Stress can’t begin to describe how it feels to cope with being unemployed.

In today’s economy, with soaring unemployment rates, cut-backs, massive lay-offs and a consumerist culture shouts “buy, buy, buy,” it’s devastating to be jobless.

Furthermore, our cultural values are out of sync – how we value ourselves and our mental and emotional health versus the value of work, money and “stuff.”

(Ironically, volunteer work builds self-esteem more than a huge salary and it’s a great stress-reducing strategy while job-hunting.)

All this hit the headlines last week…

Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen belittled Mitt Romney’s wife Ann and her full-time career as a housewife and stay-at-home- mom.

“Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life,” Rosen said on CNN.”She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing, in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why do we worry about their future.”

That comment rang alarms with everyone across the political spectrum. Especially women.

Maybe there’s hope for me…

In today’s New York Times, the lead article in the Sunday Review is titled Where Have All the Neurotics Gone? by health reporter Benedict Carey.

Where are neurotics today?

It seems they’ve become a thing of the past. An old, dying breed. According to Carey,

“For a generation of postwar middle-class Americans, being neurotic meant something more than being merely anxious, and something other than exhibiting the hysteria or other disabling moods problems for which Freud used the term. It meant being interesting (if sometimes exasperating) at a time when psychoanalysis reigned in intellectual circles and Woody Allen reigned in movie houses.

“That it means little now, to most Americans, is evidence of how strongly language drives the perception of mental struggle, both its sources and its remedies. In recent years psychiatrists have developed a more specialized medical vocabulary to describe anxiety, the core component of neurosis, and as a result the public has gained a greater appreciation of its many dimensions.

“But in the process we’ve lost entirely the romance of neurosis, as well as it’s physical embodiment – a restless, grumbling, needy presence that once functioned in the collective mind as an early warning system, an inner voice that hedged against excessive optimism.”

There’s a mysterious, somewhat strange-sounding convention in psychiatry, I think. I’m not sure. I’ve never imagined it would apply to me, so I’ve never bothered to investigate it.

I’ve steered far away from. It scares me.

Leaving therapy…

Here’s how it was explained to me at the Eating Disorders Outpatient program I just completed. And remember, an eating disorder is a psychiatric illness.

For a minimum of two years, I was told, I could not go back to see my social worker, dietician or any of the practitioners who helped me begin eating normally for the first time in my life.

A follow-up might be possible, but now I have a psychologist to help me.

I suspect psychiatrists work in similar ways. I don’t know…

Once you say good bye. Once you receive your psychiatric “seal of approval.” Once you have your psychotherapeutic “walking papers.” Once you leave, is that it?

Do you venture off into the world on your trembling feet, vulnerable, alone? Independent?  Do you never see your therapist again? Or at least for a minimum of two years? That never seemed to be the case with Dr. Bob. It seemed he would always be there for me.

As anyone acquainted with me and this blog knows, I see a psychiatrist regularly for my mood disorder. We started seeing each other in 1991.

He’s an unusual psychiatrist…

Dr. Bob is not a psychoanalyst like my first psychotherapist back in 1960. She was Jungian and probably one of the only therapists to treat children like me in Toronto.

“A very, very, very difficult child,” I’ve been told time and again all my life. “There was something wrong with you.”

You hear that long enough and often enough and you begin to believe it, Dr. Bob reflected this week.

His orientation to psychotherapy is eclectic. We talk. I sit facing him and he sits behind his desk facing me. There’s a couch in his office, but I doubt anyone uses it. And an intriguing piece of art that says, I need you which I’ve written about here.

No. Don’t worry. I’m not getting into self-flagellation or abuse. Quite the contrary.

Here’s the story…

Back in 1977 when I joined the racy, irreverent tabloid Toronto Sun fresh out of broadsheet-biased journalism school (as all journalism schools were and probably still are) I had to learn to “punch up my copy.”

Make it grabby. Make it smart. Make it snappy. Make it sing. In other words capture the reader with the story and the intoxicating way you tell it.

The same is true when you’re looking to reinvent yourself in today’s cramped and constricted job market.

As far as presenting myself as employable, I have to “punch myself up.”

This afternoon, I met with a terrific young fella named James, an employment consultant, who works at a local agency that helps people navigate the job market and find work.

Or in my case, a new direction…

During the last week in February, I took three, three-hour seminars to get my feet wet in this pursuit. One on “Targeted Resume-writing,” another on “Interview Tips,” and a third on “Writing Cover Letters.”

All very exciting and frightening at the same time, especially for me because I have a seven page CV and no idea where I fit in today’s shrinking job market.

In January, whilst in the thick of my Eating Disorders Outpatient Program, I began knitting.

A scarf. I knit it on circular needles in three colours from a design in Alison Hansel’s Charmed Knits, Projects for Fans of  Harry Potter.

I didn’t follow the pattern very closely. Pattern-following isn’t really my style.

I knit a work of wearable art…

I refined the design. Used three colours instead of two and let my mood dictate when I would change those colours.

Thus, my scarf, which I now wear all the time ~ or as long as it’s still chilly here ~ is a bright piece of wearable art, with no pattern.

I wasn’t there.

I cannot attest to the factual accuracy of what I’m about to share with you.

But according to a very close relative with whom I visited this weekend, I was given “everything” ~ all the love and attention in the world ~ but “there was something wrong with me.”

“From birth,” the relative pronounced with profound authority, “you were a very, very, very difficult child in every possible way.”

That is one truth. But is it the only truth?

Take a gun. Aim it at my heart or head. Then pull the trigger. I have heard this from this relative and others in my family more times than I can remember. It is in “the family record.” It IS the family record.

And I am not buying that particular truth anymore. It’s old. It’s out of date. It’s been disproven. It’s no longer valid or real.

Perhaps I was difficult. So?

In 1948, the year of my birth, perhaps I was difficult ~ compared to other children and other “norms” of the period. Who knows? For sure?

Perhaps there were other expectations of me. Was I a bad child? Did I hurt other people purposely? I don’t know and it’s all history now. Ancient history.

I don’t want to think about when I last wrote to you. I feel and look like a different person. Inside and out.

It is overwhelming for me to explain these differences.

They may not even appear to you, but they are shouting loud and clear to me.

Yes, I hear voices, all the time. Perhaps you do, too.

Or you do not to listen to them…

Today, you’re probably different that you were a few months ago, too. We’re changing all the time, if we’re lucky and open to change. I like change. If we’re buoyant, strong, “resilient” ~ that buzziest of psychological words these days.

When I broke my arm on December 14, I cut off all my hair. There was only so much I wanted to impose on my husband Marty who was doing everything there is to do around this place. Cleaning, cooking, caring for our dogs. Chauffeuring me hither and thither, here, there and everywhere.

Since then, and after another haircut, I am utterly shorn. I not only have “wash and wear hair,” I have “get up and go hair.”

It’s liberating…

The hair is but a superficial difference. Inside, where I have lived these 63 years, or made a semblance of living, the landscape is transformed. My ebullient personality, my default mode, is but a cover, I will confess. It’s a great mask behind which the real me lives. A me, no one really wants to know.

I don’t blame them. I’m getting a little tired of her, too.

We all long for unconditional love, but what about unconditional worth?

Musing on this question will take more than one blog post, so consider this a beginning.

Glenn R. Schiraldi, Ph.D. concisely describes this concept in The Self-Esteem Workbook and when I first encountered it, to be perfectly honest with you, I was stunned.

A new concept…

I’d never considered it before. Perhaps it’s a new concept for you, too.

So I thought I’d share some of Schiraldi’s wisdom, research and insights with you today because just reading about unconditional worth made me feel better about myself.

I’m a perfectionist.

So, naturally, I’m attempting to follow the meal plan designed for me in my Eating Disorders Program right down to every teaspoon, gram, ounce and millilitre.

I am trying to eyeball my portions, but my eyeballs are slow learners.

Plus the stresses of my life make this precarious…

I keep forgetting that I don’t have to be perfect. No one expects perfection.

I miss the support and camaraderie of the other patients in my group plus the expertise and advice from all the psychiatric, psychological, nutritional and social work staff who were always there for us, watching us, keeping us on track and caring about us.

Now, I’m doing everything by myself…

All my meals were supplied for me, with the exception of my breakfast.

By myself, alone, it’s a huge challenge to stick to this meal plan, which involves eating a wide variety of foods (anything, including my forbidden foods) at five specific times and in specific quantities.