The other trend I identified was that the language people were using to describe their issues with their jobs and careers sounded a lot like the language they were using to describe their issues with their close relationship partners. Language can be subtle, but it's rich and full of clues about what people are truly grappling with. Statements like "I used to have a better handle on what my boyfriend was thinking and feeling, but now he feels like a black box" indicate a growing sense of psychological distance. Even indirect statements like "My doctor won't make eye contact with me when I'm talking; instead, he stares at my chart" can reveal a deep-seated distrust of medical personnel. I've shown in many contexts that the comments we make about our partners can be even better predictors of our future behaviors than what we say when asked what we plan to do. Language can give us a wealth of information about people's states of mind, if you know where to look. The use of language we usually associate with failing romantic relationships—expressions of distrust and ambivalence, for example—were common during my career conversations, which made me realize a deeper shift was going on.
Therapy helps us manage all types of relationships. Why not apply it to your relationship with your career? Therapy can work wonders, especially when it's designed to help people not only understand what's driving their thoughts and behaviors, but also develop the tools they need to open the lines of communication between themselves and their potential new partners so they can assess fit before diving into something headfirst. Just as therapy can help people with their relationships with themselves and others, a therapeutic approach to careers can be transformational in helping you figure out why you're unhappy at work so that you can get closer to finding something more fulfilling.
We're all in a relationship with our career. And just like in any relationship, we experience emotions that go up and down, and that are often the result of deep psychological issues we don't always understand. Job Therapy was born out of the idea that unpacking these psychological issues is the first and arguably most important step in discovering happiness at work. It's a new approach to career navigation designed to help you learn new things about yourself and learn new strategies of communication so you leave little of your future career happiness up to chance.
To understand career goers, I studied them in a way they haven't been studied before. There are hundreds of studies on the modern career goer (people who are questioning their happiness at work and starting to analyze new opportunities)—what they want out of a job, what they're willing to tolerate, how many want to switch careers entirely. The workplace has changed a lot in the last several years, and experts are quick to document how people are adapting to shifting tides.
But as I've mentioned, this work doesn't really get at the deep underpinnings of our unhappiness at work. At best, it scratches the surface with concepts like burnout and work-life balance. The questions I had were broader and more psychologically basic: What leads us to de-identify with something we spent decades pursuing? How often and why do we sabotage our own progress at work, volunteering to do things we don't have the time or mental energy for? How much of our inability to get that raise and promotion is about our own shortcomings, like misreading our status at work, and how much is it due to the shortcomings of those around us, like a boss who doesn't have enough status to influence promotion decisions?
To get at answers to these questions, I needed to first take a step back to evaluate what makes a person begin questioning their relationship with their career. In the study of close relationships, there's been a lot of research on the risk factors of divorce, including precipitating events that kick-start the process of contemplating exit. Structural events, like sudden changes in income and having children, and psychological concerns, like an unfair allocation of household labor, which can lead people to feel underappreciated and invisible, are critical opportunities for intervention through therapy. If you can capture people at these times, you have a good chance not only of helping them process what's happening in the relationship, but also of shepherding them through the process of relationship dissolution, if it comes to that.
Applying this same logic to your relationship with your career, my first goal was to identify what the precipitating events are that make career goers contemplate going on the job market. In the first survey I conducted, I found there are five key drivers that make people think of leaving their jobs:
1. Feeling like their career is no longer an important part of who they are, when it used to be.
2. Working in a job that has changed so much it is now beyond recognition.
3. Taking on too much at work and feeling so overwhelmed that a feeling of helplessness is setting in.
4. Struggling to gain status at work, to the point where promotions and raises aren't being given.
5. Having power and status at work, but not getting recognized or compensated for it.
