Americans don’t show up in labor force statistics when they stop searching for a job. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011. Graph: CNNMoney
Doing work you’re passionate about has been the imperative for years now.
This, despite the contined high unemployment rate, a rate that doesn’t even reflect people who gave up trying to find work years ago. Ironically, they’re called the “invisible unemployed” and there’s about 86 million of them. Like the “invisibly disabled”, both are a large part of our society where the “invisible” part suggests monkeys with hands over their eyes.
That we’re supposed to be finding passion through work might explain why the U.S. birth rate in 2012 declined for the 5th year in a row.
If you’re tired, though, or queasy, or breathing with difficulty, passion may be easier to define than it might be to find. Passion may be found in small measures. It’s simple: sleep, a settled body, breath.
Being invisibly unemployed or invisibly disabled are both shameful ways of being. Many in the mainstream believe there’s nothing wrong that getting off their collective lazy asses wouldn’t fix. That’s a pretty big butt.
Being marginalized for any reason wreaks havoc with the central core of us and not surprisingly with relationship – marital, friend network, family.
For the people marginalized in this way, hunting down passion is a luxury. Suggesting there’s a choice about it is lofty, naive, and exclusionary.
However.
Invisible or not, it’s a mental health responsibility for each of us to somewhere find joy, pleasure, peace, passion or whatever you want to call it. To take charge of being part of humanity; to assert to yourself your right to be. That might or might not be through volunteer or paid employment, marriage or relationship, or the family/friend network.
Kathe Skinner is married to one of the “invisible unemployed”; she herself is (sometimes) “invisbly disabled” by multiple sclerosis. She’s a Marriage & Family Therapist and Relationship Coach on Colorado’s Front Range. More about the two of them at http://www.BeingHeardNow.com.
Categories: Effect of invisible (hidden) disability on relationship
Tags: being heard, chronic illness, disabilty, health and wellness, invis, invisible disabled, invisible unemployed, invisibly disabled, marginalized, marital, mental-health, passsionate, psychotherapy, relationship, relationship coach, society, therapy, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployed, unemployment rate
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