Posted by madeline on April 27, 2006, at 20:18:26
In reply to Need some advice regarding being geeky, posted by orchid on April 27, 2006, at 14:49:37
Orchid,
This may be long and rambling, but I want to share my career story with you. I have a history of CSA/physical abuse and emotional abuse. I’m 35 and I have spent well over half of my life building a career, I think, whose focus has been to (1) deny that I am female and have emotions (2) understand the pain I wouldn’t let myself feel by understanding, on a molecular level, the pain others feel. But this has changed so much for the better.
So, my story.
I finished by undergraduate education with degrees in mathematics and chemistry. I was the only girl in most of my upper level math courses and I felt so proud that I could hang with and outdo most of my male counterparts. I wore suits and kept my hair short and behaved very much like a man. I even broke off an engagement to marry because I did not want to play the typical “woman” role of wife and mother.
I then went into a doctoral program in the biomedical sciences. During this time my metamorphosis into the most male-like female I knew became almost complete. I shunned the company of any male companionship, didn’t date. I spent 80 hours a week in a sterile, cold, isolated research lab studying sickle cell disease. I let the scientific method absolutely rule my life. If it couldn’t be quantified, it didn’t exist to me, therefore my emotions and the essential feminine me just went away. And yet, all the while, working to alleviate the pain that sickle cell disease feel, not realizing that I was trying to understand the pain that I felt inside.
I graduated with my doctorate when I was 30 and I am now a scientist and professor at a major university in the US. I have my own research lab and still study sickle cell disease.
Around 5 years ago, I had a total collapse, a dam just broke inside of me. All of the emotions, all of the memories, all of the essential parts of me that I had tried to just push down, started to bubble to the surface. I think I was just too exhausted to keep them down.
I started therapy, and though it has taken a long time I am starting to integrate all of my parts, including the feminine me, into a comprehensive whole “me”. It’s not perfect, but it’s getting there.
I noticed also that my research (the very thing that had consumed me) had become very stale to me. It seemed so barren and pointless, and just like you are experiencing now I think, I became very resistant to actually doing ANYTHING – not very good when you rely on NIH funding. But, like you, I muddled along and managed to succeed. I tried to sort of get the “science mindframe” back, but to little or no avail.
But then, an opportunity to expand my research into WOMEN’s health came along. I felt like a lightening bolt had hit me! This is it! I can fully explore the feminine side of me, while using my way overeducated brain to help other women. I CAN embrace both worlds! I now study pregnancy in sickle cell disease and going to work is a pleasure. I feel very feminine AND very scientific. I let my intuition play as big a role in my work as my devotion to the scientific method.
I am blending to two wholes, the masculine and the feminine and it’s working (pardon the pun).
Maybe your psychological block to studying and thinking about work is that you are thinking about the wrong line of work. If it’s the right line, I think it will flow easily from you, but if the “fit” isn’t there, then you may be telling yourself, “this isn’t right”. Maybe instead of going on with your current career, you could think about looking at other ones, or similar ones that can exercise both the masculine AND the feminine side of your being.
I suspect that since you feel more feminine, your work may need to be a natural extension and expression of that. Maybe then, you could lose the psychological block.
poster:madeline
thread:637513
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060422/msgs/637630.html