A wise and broadly applicable quote about adjustment and transitions
I listen to a terrific not -for-profit radio station, WFUV (90.7 FM), the radio station of Fordham University. This is the old fashioned kind of free form, multi-genre, listener and disc jockey driven, “album oriented” station. You can hear everything from Nina Simone to St. Vincent, and Prince to Phosphorescent. All this great curated music without advertisements!!!!
One of the lovely things they do on WFUV is focus their public service announcements on a different cause each month. Last month they featured Veteran service organizations. One veteran spoke about his definition of “adjustment” after deployment. He’d been deployed three times, and said that it took him 4 years to transition to civilian life. Why?
He said, no veteran is properly adjusted until he finds a new platoon. Meaning until he finds the interdependent human connections, the level of responsibility, the degree of importance, the level of contribution that he once had in his platoon. Everything will feel off, dilute, disorienting, meaningless, and quite possibly depressing until those conditions are met.
Admittedly, transitioning from military to civilian life is a more demanding adjustment than many of us will ever make. But when I reflect on clinical work (and my own life) in the fall season of each year I think the veteran’s ideas are so broadly applicable. Back to school, back to serious work stress, back to winter, back to pressure, back home from vacation, back to the job search. From the toddler and parents acclimating to nursery school, to the freshman in college, with a new city, state, school, roommate, schedule, and social milieu to adapt to. All told, a lot of hang wringing accompanies these transitions.
One thing I’ve noticed while living through such changes myself and watching them from the clinical “front row” is—these transitions almost always WORK. Given time. Given effort. Given patience. But the veteran gives us a succinct description of what we’re waiting for, what we need to be patient with. We all need to find new supportive structures that are roughly congruent, adequate, or even superior to the old structures. Now what is a supportive structure? Support structures are the things we are involved in. Our family, friends, organizations. Our jobs, hobbies, and charitable activities. Our fitness, continuing education, and spiritual life.
The people most important to us (parents, partners, friends) are examples of a support structure. Sometimes I ask my twenty-something, occupationally confused patients about what their parents want them to “be” when they grow up. A very common response is “they’re great, they support anything I’m interested in. They just want me to be happy”. Sometimes this means no judgement, no real world advice, no shooting holes in the young adult's ideas of what they want to be, no criticism. That’s kind of lovely, but it’s not actually supportive. The most helpful support entails all sorts of thoughts, judgements, knowledge, experience, conflict, and even ignorance.
Ignorance. How can that be helpful? Well, if it’s genuine on the part of the source it may force us to put forth a strong, persuasive case (always a useful exercise). It may force us to do research, to network in order to find more educated advisers (essential). Conflict? Well, it's not fun but it is inevitable if you lead a peopled and connected life. It won't kill you to confront conflict and it will slowly kill you to constantly avoid it. Judgement? Now that's such a dirty word these days. But we all make judgements, and there is a value to our judgements and those of others. Even if we stridently disagree we ought to hear others out. Basically, all these things--ignorance, conflict, and judgement--are a pretty unpopular trio these days. But if we aren't encountering them in bearable (and occasionally unbearable) doses, we aren't engaged. We aren't living. Our life may have less friction, but it will be sapped of vitality.
My point is that support structures, our involvements, are not always entirely “feel good” experiences. Support is not tantamount to encouragement and good times. Even if our involvements feel challenging, they are important as we figuring out who we want to be. Knowing where we fit, what we are organizing our life around, and what we care about promotes comfort. We've transitioned well when we feel comfortable again.
Like the veteran, all individuals navigating a transition need these involvements. We need responsibilities. We need to be part of a mission which accomplishes something and makes a contribution. These aren’t entirely positive involvements. Each will undoubtedly contain elements of stress, disagreement, fatigue, social anxiety, and avoidance. Though not unabashedly positive, these things are essential for feeling integrated and utilized—for adjusting.
