What do I do?

Man, have I ever had a job that I’ve thrived at? This last one came the closest. I loved my clients to death and appreciated the relative amount of autonomy that I had. But apparently, that wasn’t enough to sustain me.

I know other 20 and 30-somethings that just keep going back to school because that’s what they’re good at. I don’t really want to go back to school. I was good at it. But I don’t love it like some people do. But shit, this job thing is HARD!

I’m reading “The Highly Sensitive Person” by Elaine Aron. It talks about how 15-20% of the population are “Highly Sensitive People” which means our nervous systems are more sensitive to subtleties. Our sight, hearing, and sense of smell are not necessarily keener, although they may be (mine are), but our brain processes information and reflects on it more deeply. And unfortunately it also means that we tend to be more easily overstimulated, stressed out, overwhelmed. The trait is not something new--it has been mislabeled as shyness, introversion (30% of HSPs are extroverts like me though), inhibitedness, and fearfulness.

This has been extremely helpful for me during this time to better understand myself, allow myself more empathy and acceptance, and learn how to live in this world as an HSP. I’ve had the book awhile now and have read parts of it. But for some reason, I have not managed to fully accept myself as being this way, and I believe that this could be one of the main reasons I am sick right now. Dr. Aron talks about how difficult it is for HSPs to find a job that fits them. We tend to enter into the helping professions and then feel very overwhelmed. Hmmm… sounds familiar.

I’m not ready to give up social work yet. I can imagine myself having a private practice someday, seeing one client at a time and being in charge of my own schedule. But until I’m old and wise and people want to come to me, what do I do???



http://www.hsperson.com/