Why do I feel like I’m stuck in a ‘waiting room’, hoping for my life to get started?
We set ourselves up in this mental waiting room to regather the necessary strength to move on, says Christina Rasmussen. The trouble is when we neglect to leave, and that survival mindset takes over and becomes the norm. Illustration: Rita Liu/The Guardian
Who would say they’re thriving right now?
Thanks to the US and the UK’s high cost of living, the lack of affordable housing, uninspiring or extreme politics, the horrors of war and forecast climate catastrophe, hope and joy can feel elusive.
Against such a grim backdrop, it can be difficult to feel positive about our lives, or even actively engaged in them. In my own circles, I’m struck by how many people – myself included – have a fantasy plan B: a daydream about a change in career or locale that is less a goal for the future than a rejection of the present.
Is this our lot? Or is it possible to nudge the needle from surviving to thriving?
***
Christina Rasmussen has also noticed the collective struggle and accompanying desire for escape. “It’s an epidemic,” she says after we connect on Zoom.
In her new book Invisible Loss, Rasmussen argues that we don’t have to have suffered an earth-shattering loss, like she did, to feel stricken by grief and malaise.
A counsellor and author, Rasmussen began writing about grief after losing her husband of ten years to colon cancer. He was 35 when he died in 2006; they had two young daughters.
After rebuilding her life, she developed a “life reentry model” based on neuroplasticity to help people recover from bereavement. It formed the basis for her 2013 book Second Firsts and grief-counselling classes run through her Life Reentry Institute.
Rasmussen discovered that behind a seismic loss of a loved one was often another that was smaller and less obvious, but still consequential in their personal development. These were what Rasmussen terms “invisible losses” of self: a moment or interaction that shaped them, negatively affecting their outlook and sense of their own ability.
“They were not big things: ‘The way my father looked at me at the dinner table’; ‘the way my teacher approached me when I didn’t have my homework’.”
People struggled to explain the profound effects of these seemingly minor interactions, says Rasmussen. Yet she came to believe that those moments – often of feeling rejected or publicly shamed – were pivotal, holding individuals back from fully flourishing.
She found that people denied the impact of these memories, even to themselves, says Rasmussen. “People always say to me: ‘But shouldn’t we be grateful for the things we do have?’”
But over time, the effort of suppressing this formative hurt begins to manifest – as people-pleasing, intimacy issues, compulsive catastrophising about the future, or other barriers to fulfillment. Eventually it becomes a “heavy but subtle” burden akin to grief or depression: a sense of being unable to thrive.
It reflects our “having lost faith in ourselves and our abilities”, Rasmussen writes, and leads to a diminished existence – one in which we feel hopeless, lost or stuck, incapable of feeling fully present in our lives or drawing meaningful pleasure from them.
She calls this state the “waiting room”: a way of thinking and being in the world that is defined by survival. The term reflects the phrasing often used by her clients. “People kept saying ‘I feel like I’m stuck in waiting mode, like I’m just surviving,” she says.
Many people retreat there in response to trauma or bereavement, as Rasmussen did after the death of her husband. But less socially legible losses can also be devastating, she says, if the roots of the hurt go deeper. For example, a rupture in a friendship or end of a short-term relationship might hit someone unexpectedly hard.
Either way, Rasmussen says, we set ourselves up in this mental waiting room after losing our sense of self or purpose, to regather the necessary strength and clarity to move on. The trouble is when we neglect to leave, and that survival mindset takes over and becomes the norm.
“It’s very hard to let go of, because we think it’s here to make our lives better – and it is, for the short term,” says Rasmussen. “But we are supposed to recover.”
***
Thriving might sound ambitious, even callous, when so many people are aiming for survival. But Rasmussen insists: we can dare to feel better, even good, without denying life’s difficulties or compassion to others who are suffering. It may even be crucial that we do.
Rasmussen’s theory of “invisible losses” is akin to sociologist Corey Keyes’ concept of “languishing”, popularised early in the pandemic. You might not meet the clinical diagnostic criteria for depression, but if you are languishing – defined by Keyes as “not feeling good about and not functioning well in life” – you might go on to develop it.
“Millions of people are in survival mode, thinking that’s the best they can do,” Rasmussen says. “Burnout, depression, anxiety: I believe with all my heart that it comes from dismissing suffering, not knowing ourselves and not behaving from that authentic place.”
Of course, self-knowledge is not a priority when you are struggling with the basics of existence, or loss has turned your world upside-down. But Rasmussen maintains that even people who are grappling with material constraints or hardship can benefit from this mindset work – not least because it’s something within their control.
Most of her clients have weathered enormous tragedy, she points out, “yet they spend their duration of our classes actually on their own inner life … We can actually try to change the routine, the code, the thoughts that are being repeated – of fear and doubt and questioning ourselves.”
Rasmussen underwent this transformation herself in the years after her husband’s death. In the immediate aftermath, her focus was finding stability for her young family.
She retrained, and worked in human resources for years, hating “every minute”. “I abandoned every aspect of myself, even though, looking back, I didn’t really have to,” Rasmussen says.
A change in perspective can reveal other routes forward where there were previously brick walls. At the very least, those constraints might start to seem less oppressive.
To identify your own invisible losses, Rasmussen suggests exploring times you felt overlooked, neglected, rejected or ashamed, no matter how minor. One way to do this is journaling in response to prompts like “Even though I had great parents, I experienced … ” or “Even though I grew up in an affluent society, I felt … ”
By giving yourself permission to re-examine those historic hurts, no matter how seemingly insignificant, you can start to make peace with and integrate them. You could also open up about these “hidden parts” of yourself with a trusted friend; chances are, they will have something similar to share.
In time, patterns or traps in your thinking will start to present themselves. “You can actually see the thing that’s keeping you stuck … the one thing that you’re so afraid of,” she says.
It’s only when the “survivor-self” feels safe to stand down that the “thriver” is able to emerge. But, Rasmussen warns, the beneficial changes might not be what we expect.
Often, in her sessions, people fantasise about escaping “to a tropical island with a couple of cocktails” – but Rasmussen does not advocate for upending your life, even if you have the resources. As much as we might believe that a change of career, scenery or government will make us happy, the first and most important shift is internal, she says.
Rasmussen suggests taking small steps to “plug in” to your life as it is now, and test how it could be better. Instead of dreaming about becoming a dog walker, I could begin my day by going for a walk. My friend, who fantasises about starting up a café, could have her friends over for dinner. Many people could improve their life by simply taking a lunch break, Rasmussen laughs: “That’s actually a moment outside the waiting room.”
Such changes may sound hopelessly small-scale, but she is adamant that it is possible to transform your day-to-day experience – and even to flourish after unfathomable pain – via such small tweaks as these. “I have seen people change so much internally, just by steps, that they no longer feel so afraid,” Rasmussen says. They didn’t change the facts of life or their material circumstances; they were just able to relate to it all differently, from a stronger sense of self.
Rasmussen can point to her own example. She shelved her childhood dream of becoming an artist when her husband died, believing it incompatible with achieving security for her family. But “they actually benefit from seeing you happy,” she says.
After leaving her corporate job, Rasmussen took up painting as a hobby. That was her first step back to herself, she says, and the effects continue to reverberate through her life. “When I’m sitting there painting, I say to myself: ‘This is it, this is success – doing the painting.’ I have not put anything out to sell, and I don’t want to. I’m experiencing the present moment, being what it needs to be.”
When she first felt that peaceful change in her “internal world”, Rasmussen tells me, her immediate response was fear – that it might lead her astray or vanish and set her back. Lately, however, she’s allowed herself a hopeful, daring thought: “Maybe I get to choose to keep it.”