Fear and Career

There will always be the nature versus nurture debate, despite how outdated it has become. Nature arguments usually stem from biology, Charles Darwin’s original arguments. Are we born with innate factors, that predict our ability to survive in life? The nurture debate focuses on the environment and how this alters our perceptions and experiences. I recently had to write an essay ‘To what extent is children’s language development determined by innate factors?’ for university. A study that stood out to me was concerning whether a mother taking antidepressants during pregnancy affected the infant’s ability to learn language. Three infant groups were compared being those whose mothers were depressed during pregnancy, those whose mothers were depressed and treated with an antidepressant during pregnancy, and the control group of no depression. In all circumstances, there were variations between all groups on the ability of the infant to respond to vowels and consonants at 36 weeks, and 6 months and 10 months. Nature and our biological abilities such as language development will (hopefully) always be there but so too will the influence of the environment.

The continued research in epigenetics shows us that we are active participants in our development. DNA is what passes down to us from our parents, it contains all that essential information for us to grow and live. Chromosomal DNA, responsible for our physical traits, makes up about 2% of our DNA. Those biology classes in school of ‘if my father has brown eyes and my mother have blue eyes, what colour eyes will I have’, coming back to anyone? That other 98%, is non-coding DNA. As per Danny Vendramini in ‘Noncoding DNA and the Teem Theory of Inheritance, Emotions and Innate Behaviour,’ this is responsible for much of the emotional, behavioural and personality traits we inherit. So above, when mentioning the infant during pregnancy with a mother suffering from depression, there may be actual chemical changes occurring which are inherited by the child.

This is absolutely no way an attack or blame at mother’s who suffer from depression. Depression cannot be helped as it is not an illness that is ‘self-caused’ as some perceptions might believe. It is just so that we are aware of what we might inherit.

This blog post focuses on Fear and Career. Love a little rhyme. Ann Wilkcock (1993) looked at ‘A Theory of The Human Need For Occupation’. The conclusion, there is both the biological argument for nature, as it is a means for survival, as well as affected by social and cultural norms so the nurture argument. We need the income to meet certain survival needs, and also there is the pressure of the perception of society if you do not work. So both lend equal basis as to the need for work.

When I was 6th year (final year of school before university), I had no clue what I wanted to do. I knew I was lucky, in that certain subjects have always come easy to me. Our exams were also mostly based on a memory game versus critical evaluation and individuality, and I was lucky enough to have a strong memory. The one subject that did have a much more logical basis to it, I did not need to count as a subject so, by all means, I was able to ‘work with the system’, but I did not want to. I did not want to go straight to University as I had zero clues as to what I wanted to do. However, my parents were also conditioned by the societal pressure that if you did not attend this meant you were ‘wasting’ yourself, so I put down options. I lasted 3 months and then I dropped out. What followed was a year of shame, until I went back the following year to do a Business degree always choosing the subjects that I knew I could do best in, versus what I wanted to study. This led to me doing accounting in my final year.

My Mum always wanted to be an artist. She has recently begun to draw and paint again which makes me incredibly happy as she is really talented. I used to keep her paintings that I had found hidden, in my room when I was a child. It is interesting even to think even why she kept them hidden away? I think has now come full circle, as to what it was trying to teach me at the time. When she was 15, she asked if she could do Art for the Leaving Certificate and the nuns told my Granny and together they decided that science was much better placed and that it was safer to become a nurse. Safer being the word used in terms of it was more likely to guarantee a steady income and the ability to have a family, which at the time in Ireland was the perception of ‘success’. My Granny was raised by nuns, after her parents tragically died. She chose her career not out of choice, but out of survival mode. I do not know the story of her own mother. But I know I can go back two generations that career was built around fear and self-preservation rather than joy.

I chose accounting in my final year, and I chose a career in accounting/audit. At no point did I enjoy it but I knew it was safe, and I knew the fear of shame when I had chose to drop out initially so it held me back. Every year when I have to pay my accounting fees I wait until the very last minute. They are all expensed. Even this year on the 1st of January I was voice-noting a friend to say I did not want to do it, I was letting the word define me and it felt like every time I paid the fee it became more a part of me.

Akkermans et al. (2020) recently released a paper on how the Covid-19 crisis shows a career shock. A career shock is defined as “a disruptive and extraordinary event that is, at least to some degree, caused by factors outside the focal individual's control and that triggers a deliberate thought process concerning one's career” (Akkermans, Seibert & Mol, 2018, p4). It was noted that while negative career shocks can initially cause turmoil they can incur positive career outcomes such as changing careers or taking the leap at an entrepreneurial idea. I think the statistics on how many covid businesses have been created would be really interesting.

In March 2020 at the beginning of Covid, I was unemployed, I went into fear mode and began helplessly looking for a new job that would fill and numb this scary emotion and experience. I had learned that unemployment and being out of the safe mode of secure employment was anxiety and shame. That anxiety and shame that can be passed down through noncoding DNA can alter your chemicals so that when placed in the same experiences it enacts the same reaction that your parent and ancestors felt before you. Luckily Covid had other plans and the unemployment continued. It gave me the time and space to separate what was mine and what was inherited. To think about how I could change what career meant to me to create one that was fulfilling.

Epigenetics is how behaviours and the environment can affect the way your genes code. Fear and stressors can be part of that. I do not know if that is what happened here, or perhaps it was just environmental perceptions of shame. But the point comes to the fact that we have the power to change what occurs across generations. Epigenetic changes are reversible, they never change the sequence they are just tags that may latch on. We hold the power always to change the soft wiring. The same with neuroplasticity. We can create new images, experiences and encode these in allowing for more enriching experiences and help reverse stress patterns. It also highlights the need to look at generational trauma. Is there a pattern as to how your parents/grandparents responded to stress and anxiety? Fully understanding your body allows for that knowledge is power ability to take control of your own life and how you live it. We if we know why we think that way, we can find the trigger and choose how we next wish to show up. Feel, Think, Choose.

Glennon Doyle’s affirmation ‘We can do hard things’ is one I often come back to. I try to do the hard things, that the generations before me did not have the opportunities to do due to their own life’s pressures and fears. I will try to use that to always live in my own integrity. I still work in a job that I do not particularly like. But it is completely reframed in my mind. It does not define me; I use it to allow myself to move towards my goals and intentions. Fear and Career no longer go together, I can do hard things.

References

Akkermans, J., Richardson, J., & Kraimer, M. L. (2020). The Covid-19 crisis as a career shock: Implications for careers and vocational behavior. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 119, 103434. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2020.103434

Doyle, Glennon. Untamed.

Weikum, W. M., Oberlander, T. F., Hensch, T. K., & Werker, J. F. (2012). Prenatal exposure to antidepressants and depressed maternal mood alter trajectory of infant speech perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(Supplement_2), 17221–17227. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1121263109