Dear Agnes,
I find myself in a state of unbearable uncertainty. At work, there are layoffs, terminations, and unsettling changes happening all around me. New people are being hired, others are being let go, and I’m stuck in limbo, waiting to see if my position will survive after the holidays. The writing seems to be on the wall, and I can’t shake the feeling that my termination is coming.
I’m trying so hard not to spiral into panic or let this cloud hang over my holiday season, but it’s incredibly hard. I feel like I’m sinking into a deep sadness that feels bigger than just my job—it’s like I’m in the midst of a “dark night of the soul.”
How do I hold on to hope and stay present for my family and loved ones when I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of losing everything?
Sincerely,
On Shaky Ground
Dear On Shaky Ground,
We humans don’t particularly like uncertainty. We like predictability, and when it comes to risk, we really like to know before we go. That being said, if this uncertainty is feeling truly unbearable, there’s likely something you’re doing that’s making it much more uncomfortable than it needs to be. If you’re feeling on the edge of spiraling into panic about something that has not yet happened, and may not happen, chances are you are feeding your anxiety with rumination: you’re going back to the same stress inducing thought repeatedly.
As far as we know, other mammals only have their physiological stress response activated by external stimuli (like a predator), but humans appear to have the unique gift of being able to trigger a cascade of stress hormones through our thoughts alone. If you’re telling yourself over and over again that you’re going to lose your job, you’re actually triggering changes in your physiological state, Shaky.
Changes that are meant to help you fight off a lion or a bear.
This can easily turn into a vicious cycle, because once our physiological stress response has been activated, we’re predisposed to see things in all-or-nothing terms, and through the lens of threat. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective: if there’s an actual predator approaching you, your brain wants you all-in for the fight. It wouldn’t serve you well in that moment to be thinking “Maybe that lion’s just curious, not hungry”. Your brain wants to help you survive the threat by removing all ambiguity from the situation.
In short, under the influence of stress hormones, nuanced thinking goes out the window. So of course, the more you are thinking about the possibility of losing your position, the more you’ll be telling yourself you’re about to lose EVERYTHING. And that will unfortunately trigger the release of more stress hormones, which will have you imagining the worst even more, and so on.
That stress response, by the way, is costly to the body. It’s meant to help us in crises lasting minutes or hours. When it goes on for too long, it’s exhausting, and depression becomes a risk. So the sadness you are feeling may be a consequence of failing to interrupt that stress response and get your body back to a regulated baseline.
So Shaky, let me lend you some perspective here. Losing a job, while stressful, is by no means losing everything. Losing everything means losing your health, your family, your friends, all of your worldly goods, and your sanity. Is that what’s really going to happen if you’re laid off? How do you know?
One of the most efficient approaches I’ve ever learned for managing a runaway stress response is to do my very best to take it on faith that this situation I’m in that I don’t like very much isn’t happening to me, it’s happening for me. This orients me away from the catastrophizing that naturally comes with a physiological stress response, away from resisting the situation, and towards creative, generative thinking. If I’m losing my job, maybe it’s because there’s a better position I don’t even know about yet around the corner. Or maybe it’s because I’m being called to master the art of living joyfully in the present, even when the future is uncertain (as it always is).
While this can seem like an empty “look for the silver lining” strategy on the surface, the wisdom in it is quite profound. We tend not to make the best decisions when we’re running on fear. It narrows our focus of attention such that we can easily overlook possibilities and creative solutions. And by fueling the fear with thoughts of the worst, we also suffer unnecessarily. Turning our minds to a positive outcome is extremely helpful simply in terms of facilitating acceptance of what’s happening.
The dark night of the soul is another way of saying that we’ve reached the limits of possibility in our current existence. What was once serving us has dried up as a source of sustenance, and we don’t yet see the unknown newness that is waiting just on the other side letting go of the old. And when we hold on, when we resist change because we can’t tolerate uncertainty, we can’t quite create the vacuum that nature abhors.
We may have outgrown our current projects, habits, or relationships, but feel too much fear to let them go. It’s the resistance, the holding on, that keeps us in limbo, that prevents something new from flowing into our experience, and it’s that resistance that ultimately causes so much emotional suffering. What needs to be surrendered here so a new energy can come in, Shaky? It may be your identification with this position, or it may also be your attachment to worry.
In loving support,
Agnes