When the Structure Holding Me Together Vanished

Nine weeks in: transitions, tears, and unexpected self-discovery.

Hello, and thank you for being part of the Collective-Thrive community.

I have been thinking about you a lot. When I launched this community (a whopping two months ago), my commitment to you, and to myself, was to share this adventure in real time. My plan was to post weekly updates and/or conversations, and I was off to a great start. That adventure, leaving my job and life of 20+ years and blowing it all up by becoming a full-time graduate student, has been much harder than I expected, and in ways I never anticipated. I would like to give you an update on the deeper aspects of this transition, but there is so much emotion behind it that each time I think of recording an update, I begin to cry.

I have a complicated relationship with crying. For much of my adult life, I only cried in sad movies and at funerals. I wore that as a stoic badge of honor. Despite working in a very creative field where you would expect people to be more connected to their emotions, there was “no crying in advertising.” At least not for those of us on the business side of the business.

My whole relationship with crying changed when I started seeing a therapist who used somatic techniques to help me reconnect with my body. If that sounds too woo-woo for you (it would have to me then), I can describe it like this: I spent all my time in my head, being very analytical and intellectual, and did not allow the signals from my body, the feelings and emotions, to have a voice or influence my decisions. Those who know me well might find this hard to believe, as I have never shown up as a cold or unfeeling person. I was always open and able to receive the feelings and emotions of others, but I was shutting down my own inconvenient feelings. It was a coping mechanism I had learned during some very dark times in my childhood, and the approach helped me power through life.

But that therapy changed things, and me. I had sought it out after an executive coach helped me see how much I was focused on others and not on myself or my needs. The very simple question “What do you want?” stumped me. Sure, I could identify and fulfill immediate cravings for food (I love food) or buy that dress I thought was pretty. But deeper things, like feeling alone in my marriage and wanting more intimacy, or wanting time to pursue an actual hobby that brought me joy, were inaccessible to me. Life was simpler without allowing all those pesky and disruptive wants and needs through the door, because big feelings and emotions, and a need to act on them, came with acknowledging the deprivation I had been allowing, chosen even.

Flash forward…

I worked hard in therapy to allow that mind-body connection. Jessica and I talked about the importance of this in our recent Collective-Thrive conversation. Allowing the voice of my own wants and needs to inform my decisions was game-changing and led to me changing many things in my life over the last few years. It’s like inviting an end user to join the team that will be designing a solution/application/process that they will be required to use. Of course, they should always be on the team!

So here I am, nine weeks after leaving my big C-suite job, seven weeks into graduate school, four weeks into my social work internship, and five weeks into feeling like a hot mess. Friends have been reminding me that in the lead-up to my leaving work, I said things like “Let’s still have lunch once a week” and “I will have plenty of time to hang out.” They were skeptical, and I was adamant. Obviously, I was very, very wrong. In retrospect, I think I needed to tell myself it would be easy in order to make the leap. I knew all the reading would be hard, as I am dyslexic and read very slowly. I knew all the change would be hard, and I posted a toolkit to help myself, and you, survive change. And all of that did happen. But I also knew myself to be a super-organized person who gets hard things done. Having spent most of my career working long hours and juggling massive to-do lists, I believed I could power through anything. Why would graduate school be any different?

I could not possibly have anticipated all the ways in which it is different, because I was missing some critical pieces of information about myself. I have experienced these new learnings the way one experiences a tornado ripping through a house. They completely upended my understanding of myself.

I don’t want to leave you with a cliffhanger, so I will share what I can. But if I post a video or try to explain these new things in depth right now, it will be mostly rambling and tears. So, bear with me as I am still processing.

What I have been able to sort out is this: when I walked away from the back-to-back meetings, meaningful collaboration, high-pressure environment with tight deadlines, and constant human contact, I left a structure within which I thrived. The tornado started slowly. The two-week staycation was amazing, and the initial weeks of school were fine. Sure, there was the anxiety around change and reading (400 pages a week!?!), but it was manageable because it was expected. As time went on and I spent long hours in isolation on schoolwork and internship tasks that were not intellectually stimulating, the winds picked up. I struggled to access that super-organized, get-things-done person I knew myself to be. Like mortar disappearing from a strong brick wall, she vanished, and it toppled in the wind. It is hard to explain the feeling. I was intellectually paralyzed but simultaneously bouncing around my apartment like a pinball. I had piles of work to do for a degree I want, and am paying a lot for, and yet no amount of sheer will could help me focus. It is very disconcerting to suddenly feel and act like a completely different person. Identity threat on steroids, and plenty of crying to release anxiety.

So, I did what I always do when faced with a problem: I started to gather information, marshal resources, and work toward a solution. I am still in the middle of that.

I have:

• been diagnosed with ADHD (fascinating at my age!)

• consulted professionals, knowledgeable friends, and available research

• begun applying layers of interventions

• tried to give myself some grace as I work to understand these critical new learnings about myself (this may be the hardest part)

Every transition comes with anxiety, because that is how the human brain responds to change. I did not anticipate that my newly empowered anxiety would invite my neurodivergent eccentricities over for a party in my head, but that’s what’s going on.

The weird, scary, and beautiful adventure continues!