Holden Caulfield Syndrome
Yesterday I came across an app that allowed me to gain some perspective, spread some positivity and, coincidentally, write this blog post for you. It’s about something I thought of on one of the many 7-hour train rides back to Rochester from NYC after interviewing all over Manhattan with no luck and has been ruminating ever since. It’s a thing most of us experience at least once (if not many, many times) in our lives and it leaves us feeling hopeless, unmotivated, and unwilling to ask for help. I want to talk about feeling stuck.
I haven’t always been an optimist. Actually most of my adult life has been spent as a self-proclaimed cynic. For a long time I hated being around other people. Their utter incompetence made it unbearable and social functions exhausted me. I would much rather spend time alone doing what I wanted to do than risk a mental headache brought on by generic conversation and friendship that didn’t go deeper than face value. I guess you could say I had a really bad case of Holden Caulfield syndrome.
On top of that, I have both extreme pride in being a talented writer and terrible (if not irrational) anxiety about failing to be a talented writer. Upon taking my first real-world job in advertising, I realized very quickly that that doesn’t exactly mix with a lot of things that come with doing it for a living:
- Putting myself out there
- Presenting my work to others
- Taking criticism and rejection
- Collaborating with a team
- Voicing opinions and concerns
- Starting over from scratch
- Asking for help when I need it
But what does all this have to do with feeling stuck? Everything.
Remember that app I was talking about earlier? It’s called Unstuck and spoiler alert: it’s about getting out of anxious ruts. It uses an empathetic approach—asking you questions about in-the-moment feelings—to better understand how to help. I tried it yesterday and it was spot on. (Seriously. The Internet is weird like that.) But it brought me back to thinking about what being stuck really means.
It doesn’t always have to be personal. It can be professional too. For me, lately, it’s been both. For instance, I think I should have a full-time job by now and I don’t. I feel afraid of being turned down, tired of searching day and night, and up in the air about where I want to be in this stage of my life. That’s a whole lot of stuck. All of these feelings are a product of my anxiety and stubbornness that comes with it. Instead of finding positive, alternative ways to fix our situations, we tend to dwell on what's wrong. The app called these tunnel visionary blinders and, like many people, I need to learn to take them off.
Blinders can be anything. They appear when you refuse to see things from another perspective. Sometimes even when it's a situation you can't really control. Suppose you're frustrated the train is late. All that energy you spend—being upset, cursing the driver, making a scene—won't solve a thing because you can't magically rearrange the train schedule. You have to accept the train will come or figure out another way to travel. Or maybe it's something you can control and you're just letting your ego win the battle because it's easier to stick to your guns and believe you're always right. That only results in isolating yourself and limiting your chance to grow as a person (see Holden Caulfield syndrome above.)
Of course not all people are cynics. I like to think I'm in recovery. I know I can’t just get rid of my anxiety in a day, but I can work on being less stubborn in the meantime. It’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve really tried opening up and embracing optimism. In lieu of “taking off my blinders”, I make a conscious effort to experience new things every day. Getting out of my own head has opened my eyes to opportunities I never would have seen before. I try to find the positives in any given situation, even ones that take a while to work through or are especially disheartening. But if I ever feel the hopelessness start to creep up again, I remind myself that every failure isn’t really a failure at all. It’s a lesson to be learned, preparing me to become my better self.
Not to get all psychologisty on you, but taking a moment to acknowledge these feelings and deal with them head on really works. It’s helped me throughout my job search and has gotten me better acquainted with my own resiliency. Let me quickly paraphrase every inspirational quotes Pinterest board ever:
“You are only confined by the walls you build yourself.”
Being stuck is something we can’t 100% avoid. Like a traffic delay, it’ll happen occasionally but there is always an alternate route. It might take a bit longer than expected or have you traipse through unfamiliar territory, but eventually you’ll get to where you want to be. Or at least a little closer to knowing where you are.