Why you can’t let your career be your identity
I’m three years younger than White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who has the job I thought as a 25-year-old I would always dream of having. But with all due respect to Ms. Psaki, you couldn’t pay me enough money now, at 39, to take a job like that (not that they’re asking) — though it took a long while for me to realize that I’m not a failure by admitting it. I don’t have to fulfill the dreams of 25-year-old Kate, because she didn’t know that focusing on a fancier title, a bigger paycheck or more people to supervise wouldn’t fix what she was convinced was wrong with her.
Poor kid.
Overachievement had been my anchor and my crutch, even though I didn’t come from an overly driven or workaholic family. But, I was raised by a single dad who worked two jobs in order to provide for me and put himself through college and graduate school. He was fairly serious when it came to my grades, but only because wanted me to be able to take care of myself and not struggle to make ends meet the way that he did.
My mom, on the other hand, was in and out of my life. Her presence in my childhood was fleeting — and her absence was often wielded as a weapon against me if I “disappointed” her. Every time she left, I would experience a renewed and deep sense of loss, often resulting in what I now know were full-blown panic attacks. I came to believe that if I could just stop disappointing her and be that perfect supportive daughter, she might stop leaving.
She didn’t.
While I couldn’t achieve any sense of control at home, I found safety in traditional successes in school (and later at work). Sure, I couldn’t make my mom stick around, but I could get straight As.
Unsurprisingly, I would later dedicate my career to worthy causes — first child welfare, then reproductive rights and later mental health — because I needed my work to matter. Because work became the only thing that mattered to me. I tethered my worthiness as a person to my success as a professional, even though, as much as it saved me from the feeling of worthlessness, it also reinforced it.
I seamlessly entered into a toxic, symbiotic relationship with my employers — one in which they hired people like me because they needed young, ambitious, workaholics desperate to prove their commitment to “the cause” for below market pay and long hours. I was all too eager to help, in exchange for a sense of righteousness and personal validation from people, especially women, who were older and more experienced than me.
My commitment to those causes was often measured in how many hours I worked, emails I responded to, meetings I attended. This wasn’t just my own self-assessment, but it was also reflected in the attitudes of my bosses and colleagues. If a coworker left the office before 6 p.m., judgment and resentment would set in. But if one was still at her desk when I wanted to go home? I felt inadequate and jealous.
Early in my career, an older colleague repeated this quote: “Nobody on their deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.” (This quote is often attributed to the late Sen. Paul Tsongas, D-Mass., but it turns out that his friend, the lawyer Arnold Zack, actually said this to Tsongas when he was contemplating retirement after being diagnosed with cancer.) I legitimately didn’t think the adage applied to me, because I was working to help people; there’s always more you could do. (Naturally, it didn’t occur to me until recently that Tsongas only had this epiphany when confronted with his own mortality.)
Of course, not all my former bosses and employers intended to create a “hustle culture” in our workplaces, but they sure perpetuated it. It’s a culture that values the performance of doing work as much as the results of that work.
And for the longest time, I was a star performer. One who happened to also have a lot of panic attacks.
And I wasn’t alone. Mental and emotional breakdowns were such a common occurrence among the staff at one nonprofit that we had an unofficial “crying room,” which was actually an appropriated lactation room for nursing parents, simply because it was one of the few private spaces in the office. Once after a particularly rough day, I had a panic attack and couldn’t make it to the crying room, so my work bestie silently and supportively stood in front of me, watching me weep, while using her body to block our CEO’s direct line of vision into my office.
I left that job for an even more intense and demanding role elsewhere, where I became an expert on places to discreetly have my increasingly more frequent panic attacks. The bench in the park across the street from the office was flanked by bushes, so that served nicely if I had enough time to leave the building. The hidden area behind the main staircase could work, but it was marble, so it could create a ghastly echo if my sobs got too loud. The bathroom on the second floor only had two stalls, but it usually worked alright in a pinch.
Despite all that scouting, it still wasn’t uncommon to find myself needing a space to have a panic attack when there were none to be found. I once had an intense one at my desk, in our entirely open office setting, ironically as I edited tweets about the importance of caring for one’s mental health and wellness. Having a public panic attack while quite literally advocating for mental health would have been hilarious if I hadn’t felt like my heart was being crushed inside my chest.
Soon after that incident, I was standing on a busy street corner in Manhattan when, distracted by the two buzzing phones in my hand, I nearly stepped off the curb and into the path of a speeding taxi. For a fleeting moment, I imagined myself having accidentally stepped in front of it with a sense of relief.
I knew immediately that I didn’t want to die, not exactly. What I wanted was a break — or, rather, an excuse to rest that would be acceptable. I wanted a respite without having to admit that I couldn’t cut it in a fast-paced, high-stress environment. I genuinely thought it would be better to end up in an ICU than admit I needed a change.
It was a wake-up call, but not the one that it should have been. Rather than immediately realizing that being reachable 24/7 and working 65+ hours a week isn’t an acceptable lifestyle for anyone, I saw my inability to do so and be happy as a failure. My whole identity was wrapped up in my ability to “do the work,” whatever the personal cost. If I couldn’t “do the work” without wanting to get hit by a car so that I could get away from the work, who the fuck was I?
I was 37 years old and I had no idea.
But what I did know was I had to leave that job, even if it meant feeling like a failure for a while. It was only after a lot of therapy sessions, medication and a job that didn’t require or expect me to push myself to the very limits, that I finally started to uncover all of who I am. I am a communications strategist — a damn good one too. But I’m also a friend, a writer, a daughter, an embroidery artist, a girlfriend, an activist, a cat person and a sister.
I’m nearly 40 now. I still have an anxiety disorder and panic attacks; I can’t change that. But I finally know better than to accept work that demands I break myself in order to feel worthy.
Tricia Hersey, who founded The Nap Ministry — an organization dedicated to the liberating power of naps and the belief that rest is resistance — has said of people like me: “Your obsession with your productivity as a function of your worth is preventing you from tending to your soul.”
Unlearning this obsession is the work now. I’m the work now. I’m one of the people I need to help. I always have been.
