How Can I Cope With Major Career Changes?

What can you do when you are faced with a major change in your life - especially a total change in your career? Whether you like it or not, you may be forced to find a new profession or business - or even a new marriage. How can you cope with this kind of difficulty, and possibly come up smiling. The answer to this question was given thousands of years ago by several ancient Asian, Greek, and Roman philosophies and has been incorporated in the theory and practice of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), which I originated, as the first major Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) in 1955. Since that time REBT and CBT have helped a large number of people who face a crisis, and are now among the most popular and most research supported therapies in the world. Moreover, you can also use them with REBT self-help materials if you decide to do so. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy tells you that when you upset yourself about changing your career, or about practically anything else, it isn't just the stress caused by the changing that upsets you. No, as the Roman-Greek philosopher, Epictetus, said two thousand years ago, you mainly make yourself anxious and depressed about stressful events in your life by the view you take of them. This theory of human disturbance has been put by REBT into ABC form. When your goal is to do well and to be approved by other people and you are blocked by Adversity (A), such as losing your present career, and you feel the emotional Consequence (C) of anxiety, A contributes to your feeling (C), but does not entirely cause it. You yourself also strongly contribute to your anxiety (C) by your Beliefs (B) about the situation at A. So A plus B equals C. But since you often cannot change A - such as your job loss - you can definitely change B - your Beliefs about this loss and by doing so you can wind up, instead of with anxiety (which is an unhealthy destructive feeling) with the healthy negative emotions of feeling sorry, regretful, or frustrated which will help you cope with the Adversity (A) that you experience. If you use this ABC model of REBT, you can minimize your feelings of panic and depression about a disrupted career, or about anything else as follows. The main Belief (B) that will serve you best when you are confronted with stressful situations is a flexible outlook that minimizes your demands that this situation absolutely, must not be as bad as it is. You prefer to make good life changes and have them work out exceptionally well. But when you ask for a guarantee that you succeed in your future pursuits, and that the people you relate to in these pursuits absolutely must like you and treat you fairly, and that world conditions must be good, you are making almost impossible demands and will then make yourself anxious. If you are forced to change your career or other life plans, you had better therefore have three strong preferences: 1.) "I would very much like to pick a good field to work in and to form highly satisfactory relations with others, but I never have to do so. If I fail at something I try and get rejected by some people I favor, I will learn from my failures and keep trying in other areas and with different relationships. I will measure my performances and attempt to improve them in the future. But I will strongly refuse to negatively evaluate myself, my worth as a human - I am a person who, at worst, does some things badly. I will never rate or evaluate myself as an incompetent or worthless person for sometimes acting less then perfectly." 2.) 'When other people treat me unkindly or unfairly, I will criticize or deplore their behavior but I will accept them as fallible humans who did badly and I will not condemn or damn them as bad people. Just as I choose to give me, myself, unconditional self-acceptance, I shall give them, the sinners, unconditional other-acceptance - yes in spite of some of their reprehensible actions." 3.) "Just as I will give myself unconditional self-acceptance (USA) and also give other people unconditional other-acceptance (UOA), I shall also do my best to give the conditions under which I live unconditional life-acceptance (ULA). As Reinhold Niebuhr said at the beginning of the twentieth century, I will work at having the courage to change unfortunate world conditions that I can change, to have the serenity to accept - but not to like - conditions that I can not change and have the wisdom to know the difference!" If you are in the process of making difficult changes in your work and life and if you will cultivate these major kinds of acceptance, you still will have many difficulties and problems. But you will be much better able to deal with and cope with these problems than you otherwise would do. The difficult issues of coping with life and of avoiding feelings of anxiety and depression, that add considerably to these problems and often make them considerably worse, is once again described in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. REBT, together with its sister Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) combines and integrates many thinking, feeling, and behavioral techniques and directly and actively shows you that whenever you raise your strong desires for success, approval, and control into absolutistic, inflexible musts, shoulds and oughts, you frequently make yourself angry at yourself, your family, and your coworkers. Fortunately, you are a constructivist who can think about and think about your thinking about your disturbed feelings and thereby change them to healthy feelings of sorrow, regret, and frustration. Even though in some ways you may sabotage yourself with your irrational beliefs and dysfunctional behavior, you practically always can choose to change and to deal more adequately and creatively with your life problems. At least, if you think you can do so and if you use several Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy methods. REBT and its sister CBT have produced scores of research studies showing that they are effective. They have also devised many self-help books and other materials that you and other troubled people can use. These include David Burns', Feeling Good and my own A Guide to Rational Living, How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable, and Feeling Better, Getting Better, Staying Better. If you feel stressed by problems of change or by any other crises in your life, try some of these helpful materials! Yes, important changes in your work and your life produce stresses and uncertainties. To have no feelings about these problems would make you ignore them and do nothing to improve them. To be panicked and depressed about important changes will only help you to deal with them badly. The solution that REBT gives is to confront unfortunate changes with healthy feelings of sorrow and disappointment but not destructive feelings of panic and depression. You can arrange this healthy outcome by strongly wishing and preferring that changes turn out well but not demanding and insisting that they absolutely must work out beautifully. Wishing for great changes will motivate you to work at bringing them about. Demanding that they be good when of course there is always a chance that they will not be, will make you so anxious that you will sabotage your chances of successful change. Choose! Once you stubbornly refuse to upset yourself about career changes or other real difficulties that may come your way, you can then look at all sides, instead of merely the grim sides of what is happening. You can creatively make some lemonade out of your 'bitter lemon' by seeing your change as an opportunity to learn from, as a real adventure, and as an event that has advantages that can distinctly be relished instead of only be horribly feared. Distinct benefits can come from 'frightening' changes - if you first use the principles and practices of REBT to rid yourself of the 'horrors' that you mainly create in your own head and heart!
Albert Ellis, Albert Ellis Institute, New York City