How Un-Nesting Is Helping Me Cope With the Trauma of Losing My Dream Job

Nesting is a phenomenon documented in pregnant women where they develop an impulse to clean, organize and otherwise prepare for the birth of their babies. While it manifests differently from one woman to the next, the sudden burst of Marie Kondo joy-seeking is common enough to warrant its own label. Reasons for nesting may vary, although according to Science Daily, there may be an evolutionary significance to the behavior, notably “providing a safe environment helps to promote bonding and attachment between both the mother and infants.”

• What is PTSD?

This evolutionary adaptation piqued my interest, particularly in reference to what I’ve been experiencing lately in my own life. For context — after almost 18 years of doing my dream job, my husband and I have had to make the unbearable decision to sell our bed and breakfast. Along with that sale goes my dream of being a chef and frankly, it’s got me feeling very untethered. I already have attachment anxiety from childhood trauma which gets triggered by uncertainty, but not knowing when we will sell, where we will go, and what I’m going to do is a whole new level of loss of control that I am not entirely sure how to deal with.

Frankly, I’m angry, resentful, and scared and I can’t express this in any kind of meaningful way that anyone will truly understand. It’s a familiar feeling — one I learned to push away with busyness and hyperfunctioning as a child who knew her mother couldn’t tolerate her discomfort and who determined that productivity could distract her from her painful feelings. It’s something I’m ashamed of and deeply unsettled by.

Cue what I can only describe as “un-nesting” impulses. I have become obsessed with purging things — clothes, books, papers, kitchen appliances — anything I can just to feel like I’m doing something. But it’s deeper than that. If nesting is about creating an environment where a mother and child can bond, my instincts to rid my environment of things that make me feel attached or bonded to this job or this place is a way of easing the impending sense of grief and loss I expect to experience when the business does sell.

For all intents and purposes, since I never had children, this house and this job have been my proverbial baby. I planted roots here for us to thrive and grow in a symbiotic relationship. And now, after almost 18 years, I feel somewhat betrayed by the world and life for robbing me of what has been deeply fulfilling and given me a powerful sense of my identity. As I write this, the irony is not lost on me that in a way I’m like an empty nester whose child has grown into an adult and is leaving for college. The only difference is that typically a parent will continue having a new adapted relationship with their adult child. In my case, it’s like my child is dying and I’m experiencing one funeral after another as people question me endlessly about what I’m going to do for a living and where I’m going to go.

I don’t know what the future holds, but for now, I shall continue purging things, sorting things, and otherwise ridding myself of stuff as I attempt to cope with the not knowing. As my therapist noted yesterday (in jest), as long as I haven’t started tossing any of my cherished Céline Dion memorabilia she’s not overly concerned with this coping mechanism. If you see Céline hoodies in the garbage bin, alert my therapist to stage an intervention. And please… rescue the hoodies.