I wasn't surprised. Over the past seven years I have met with dozens of women and men who seek out psychotherapy after a workplace crisis.
Work is their life.
And when it ends, they are devastated. They feel as though they are aliens or exiles from a society that increasingly values commitment to and identification with work over all else. As divorce, geographic mobility, social fragmentation, and the decline of neighborhood, community, and civic participation grow, more and more of us are turning to the workplace to satisfy needs formerly filled by family, friends, and neighbors. This trend is hard to resist. In the absence of countervailing institutions that sustain us or provide a vision of how life should be led and for what purpose, corporations offer a sense of belonging and personal identity.