When Life Changes: What is Lost. What Remains?

Myles Doyle - MTD Psychotherapy

*7 min read*

Life transitions are part of being human. Some are welcomed and expected. Becoming a parent, getting married, starting a new career or finally retiring after decades of work may be transitions we have looked forward to.

Others arrive without invitation. Bereavement, separation, illness, redundancy or the end of a career.

We are living through more transitions

In Ireland in 1950–52, life expectancy at birth was 64.5 years for men and 67.1 years for women. Today, many of us can reasonably expect considerably longer lives. Central Statistics Office

That doesn't simply mean more years. It can mean more chapters.

Retirement, for example, is no longer necessarily one single stage of life. The early years may bring opportunities for travel, volunteering, new hobbies, spending more time with family or simply having the freedom to decide what to do with your day. Later years may bring another transition as energy or mobility changes, perhaps followed by a greater reliance on family or others for support.

Or, increasingly in the modern workplace, a career transition may not be our choice at all.

When redundancy becomes more than losing a job

Imagine a man in his early fifties who has spent much of his working life progressing through a company.

He has done reasonably well. He is now in middle management and his salary reflects that. Perhaps there is a mortgage, children approaching university, school fees or simply a lifestyle that has moulded around the family's income.

Then he is made redundant.

Initially, this may be primarily a practical problem. Update the CV. Contact people. Apply for jobs. Prepare for interviews. There may even be optimism or excitement. “I've got twenty-five years' experience. I'll find something”.

But suppose six months pass. Then nine. Then fifteen.

Application after application has produced the same result. Sometimes there was an interview. Sometimes there wasn't. Sometimes there was simply another email beginning with some version of thank you for your interest, but...

This isn't an imaginary difficulty for older workers. Recent OECD research indicates that although unemployment is less common among older workers, once unemployed they remain unemployed for longer. Job displacement can also result in substantially greater and more persistent earnings losses for mid-career and older workers than for younger workers. OECD

By now, something else may have started happening.

The question is no longer simply:

When will I get another job?

It may have become:

What happens if I don't?

When practical worries become personal

The financial concerns are real.

• Can we continue living in this house?

• Can we still afford the children's education?

• What happens to our savings?

• Do I need to accept a job paying considerably less than I earned before?

• Do I need to radically retrain to a separate lower paying career.

• Do we holiday differently? Change the car? Downsize the house?

These aren't irrational worries and counselling shouldn't pretend they are. Losing an income can have very real consequences. But another set of questions can begin appearing alongside them.

• What does taking a lesser-paid job say about me?

• What will people think if we sell the house?

• How does my partner see me now?

• What do I tell people when they ask what I'm doing?

• And perhaps the most difficult one:

What does all of this say about who I am?

That's where a life transition can become an identity transition.

Three ways we can experience identity

There is a simple way of thinking about identity that I often use in counselling.

There is who I believe I am.

Perhaps I see myself as capable, responsible, successful, independent, ambitious, dependable or as someone who provides / co-provides for my family.

Then there is the person I publish to the outside world.

Part of that is about our values and the things that matter to us. We may want the world to see us as hardworking, responsible, successful, caring, independent or dependable. But we also publish the symbols of those values. A job title, home, car, clothes or holidays.

That doesn't necessarily mean showing off or pretending to be something we're not. Those things can quite authentically become part of the identity we publish to the world.

The difficulty comes when a life transition changes the symbols.

Before redundancy, I may have believed that others saw me as successful and established. Fifteen months later, after repeated job rejections, some of the outward symbols of that life may have started to change.

• There is no holiday this summer.

• The car has been traded for something cheaper.

• We don't eat out anymore.

• I haven't bought new clothes in months.

And that is where a change in circumstances can start to become a change in identity.

What has actually been lost??

The same question can arise at many points in life.

Retirement can remove a professional identity that has existed for decades. Becoming a parent can temporarily overwhelm identities that existed before parenthood. Children leaving home can challenge someone who has spent twenty years understanding themselves primarily through being needed as a parent.

Bereavement can mean losing not only someone we love, but also, in part, a role we occupied alongside them. Separation / divorce can change our understanding of ourselves as a husband, wife or partner.

Even positive transitions can leave us wondering where the previous version of ourselves has gone.

Some of the symbols of our values may be gone. The values themselves are not. Therapy can help us accept what has been lost and find new, authentic ways of expressing what remains.

What you can do?

If a major change in your life has left you feeling unsettled, it can be tempting to focus entirely on fixing the external problem. There may be practical changes and difficult decisions to deal with. But alongside those, it can also be worth asking yourself:

• What has actually changed?

• What have I genuinely lost?

• What am I assuming other people now think about me?

And, perhaps most importantly:

• What remains?

Counselling cannot restore a lost job, reverse a bereavement or make children young again. What it can do is help us make sense of what has changed, accept what has genuinely been lost, and recognise what remains.

MTD Psychotherapy provides counselling for adults in Co. Meath and online across Ireland. If you are experiencing a significant life transition and would like to explore whether counselling might be helpful, a free 15-minute consultation is available to help you decide whether it may be right for you.