Is Returning to Work an Essential Component of Wellness?

I have haven't slept well the since my last therapy appointment. Something in my session triggered some kind of potentially life changing thinking. I cannot sleep because I keep waking up thinking about how to change, accept and move on. When I wake it seems to take forever to fall back asleep. My mind has been racing with thoughts of how to make the leap, the decision, to change; how to create the will and motivation to change; and finally how to create change for myself despite my lingering and often paralyzing symptoms.

My appointment and meeting with a friend afterwards instilled a sense in me that I have been approaching my mental health "healing" and expectations of what is "well" from the wrong angle. I have been trying to get the old me back, but I suddenly recognize the old me, in many ways, is gone. My job now is not to recreate who I was, but to create a new me. Who I was led to my depression and anxiety. Who I was led to increasingly worsening Major Depressive Episodes)MDE's. Who I was is not a desirable goal to have. I need to be different than who I was in order to heal.

My entire life I expected that I would get meaning and purpose from my job, from working. I never wanted children, so that was not the way I sought meaning or purpose. It has always been through my job, or my schooling. School was extremely meaningful for me. Although I had two MDE's; one first year university and the other a few years later during second year university; both times the episodes were not triggered by lack 0f purpose/drive/interest/or meaning about school. Both were triggered by indecisiveness and fear of failing at something that mattered so much to me; although these may have been symptoms of an already "creeping in" of depression.

Once I came out of my depression in 2nd year I was happy for the next three years of school. I loved school. I loved the challenge. I had a sense of enjoying the moment, being IN the moment, feelings had not had for a long time. While going to school I worked part-time, but for the first time since I began work with babysitting when I was 12 years old, work became secondary to something more important to me. It was a means to and end, a means to do what I really liked to do; which was learn.

Until yesterday I did not realize what I have been doing for the last 7 years of depressive hell, and for the 11 years of my previous career. I have/had been trying to hang onto the job I had because, I thought it was the only way to create meaning and purpose in my life.

It never crossed my mind (even when I was doing the parts of the job that I hated) that my work was not the path to creating meaning and purpose. I just thought maybe I was not on the right work path. I even turned my favourite hobby (gardening) into work, because that is how I understood meaning could be found: through work.

As I left Dr. X's office I thought..."what if my volunteering really is work like he says?" Or what if even a more dramatic shift is taking place and work (volunteer or otherwise) is not my path to happiness?"

The former thought is a bit easier to accept; although I am loathe to concede Dr. X. may have been right all along. Only because I told him his insistence that "I was working" (i.e. volunteering) was really starting to annoy me. However, maybe I am working. Maybe it is important work. Maybe I am helping more people than I am taking from people? Maybe my volunteering balances out the disturbing thought that I am accepting disability money when so many others struggle more than me and deserve the help more than me.

The latter thought, "That maybe work is not my path to happiness" comes with all kinds of emotional baggage. Not the least of which is my fear of avoiding responsibilities, or feeling like I owe it to society to work, to not receive money for nothing; that awful feeling that I am a drag on my countrymen and women for being on disability, that I am shirking my duties and responsibilities; that I am doing something immoral or unethical in deciding work is not healthy for me. These thoughts are hard to manage.

Yesterday I just tried to take a Utilitarian approach to the idea of not working. I tried to imagine how my not working might be helpful, not only to myself, but to the greater good of society.

Perhaps, if I did not work, did not think of how to get working, did not try to find ways to work I would become well. Perhaps all that energy I spend negating and berating and hating myself for not working would go into constructive enterprises, painting, drawing etc.

Maybe, if I became well, Dr. X could help another person. Maybe, if I stopped worrying about work and focused on the things that bring meaning and purpose to my life: things like art, or music, or building and maintaining friendships, I would have more energy and the means to spread the joy to others who need more joy in there lives.

A tiny part of my mind is willing to concede that "work" as I define it is not healthy for me. Unfortunately, the largest part of my mind is preoccupied with what others will think, what is the right thing to do morally and ethically (for my community's greater good). It always appears that the point of wellness, (according to most mental and physical health providers), seems to be defined by an ability to return to work. If that is so, then how can the counter intuitive idea, that not working may help me become well and stay well, be correct?

Am I supposed to decide to not work? And if I decide that and become well, will a return to work make me unwell again? Am I forever unemployable, yet able to help others while helping myself? I cannot understand what it is I am supposed to be doing; what it is that will KEEP me well if I manage to get there?

Am I misunderstanding what Dr. X is trying to express to me?