I know this is too long, but I don’t know how to transition and I married a man who was succinct so I didn’t have to be, so I am banking off of content interest for you to keep reading. But I don’t feel entitled for you to keep reading if you are bored – I just couldn’t figure out how to edit this down further and I really needed to write you after reading your blog.
I have spent the past 20 hours in three days reading your blog. I’ve probably read over 50 posts or so, and they all revolve around the self-acceptance and fulfillment or career change categories. I am very interested in reading your homeschooling and parenting categories soon since I am almost 63% sure I will be going off birth control after my husband and I come back from our China trip in 2017.
I am 28 years old (ticking clock and parents aching to be grandparents working against a fear that once I have kids I will always think “what if” if I don’t figure out “what I should be doing” now) and feel like I’m in a job that wastes my potential. I know I shouldn’t blame the job, but I blame myself for being too weak and scared to leave this job that is a 5/6 on your test for “do you have a good job“… so I tell myself I should shut up and be grateful.
I am an ENFJ, but sometimes I test as an INFJ. I think I’m 50/50 on the Introvert/Extrovert thing because I love helping people at work, but I get tired of being constantly around them (so I work virtual and in-office) and I am very independent and need an escape to think.
This also may depend on at what time I take the test. If I take it around holidays when all my free time is taken up rushing to and from family events which I am very bitter and guilty for feeling bitter about right now, I test as an INFJ, but when I’m taking the test while I am at work or was just around cool people, I am an ENFJ. I love my family, but I can’t say no to family events because we live 2 hours away and it’s not like I see them every day… so perhaps I am just a guilty and bitter ENFJ with no family boundaries.
I am a programmer analyst who changed from being a systems analyst last year. I have been caught in analysis paralysis on my next career move for over 3 years. I have been at this company since my 2010 college graduation.
My company likes me enough to keep me even when I had a quarter-life crisis last April and said I am about to quit so they gave me a coding job I asked for to replace my database job but it didn’t get better because I don’t like data, I like reading about research based on data. (TBH I think they keep me because I’m fun, not because I’m good at coding) But I thought I should make myself get a degree in something I was bad at because it would be a good character building experience for me. And because it would fulfill both my parent’s expectations (and I had no time to think of any for myself) I think that was a big mistake.
The only part of my job I like is when I am helping people find answers to their problems. But I don’t want to learn the code anymore to be the answer to those type of problems so I don’t see how I have any more use here except to keep doing a mediocre job at learning to code and then giving people sort of knowledgeable advice about something I don’t really like. But I end up feeling good I helped them and that keeps me going. Sort of.
My dad is a successful engineer and manager and loved us based on achievements (grades, contest wins) and my mother was a very emotional and creative best friend who raised me to “get a degree” because her husband would definitely marry a woman with a degree if she died. My parents are still married after 36 years and are quite happy with each other for what its worth.
My friend is abused and I have been helping her through her issues. This makes me feel fulfilled and interested because it presents a challenge where I need to convince her to make better life choices to get away from the abuse. I looked up “victim advocate” job on indeed and apparently a master’s degree is required…. so I dropped that idea because having to get a masters degree for that sounds stupid since I’m already doing a great job at helping my friend now. I actually ended up counseling many coworkers about their relationship issues or lack thereof these past 5 years. I’m good at getting people to open up. But to be a psychologist I’d need a doctorate and I’m 28 with a ticking clock.
I tried to go to art school and business school at the same time. The art school because I wanted art and the business school because I thought it was the smart and practical thing to do to support that art.
I felt mentally raped by art school as they were all crazy drug addicts who thought my representational art was kitsch and their over-sexualized abstract art was high brow. I saw no other options in art. The school gave no other options to be a different type of artist. So I quit. I did something practical that I thought would give me a stable income so I got a business degree in computers. I am sort of a happy person in general but existentially miserable.
From one of your posts, I tried to remember my greatest feeling of accomplishment and super fun or peaceful moments as a child. So I remember interpretive ballet dancing on stage many times and enjoying it, mostly because I enjoy moving around and also knowing people are being entertained by it. Now I pursue wushu, a performance martial art 3 times a week. I remember setting up house for dolls with friends in a low hanging camphor tree. We climbed and jumped off the branches. We were at home there.
I now live in a stilt house on a lake built from wood and fixing it up feels good. I liked helping my grandmother with her chicken and rabbit feeding chores. I also remember laying in a meadow by a forest in really soft grass and it felt awesome. I currently have 5 chickens and think 15 would be even more fun – so I guess I’ve done pretty well in actualizing my childhood aha! moments. I realize this and feel more ungrateful that I am still complaining about my career.
I know you’ve heard this before… but I think I still want to be an artist. After all the career books and repetitive analysis I have done in the past 3 years I look back on my notes and I keep coming to this conclusion. I make some art, but I feel guilty about it because the art doesn’t make money to help support myself or my family so its only for myself. Then when I catch myself feeling like this I become scared to death I will become my mother. She is too guilty to do anything for herself and never tried to capitalize on her natural artistic talents.
Right now I just want to sit the work computer down and go to my art desk and make art. I have been in the flow state with this before. But I would be a bad employee if I did that. But I’m not a bad employee if I type this long winded expose of my life to you after reading 50+ of your posts in the past 3 workdays.
But am I cut out to be an art entrepreneur? In 5th grade, the kids liked my art and commissioned different Pokemon, and I drew them and received fair compensation. I was proud of how well I could make Pokemon drawings and sell them for 25 or 50 cents but then a jealous kid told on me and the teacher said I couldn’t do that in class. I was so guilty I did something the teacher said was wrong so I quit.
I am a people pleaser to my own fault, and I don’t want to die having pleased everyone but myself. I’m scared because now I’m 28 with a ticking clock and probably have maybe 2000/10000 expert hours of art combined under my belt. I want to draw pictures of awesome stuff, have people see it and love it and want it, and then pay me for it. So then I can buy everything plus health insurance with it and feel worthy. I know there are successful artists that do this. But they are all already successful. I’m just starting out. It was easier to explore when I was a child and had no adult responsibility or a baby clock.
I want to ignore people (INFJ) but I just can’t (ENFJ). Women have it harder than men in these existential crises because of babies. And I still want babies too.
If you got to this part of the mail, my question is what do you think I should do? I would love to know your opinion about my situation. I finally feel braced and ready for any hard truths I may hear.
I originally wanted to be a lawyer, however, after interning for a law firm over the summer, I quickly noticed how miserable lawyers are. During my second year of college, I am taking Finance and Accounting courses, and loving the work.
I have decided that I want to become an investment banker after college. What tips do you have for getting an investment banking internship? I plan on doing the CFA Program (Chartered Financial Analyst) after college, but what else can I do to stand out to get one of these highly competitive internships?
Why does most everyone hold their talent/passion/true gift/calling under water like trying to hold a beach ball under water? It does eventually pop up, but why the squelching? It’s wide spread and effects all classes, people, etc.
I was a Certified Nurse Aide at a hospital for 1 year and 6 months, I never made it to my 2 year anniversary. I was fired 2 days after my 1st and only family emergency.
My sister crashed her vehicle into a tree going 60 MPH in a residential neighborhood. I received a call while at my housekeeping job, she may have done it on purpose. I called my hospital job crying while driving to the downtown hospital, one of my 3 department managers stated if I didn’t come in….I was fired, if I came in emotional….I was fired.
I came in 5 minutes late and with proof. I had to wait for the Chief of Surgery. I showed a manager and she said it was all acceptable with all my proof (pictures of the crash, Letter from her Surgeon and Nurse). I was fired the next day by the director. The manager I spoke with wouldn’t help. The director refused to meet with me and security wouldn’t let me into the hospital.
I’m having issues explaining the situation in interviews. I feel like I should have fought it better, but was distracted with my sister’s accident and watching the 4 kids.
What should I do?
I know you have to keep trying different jobs out to know what you want to do, I think my problem is that there is some kind of block/resistance around anything, including the jobs I try out.
I’m an INFP.
I have interned as a Human resource intern for a non-profit and I think I liked the talent acquisition, recruiting and company wellness aspects of it, but not benefits/compensation etc.. But I still don’t know if I want to pursue this aspect of HR further. I always seem to feel like there’s something else.
I’ve interned as a marketing and communications intern in NYC for a start-up juice company. I didn’t like it that much, thinking I don’t care too much about marketing for this.
I then got a job as a marketing assistant where I assisted the director of business development with marketing, social media, helping out with proposals (it was a consulting company) and other little business development pieces.
I liked it because of the people I worked with and the office environment. But it was also something I saw as temporary.
My biggest resistance comes with pursuing Psychology. I definitely don’t want to get a PhD, but secretly, I think about counseling as a career but I have SO MUCH resistance around this. For example:
(1) I don’t know if I’m confusing my love for personal development and spirituality with choosing this as a career–cos I use it to help myself. I get really inspired by mental wellness and I spend a lot of time being inspired by individuals who are life coaches etc. online and I feel connected. But am I just having wishful thinking.
(2) I love being empathetic, I’m a great listener and I feel a desire to help and empower others. BUT there are times where I feel like I don’t want to be listening to people’s problems. It gets depressing and I feel stupid if I can’t help or give the right kind of advice. What if I suck? I also have enormous fears around not feeling smart enough for grad school. I got by fine in my undergrad career but didn’t do well in my research methods class for e.g.
(3) I don’t really want to do clinical psych because I would want to help with less serious concerns than actual mental disorders like schizophrenia for instance. There a lot of people in my country where there is not enough psychological help and no outlet for people to talk about mental wellness. I feel like there is some kind of potential here but I’m not exactly sure how I would want to play a part.
I’m 25 years old and I can continue to experiment with jobs but I’m afraid that I might just be hopping from one thing to another with no direction. I know this feeling very well. There are instances in my life where I’d feel this way and actually sabotage myself because I’m not seeing things properly. I’ve read Dr. Meg Jay’s book, Defining Decade and how the decisions you make in your 20’s are important.
I’m scared that I’m just aimless. I can’t even decide what skills to get good at. I don’t want to waste my time on something when I could be gaining experience somewhere else. In my country, opportunities are different than in USA. It’s more common in the U.S. and maybe elsewhere to experiment with jobs but here, it’s different. I just interviewed for HR executive position and the interviewer asked why HR after interning and working in marketing/business development.
I would appreciate any insight you have?!
I have two questions for you, but first I want to tell you our story to put the questions in context. My boyfriend and I have been together for 3 years. When I met him he had just started graduate school (at age 43). A month after we started dating his father died and his whole life unraveled before my eyes. He withdrew from school and went into a depression. He didn’t look for work, didn’t go back into his program when the time came, lost his place to live, and had to move to some family property four hours from where I live.
I could see how much he struggled and I knew there was some genuine and significant barrier to him getting his life together but I couldn’t put my finger on it (PTSD? An attachment disorder? Pervasive developmental trauma?). In any case, I have been loving him as best I can without trying to “help” him or “fix” anything. (I am a mental health counselor, and majorly co-dependent, so believe me this has been a herculean act of restraint.)
A few months ago he mentioned that he really relates to the way Temple Grandin explains thinking in pictures and he thinks he might be on the autism spectrum. I considered this. I have been racking my brain for three years trying to understand what is going on. I am a counselor, for pete’s sake, how could I not recognize this? (Possibly because we studied the autism spectrum for 10 whole minutes of my 60 hour master’s program—but that is the topic for another day).
I began reading everything I could find and suddenly everything made sense. After I read Tony Attwood’s Complete Guide to Asperger’s I told my boyfriend that it was like someone had taken all the individual puzzle pieces of observation I’d been collecting over the past three years and fitted them together so I could finally see the whole picture. Now we were onto something, something big, something that explained all the trouble he was having and had been having all of his life (and why he couldn’t say “I love you” with words although I felt more loved by him than I ever did by my ex-husband who said “I love you” every day.)
I encouraged him to read about it, too, (which he is doing) and I have continued reading and reading and we have been talking about it a little bit at a time since then. One thing that just about every article and book I’ve read repeats over and over is that the Aspies who have some measure of happiness in life are the ones who have someone (almost always a mother or wife) who helps them structure their days and navigate the intricacies of the neurotypical world.
I began thinking that my strategy of not “helping” which I thought was so healthy of me (finally, for once!) was actually, in this case, the opposite of what was needed. So, I am beginning to offer help with his job search, depression, and unbearable living situation. In the course of my research I came across your blog. So, finally, I get to the first one of my questions to you: Do you think this is an appropriate thing for me to do? Or would you tell me, as I have read in your responses to parents, that I should just love him and do things we enjoy together and let him figure out the rest?
And my second question is: how can someone with Asperger’s develop an internal locus of control? Tony Attwood says it is quite common in Asperger’s to have the sense of an external locus of control and I think this is what holds my boyfriend back even more than executive function problems or trouble dealing with people (although that causes him a lot of trouble).
He feels completely at the mercy of outside forces and seems to have no idea that he actually has any power to play a role in creating a positive future for himself. Any hint of a suggestion that he can make positive changes in himself and his life seems to make him feel quite hurt and even angry. If he can’t realize he can change his life for the better, he can’t feel any motivation for taking steps to do so and that seems like a hopelessly stuck place.
Did you once have an external locus of control and, if so, how did you overcome it? Do you have any suggestions that you think could help him? I love this guy so much it makes my heart hurt. I want so much for him to have a happy life and for us to have a fulfilling relationship something like what you seem to have with The Farmer. Do you see hope?
I am an ENFJ and I’ve listened to your course for ENFJ’s and it was great! And you were talking about me when you said ENFJs want to have it all. That’s why I took the course because it’s sooo TRUE! I need to do it all and find myself committing to too much and becoming overwhelmed
I have a question regarding my career. I have NEVER wanted my career to be my life and always pursued a career in science communication because (makes so much sense) I love taking research learned and explaining it to the public. However, I realized this career will never pay me any money and I won’t have control over where I live.
So, after spending 4 years working in the science communications field I have made a decision to become a nurse. I’ll be able to work with people, live where I want, earn more money, and have a good balance between work and life (don’t take work home with me). I’m currently finishing up my prereqs, working the hospital part-time, and applying to schools (out of state schools).
I’m also concerned with going back to school as school is not my strong area and I will be doing the accelerated nursing program which is quite intensive. I know I can do it, but am trying to figure out how to still maintain balance and not feel overwhelmed, which is why I’m seeking out advice before I take the plunge this fall (have to be accepted first though). Do you have any advice on this?
My second question for you is that you say “ENFJs can have anything they want, and if they don’t have it it’s because they don’t really want it.” I understand this to a certain extent. I’m curious as to what you mean exactly because there have been, is currently actually, guys who I have wanted, but they haven’t wanted me in a romantic relationship. They want to still hang out with me a lot and confide in me, but it actually blows my mind that they want that, but don’t want to be in a relationship with me.
So, I’m confused on how you say “ENFJ’s can get anything they want.” AND the worst part is because I know they enjoy my company I hang out with them whenever they want to because I don’t want them to feel alone or like they don’t have anyone to confide in. It’s actually kind of nuts. I’m also stubborn and can’t accept that it’s “just platonic.” This is actually the most challenging part of my life right now, as for everything else I want, I do get. You are right about that.
I’m 27 now though and want kids and to settle down. I’m tired of getting sucked into dating guys that I date because I feel they need me more than I need them, but I stay with them because it makes them feel good. It’s insane when I say it out loud. I want to take the time to date a guy who I want to marry.
Thank you! I thoroughly appreciate any advice you have!
I just finished the INFJ course, and I wish I could thank you, but I won’t. That class made me see my plan for myself is totally fucked up.
I am 27, and working as an advisor to the government. Going to work everyday is exhausting to me: having to come up with all the things people ask me to do, the meetings, everything related to working in an office is just too much, plus the fact that I need to wake up super early to be able to save some time for myself before heading to the office, and also have at least two hours of alone time (I usually go to yoga) before getting back home to my boyfriend. It’s just too crazy.
My exit plan before following the course was to go into something related to health and wellness. I thought it would make more sense than my actual job, and I did my yoga teacher training and I’ve been practicing for more than 10 years now, so it has always been interesting to me. I know teaching yoga is a lot of marketing, I was thinking more about going back to school to study acupuncture and work as an acupuncture/massage therapist/yoga teacher + counting on my boyfriend to be the breadwinner (he’s an INTJ).
Knowing now, from your course, that I am a planner more than a doer, and that my exit plan might not get me what I need to be happy was kind of a relief (not having to go back to school full time for 3 years without a salary was scary), but now I am left without any plan and I feel totally depressed.
I miss my family, spending time with them is the only thing that makes sense to me, but I still have to make some money to live like pretty much everybody else. I have an amazing boyfriend and might have been interested in the kids plan (even though I can’t quite figure it out and still not sure I could do it), but I have been dealing with a disgusting eating disorder for 12 years which keeps me from having my period, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to eat enough to maintain my period, so I can’t and I do not want to count on that.
I have no idea what to look forward to anymore. I feel stuck in my beige cubicle and I want to die. Help.
I’m 25 years old and I’m angry with my mother.
She did well raising us. She came from a poor family and used her skills to create her own business. She didn’t even graduate college. Over the years, she earned money to buy us a house and several necessities. She paid for our education, she gave us allowances. She just made sure we were okay financially.
And we are okay. Until now. Or maybe it’s been a long time but I’ve just realized it now. I recently resigned from my job and while I have my savings, I don’t have to rely on them too much because I don’t really spend a lot and most of the things I need she buys (we still live in the same house). I’m grateful in that aspect.
But I’m just frustrated with my anger at her. She was never loving, never emotionally attentive. She never said “I love you”, hugged us, kissed us, not even a moment where she actively showed she appreciates us. Even though we’ve grown as respectable, responsible adults. Despite the difficulties we experienced and how we’ve overcome our struggles. She never told us she’s proud of what we’ve become.
And she gets angry when we do things wrong. Absolutely humiliates us. Undermines us for every wrong thing, even though she could simply tell us to do it right and not berate us.
I’ve confronted her about it on several occasions. Told her she’s too cruel. She should be kinder; aren’t we her kids? She would always throw the same argument: but I gave you food, money, all the things you enjoy! Which is true.
I just want to know if what I feel is valid. And if I should just move out or something. Maybe space will make her more loving? I resigned because of work stress (and maybe I’m having a quarter-life crisis? I’m just lost right now. Figuring things out. But generally okay, like I just need to rest for a while) and I don’t feel like having a job just yet, but maybe I need to find a job soon so I could interact with her less.
How do you think looking for a job or career is similar to or different from looking for a lover or life partner?
I’m interested in improving the way I approach both of these tasks and often sense that there is an overlap. But I realize that my sense that they are similar might be a reason why I’m not as successful with either as I could be.