Cognitive Distortions and Mood. OR: I Have A Job? Meh.

I have a job now.

After a year and a half of unemployment.  After nearly a year of bad, serious crazy.  After learning that my partner is so angry about my crappy work history, my lack of contribution to the household finances, that he can't remember why he loves me.

A job.

It fell into my lap out of the sky.  An acquaintance of ours has decided that he needs his business to have a better web presence.  He's of the pre-internet generation, and he's aware that things like blogging and FaceBook and search engines are important; he's just damned if he knows why or how.  My partner mentioned to him that I had experience in these areas, thinking that this fellow would call me to ask for advice.  Instead, he offered me a job.

The gig is part time, I get to use my brain, I get to work from home, AND I get to create my own schedule.  If I need to sit in front of my sun lamp, I can do that.  If I need to take a meditation break, I can do that.  If I need to listen to Bach, I can do that.  It's not just a job, it's my ideal job.

So why can't I get psyched up about it?

Each job I've had has blown up in my face, in ever more novel and absurd ways.  I've lost jobs because my learning disabilities interfered with my ability to perform my work.  I've lost jobs for merely disclosing that I have learning disabilities.  One job ended when the owner of the company decided that her high blood pressure wasn't "a medical condition", it meant that she was "transforming", and therefore was no longer interested in the business.  At another job, the trustees of the institution I worked for played shell games with the payroll money, and they got my last four months of work for free.

And my last job?  It lasted two weeks -- just long enough for pending legal proceedings to prevent me from saying more.


I feel like I should be happy and enthusiastic about my job offer, and instead I feel dazed, uneasy and kind of ... meh.  Every time I start to look forward to my work, my brain says, "yes, but ...".  I know this is all  about negative cognitive distortions.  My mind is trying to cast my previous experiences in stone.  Because you have been exploited, it whispers, you always will be.  Don't get your hopes up.   It's too good to be true.  Prepare to be disappointed.

I have good reason to believe that my new work situation will be completely different than all of my previous ones.  I know the company; I know the owner.  I know he's a truly decent person.  When my partner and I have done bits of work for him in the past, and he's shown himself to be completely ethical and above-board, doing the right thing in situations where most of my employers have skirted around labor laws to save money.  This is going to be good work, with clear expectations, healthy communication, and fair compensation.

The upshot of all this is that I know that I won't be exploited, and I have no idea how to handle that.


Cognitive behavioral therapy teaches us how to identify the negative thoughts that pull us under, and to differentiate them from facts.  I know that the ruminative refrain of "it's too good to be true" is not a fact.  I know that my past experiences are not accurate predictions of the future.  But damn, when all you know is getting your legs kicked out from under you, how can you learn to stand?