body, because a lot of high achievers sort of live here.
17:53
in the head, they’re disconnected from the body. That’s why we get a lot of aches and pains and gut issues and headaches and tension and all that stuff, because we’re not processing emotions, the body’s processing the emotions. And so a lot of these individuals are only about execution and performance and doing and being busy, and they don’t have time to pause and rest and relax and think and reflect. That stuff doesn’t exist for them. And what it causes is this personal disconnection.
18:23
At the same time, another way that I’ve seen this show up is that they also start disconnecting from their loved ones, from family members. These are the people that, I mean, a lot of my patients haven’t had sex in a while because they’re disconnected. They’re exhausted, disconnected. They don’t spend time with their partners. So you see an erosion of their social networks and friends because they’re so immersed in the workplace. So those are two ways it shows up. I can talk about the other ones later.
18:52
Yeah, so in P &G, my boss was always famous for saying the ideal consumer customer client profile for hiring us was insecure overachievers. that was, So if you want to talk about gaining those, that talent that’s going to basically prone to career identity fusion, that was us. So you’re right. You’re 1000 % right that those, not only are they recruited, they gravitate towards these jobs and
19:21
You know, let’s be honest, like there is an element of it’s working for them too. It’s feeding them in, in a way that is satisfying despite all the other stuff that is going on, but it is so hard to unravel from it. mean, even to this day, my, um, my business coach is one of my former bosses at PNG. And so we kind of have gone through it to, uh, together. She, she says to me the other day in a coach and she goes,
19:50
you still have this like huge desire to be seen. And I’m like, yeah, because that’s all you strove to do at PNG is you had to be seen, you had to be shown that to be to provide value. And I was all about the metrics. I was all about the titles. I was all about. So like, there’s still like, you know, all of that kind of getting intertwined. So maybe you could speak in a don’t give them all the way, because I want people to actually buy the book and read the book, but speak to like a couple more of how does somebody self identify them as being in this
20:19
space and then how do they know that that’s not burnout too? So if you could kind of give a little bit of context for that, that would be great. Yes. And to be honest, like if there’s anything I would love to be able to achieve through all these different conversations is for people to realize that not everything that feels like stressful or difficult at work is burnout. There could be a number of things going on. amazing. because work like burnout has become like a catch all kind of phrase, you know, it’s like the clinical diagnosis for everything.
20:49
And that is not the case. And the reason why it really matters is that if you intervene using burnout tactics or whatever, it’s not going to work for someone that has this nervous system activation. If you tell someone who has career distress or smog, like go take a vacation and you need to rest, these people can’t rest. Like you’re just setting them up for even more anxiety. They cannot rest. Whereas someone that has burnout, they actually can, they should go and rest and sort of rejuvenate and regroup and reenergize. That’s really good for them.
21:18
So burnout, as I was saying earlier, burnout is really like truly feeling so depleted and exhausted that you just don’t have any energy to go anywhere. Like the workplace feels almost like you have an allergic reaction to it. Like I just, I don’t want to go to work. They detach, they don’t, they just, their performance starts really decreasing. there’s, there’s that, that starts happening and they start disconnecting from the workplace. And work is really, it just feels like a lot of pressure and a lot of
21:48
energy needs to be invested and they just don’t have enough like internally to cope. Whereas career distress response, here’s what I’ll tell you like warning signs. Number one, you can’t stop thinking about work. You can’t stop working. You put more on your plate. Even on a day that it’s like a slow day, you’re like, well, let me see what else I can be doing. If it’s not work, you start cleaning your closet. Like you find things to put on your plate, to put on your thing.
22:15
on your to-do list because now doing something feels really very threatening to people. They also have a hard time like cognitively turning off their mind. So they ruminate at nighttime when they’re trying to sleep or they wake up and they go back to a conversation and they replay something that someone said in the workplace. So again, it’s like, it’s this multi-layered, multi-dimensional distress. So it’s cognitive, it’s emotional, it’s physical, right?
22:43
And it’s also relational and personal. And the way that they cope is by working, working, working. So again, if you feel like you’re activated, you feel like your nervous system is just dysregulated by the workplace, that’s a good sign that’s maybe not burnout. And you’re still functioning. You’re still sort of accomplishing, because that’s really, really important. I mean, if you look at the definition of the World Health Organization around burnout, like one of the major
23:10
hallmarks of burnout is that the person’s performance starts decreasing. Now, something really interesting happens when people do have career distress response for a very long time. I have seen them also go into burnout because the nervous system has been so activated for so long that a number of things happen. Number one, they can get an anxiety disorder or they actually have a mental disorder. And that’s when they come to me. They come to me when they’re very anxious. So that’s one thing, mental health problems. They also
23:40
can have physical, real physical health problems, autoimmune issues. So many people have been diagnosed with lupus, with all kinds of autoimmune problems. And when you look at it, it’s like, looks really more like you’ve been, your nervous system has been so activated for so long, your autoimmune system has just like shut down, right? So you have health problems. There is, you can have, I mentioned anxiety disorder, but you can also start feeling like.
24:06
like life has no meaning. That’s when they come to me like life has no meaning. I don’t really care that I’m paid all this much money, but then I feel guilty and I feel shame. like, so all of these things, all this, this is why the book is called The Great Unraveling. So many things feel like they just, it’s just falling apart because it’s not just how you feel, but also everything else, how you think, how you feel, how you relate to people, how your body feels. All of that is just dysregulated.
24:35
I mean, it’s a lot. I’m picturing a ball of wax as you said, the great unboggling, like just this like mess that you have to untangle. But one thing that I’m interested in is what does happen in your relationships, right? Because I think what’s interesting about this and I can appreciate the difference you’re setting between burnout and- Career distress response. Yes, sorry, the words left my head. Yeah, you. Career distress response.
25:03
I can totally appreciate the differences, but I would love to know how do people start responding to you? Because it’s interesting that you’re still achieving, right? And so in my head, I’m like, wonder if they look okay to people, but then there’s like the, I snuck off to the bathroom, right? Like I can get like, yeah, that would be annoying, but how are people receiving them in this way? Yes, for sure. And I do want to say something like…
25:27
burnout and career distress can look really similar and there’s some similarities. I want to make sure that, and by the way, burnout is a real thing. It’s well-studied. 50 years of the literature has been dedicated to burnout. So that’s important to know. And if you have that, definitely should try to seek help. But in terms of how career distress shows up in relationships, what happens is that because they’re so focused, their mind is so focused on work and they’re ruminating,
25:55
they just start detaching. They’re there, but they’re not there. They’re children’s birthday party, but they’re not really there. They’re looking or they’re thinking. So they’re thinking, ruminating, trying to do something, trying to be productive. there is this gradual separation or erosion from maintaining deep connections to their children, to their spouses. I’ve had patients that have come to me and said, oh my God, my wife served me divorce papers. I had no idea she was so unhappy.
26:25
Hello, come home late, you go to sleep, you don’t talk, right? Like you’re not engaged. So relationships need to be connected. They need to be invested in. it’s just no, they don’t have anything to invest. Everything that they have, they leave it at work. And at work, they look super intact. That’s why everyone misses this. They look fine. They look like they’re on top of the world because they put on the mask, you know, in the morning.
26:55
They have their everything is good. I’ll do it. They respond at 12 midnight to the email. like they’re like this perfect employee, but they’re falling apart and no one knows. And those are the people that eventually one day out of the blue, they decide to leave. So you need really important talent in the workplace, in organizations, or they get really sick or they get the heart attack, right? Like all these things can, or they go on sabbatical. Like lots of people go on sabbatical because they actually, this is what they’re dealing with, right? So yeah, and at home,
27:24
the wives or spouses or husbands, they experience these individuals as like, you’re there, but you’re not there. And there’s actually like this huge isolation that their spouses and partners feel like, wow, like I don’t have anyone to talk to. We’re no longer like, we’re talking about just like the mundane day-to-day stuff, who’s picking up the kid, but there’s no real intimacy, not necessarily just physical, but intimacy in terms of connecting, because these individuals also have lost parts of themselves.
27:52
perhaps when they started dating, they were going to art galleries because they loved the art. So they loved walking or going to the gym and everything has collapsed into the workplace. So they’re no longer doing things and activities with themselves or anybody else, right? And so that’s where I see the collapse when it comes to relationships. No, I think that makes a ton of sense. And I think it’s so interesting the difference between work relationships and personal, but I have to imagine then
28:20
the work relationships are probably somewhat transactional as well, right? Because they’re just continuing to do. So they’re respected for the doing, but I have to think that they’re not probably the best empathetic leader, for example. Yes, absolutely. And that’s why I think that this conversation also matters to leaders. Because when you are that way and when you are that leader, that’s where you’re role modeling. You’re role modeling that you have to be out. Like if you are answering that email at 12 midnight to your direct reports,
28:50
What are you telling that person? Like, I expect you to do the same thing. Or if you say, oh, great, I’m so glad that you asked. So you have to be super aware. those are the leaders that are, the ones that have done the work in terms of career distress, those are the ones that are very grounded. They know who they are. Outcomes that in the workplace don’t define them. It will bother them, obviously, but they can shake it off and they can move on, right? And so they have an ability to…
29:19
feel like they’re beyond the workplace. And these are people that have fuller lives. They actually have activities and things they love to do outside of the workplace. They have other things that give them meaning and purpose, right? So I always talk about how important it is for you to diversify your identity portfolio. Like, cannot just be in the workplace. Like, you need to be doing other things. And for some people, it’s being a good parent, and they’re very involved.
29:43
in their kids’ lives or could be in the church or in the community, they’re doing other things. And that’s why they, something that goes wrong in the workplace is just one thing, not the thing that happened to them. So in my therapy work, one of the things that we do is actually work on like identity, of like integration, like let’s look at you, like who were you before? When you were a little girl, what did you love to do?
30:13
make you feel happy, right? And sometimes, unfortunately, because these individuals tended to grow really fast because a lot of these individuals grew up in environments where, you know, they really had to be a little adult. They had to be performing and they had to do and mom wasn’t always available or dad had a drinking problem or right. So there’s some sort of trauma also among these individuals, not big T trauma, but little T traumas that are important. And so they also don’t even know how to play. They don’t know how to sit. They don’t know how to enjoy anything.
30:42
So a lot of the work also that needs to be done is learning how to find joy and learning how to find like, who are you? What do you love to do at this point in your life? What else would you like to explore about yourself? So there’s a lot of that art that needs to be done. And that’s one of the career harmony practices as well. Which is a good lead in, because that’s exactly where I was gonna go next. Because we’ve done a lot of conversation. I think this was super important conversation just to bring some…
31:08
some realness to this topic. I mean, and just really break it apart so that people can really appreciate the fact that they’re not alone, first of all, and that this is a, this is a real thing and this happens, but I’m sure they’re like, okay, how do I disentangle myself then? mean, cause it’s, it’s so much easier said than done, especially when there’s so much tied up to achievement and those, like we said, those parameters have kind of been set, right? So,
31:37
give us kind of that lowdown of the career harmony and you have your pillars and stuff. So talk us through that. Yeah, I do want to echo what you just said, because a lot of patients that I have come in and say, can you fix me? Like, how long is this going to take for me to be good now? Right. Because they’re like productive. And I’m like, I hate to disappoint you, but it’s not going to happen overnight, because for decades, you’ve been defining yourself this way. This is how you’ve been functioning.
32:05
Like your brain is conditioned to be a certain way. And so it is a process. And if anyone who is listening to this, who sees themselves in what we’re talking about and wants to do something about it, I will warn you, it’s intentional work. It’s not something that you can be like, oh yeah, I’m gonna think about it. I’ll buy the book and you read a chapter in there. You have to do work. Like I myself, I am a recovering high achiever. I said, not quite, you know, but.
32:33
Not quite there yet, but I was sick, physically sick for so many years from pushing myself so much. Like I had all the diagnoses you can imagine. And it took me a very long time. And I’m a therapist myself. Like I knew my issues and I still had a really hard time sort of like getting myself out of that conditioning. It took me a long time. So it takes time. Some people can start with like.
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the great unraveling the book just to sort of superficially understand what’s going on. That’s really the goal of the book is not to provide therapy necessarily, but just to see the lay of the land for this. But some people need therapy. Some people need coaching. Some people need someone to talk to and a friend, a good friend or a mentor to talk about these things in the very first step, which is I have four pillars. The very first thing is to just see the pattern. Just see, just see yourself like.
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See how you react at work. know, when someone says something like, so you say, oh, why did I react like that? Or why am I carrying this today? Why do I feel I have a little sort of like cloud on the side of my head with that emotional stuff, right? So you want to ask yourself like, not ask yourself, just see, just see, pause and see. And you can write it down. You can journal it. You can talk to someone about it. And then another part of that pillar is also to start understanding. And this one is a little harder. Where does that come from?
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Because the insight is really important. Like, insight is everything. That awareness of like, oh, I know where that comes from. Yeah, mom used to say that. you’re like, this is not to do therapy by yourself or to blame anyone, but patterns at home get repeated at work. And so you wanna know where these patterns are coming from and where, what their origin story. The second pillar is also that I work on is to help people get regulated. Regulated emotionally.
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quiet the mind and also regulate their bodies. And that’s really important because these individuals are constantly activated at work. They’re constantly responding to a comment or feedback or a meeting where someone gave them a weird look. They’re activated. So helping them learn how to sort of like self-regulate through different exercises and things that are in the book, it’s really good because it helps them be able to respond in a different way when these things do happen at work. The third pillar is reconnecting to who you are to yourself.
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and reconnecting to those who love you and support you and you want to have a relationship with. And so that’s a really important part because the last pillar is redesigning work, redesigning the way you work, having a different definition of what success means to you. And if you don’t know who you are and how you want to live your life, then it’s going to be hard for you to figure out like how you want to work. So the first, so that third one is really about
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getting in touch with who you are, what really matters in life, your joy, whatever that is. And again, this is a lot of work. This is not easy work. And then you take that and you ask yourself, then how do I want to work? And one of the ways that I did that myself was that I had a few years ago I had a group therapy practice and I was like, oh my God, this is a lot of work. All these different therapists, all kinds of like, it was a big business. And I realized I had to come to a conclusion that that was not the right business model for me.
35:51
I changed it. I redesigned my business and I redesigned it to asking myself, when is the right time for me to work? When do I want to see patients, what of patients I want to work with? What kind of work I want to do? And I did that. And you know what’s fascinating? When I did that and I uncovered who are the people I want to work with and what is the work that brings me the most joy and that I’m really good at? I was able to charge more money. I was able to work less, right? I was able to write a book, right? So.
36:20
It does work, but you have to do the work to get there. And so the book just walks you through that template. And hopefully you can take that and work on yourself or you can work with a therapist or you can work with a coach or talk to your friends and mentors. Yeah. I mean, I think this is so good. And Anne and I launched a book, The Power of Your Personal Brand, playbook for struggling middle managers who want to do big things. And so many of the things that you just outlined are
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mean, different steps, different ways to do it, right? I, hopefully everyone listening is so familiar with the framework that I never have to say it again, although, you know. But I think what is so interesting, and we say a lot of the same thing all the time, is that it is work. But to the point you made, if you actually put the time in to do the work, what comes out the other side is what you should be doing. You you mentioned like people can’t even connect with their purpose. All of a sudden, you know what your purpose is beyond your job.
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And I’m also stuck on the thing you said before about if it’s not all about work, then something happens at work and it’s a blip on the radar and people can get back to life, right? And so one of the questions that popped out in my mind as you were talking is does it typically lead to career invention to the point of like starting a new job, starting a new industry, or can people find ways to actually stay where they are and still be able to do this work and redefine work? Yeah, that is such a good question.
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So this is what I’ve seen and also my experience. Some people are actually able to, once they understand these patterns and then they understand why they’re reacting, they’re able to say, like eventually they’re like, oh, actually I like my job. I’m going to stay here. Like I’m good, right? They still struggle, but they feel good. They don’t feel so unraveled, so easily unraveled. But there are some people that realize, you know what? I became a doctor or an attorney because my parents expecting me to do this. Like I’m living their lives. I don’t want to do that anymore.
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That’s just not me. And it doesn’t mean that they stop being a doctor, but it could be that they maybe become, they do other things within the medical industry. And that’s when I helped them sort of redesign and reinvent themselves. They become maybe thought leaders and they have other, they do coaching. like, so there’s so many ways now for you to reinvent yourself, which is really great at this time with social media and all of that. So, I mean, you guys are doing podcasts, right? Like there’s a lot of things you can do that really you can connect.
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the skills that you have accumulated over your lifetime professionally, sort of like bring those over to something new. And so a lot of the work that I do with when I do career advisory is really to sort of like do an inventory of what all your assets, your everything that you have been able to achieve that you love to do. And where can we put that? Like that is still adjacent to your career, right? So it’s not about like leave your job.
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but just something for the next 10 years. Like, do you want to do this for 10 years that you’ve been doing? Or do you want to do something a little different for 10 years and it was going to take a little while to get there, but you will feel better. And so some people do sort of like work redesign or career reinvention. Some people do launch businesses. I’m seeing also a lot of nonprofit executive directors coming in to say, want to do coaching. I want to work with organizations. I want to help other nonprofit executive.
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directors like so they’re sort of taking all that they’ve learned and repackaging it into something that they can sort of own themselves and have more freedom over their careers. And so that’s really beautiful to see, you know, that whole transformation. I think that’s like a really fabulous way to to wrap up this episode because it just gives hope, I think, to a lot of folks that are sitting here kind of wondering, is it possible to even
40:04
unravel or disentangle myself from this. And I mean, I think, you know, I, I’m still going through it myself. know April still kind of goes through that herself. It’s not like you said, Dr. Angelica, it’s not something that is going to happen overnight, but there, if there’s an intent in there’s you’re willing to create the space and you’re willing to acknowledge some of the past little T trauma that’s happened or how you’ve been conditioned, it’s all very, very, possible. So I thank you for.
40:33
giving everybody that picture, I mean, the picture of hope, I think that a lot of people need when they’re going through this very real situation and experience. But before I let you close us out, are you open to some open fires? Probably not. Are you open to some rapid fires? Absolutely go shoot. Okay. What are you reading right now that isn’t obviously your own book?
41:01
Oh, boy, I’m such a geek. read, so my reading is fiction. So what am I reading? Oh, I’m reading this book called The Nervous System, something is I’m all into the nervous system now. So regulate your nervous system. And I can’t remember the name of the God, but he actually is like some sort of like an influencer in the nervous system. Thanks. I think it’s called regulating, regulating your nervous system and actually give it to my young daughter so that she can use it. Sounds like a really good thing to learn.
41:30
So we talk about big things all the time and I was talking about dreams earlier. What is your big thing that you’re looking to achieve here in the near future or even the distant future? Oh, wow. Wow. OK. So in this chapter of my career, by the way, so I’ve been a therapist for 30 years and in December this year, I will be wrapping up the therapy practice and I will no longer be a therapist. Oh, wow. Yes. Yes. And so I’m dedicating my next
42:00
chapter of my career to launching a new field that I call career health. So think about mental health, physical health, public health. And career health is basically the study of how our relationship with work and achievement impacts our psychology, our physical health, our relationships and identity. And so we’re actually starting a new research study here in Greenville on career distress response. And we are validating a career distress
42:28
inventory, a scale that I developed to assess this so that hopefully therapists and coaches and organizations and even healthcare professionals can use that when someone comes in to see them. So that’s what I’ll be doing. Yeah, I love that for so many different reasons. I mean, you can probably get all your research done in a week at P &G.
42:52
That’s a good one. You in and you’re like, oh my goodness, talk about achievers. No, that’s awesome. I love that. I really do. What is one way that you do self-care? So when you’re feeling, you know, any kind of like stress or anxiety or, know, wherever that is for you, like, how do you practice self-care? Yeah. So one of the things that I had to learn to do was to be able to rest.
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Like I just did not know how to rest at all. didn’t, I like my kids. I remember my kids wanted to even play games and I couldn’t even play a board game because it felt to me like I’m not being productive. So I’ve been able to embrace rest, which means like doing nothing, which means doing something. So like, want people to know that when you rest and you’re doing nothing, you’re actually doing something really important. And so resting could just be like, I lay down. I don’t even read a book. I just lay down. Oh, I really enjoy watching home decorators channels.
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on YouTube, because I think deep down inside, I was always a very creative person and I just didn’t get to develop that because I had to be on all the time. And so I’ve always been using my left brain for everything. High achievers use their left brain a lot. So I spend a lot of time in creative sort of environments. Like I go to art galleries or I’m also renovating homes. I’ve done my seventh house, like a seventh home that I have either bought or renovated for somebody else.
44:20
I’ve been doing that and I get a lot of pleasure and a lot of meaning and purpose making something that’s really run down into something that’s really beautiful. And so that’s how I do self care a lot, just being more creative or buying, like notice I have my painting here, like just buying artwork and supporting local artists here in Greenville. Oh, I love that. I can definitely exemplify that too with being so stuck in the left brain that the right brain has been a little dormant.
44:49
So I love that. Yeah. Awesome. Oh my goodness. We could talk for hours, I’m sure. But I’m going to let you wrap us up. So anything that we missed or anything, do you want to put a bow on and then obviously tell people where they can find you? Where can they find the book? Give us all the details. Yeah. You know, one of the things I want to make clear, I don’t want this conversation to come across as anti-ambition. Ambition is really important.
45:19
Like ambition gives us meaning and purpose. It makes our society a capitalist society. It’s good. The problem is when ambition becomes who you are and how you define yourself. That is the problem. But ambition is good. And I think that at some point in your life, if you identify with this in this conversation, you see yourself in this conversation, there is going to come a time in your life you’re going to ask yourself, is this what I want to do for a long time? And what is the cost of this is costing me?
45:48
And do I want to do something about it? Because either you do something about it now or your body will do something about it. You will lose control. And so you might as well have some control over it now and do something about it. Otherwise your mind or your body or your relationships will do something about it. Like they’ll fall apart. so, and again, that’s the reason for the great unraveling as to title. So like do something. If there’s anything I can do, can say, it’s just do something.
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You don’t have to buy the book. There’s plenty of resources out there, you and there’s resources on our website. But if you want to buy the book, it’s coming out in September, first week in September, and you can learn more about it at thegreatunravelingbook.com. And thank you for having me, of you. And if people want to contact you or get in contact with you, where can they find you? Yeah, so I write a newsletter on Substack. I’m also on LinkedIn, so they can DM me, but they can also write to me. very approachable.
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You can DM me, I write to everybody else, everyone who emails me. So I can be emailed or contacted at angelica at careerharmony.net, not dot com, angelica at careerharmony.net. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Angelica. It’s been a pleasure to have you on. Yeah, what a conversation. And with that, we encourage all of our listeners to take at least one powerful insight you heard and put into practice just so much here.
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And remember, Strategic Counsel is only effective if you put it into action. Did we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com. We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business. And make sure to Follow or Subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform!