683: Is Job Security Worth Your Mental Health? Career Burnout, Pension & Midlife Reinvention

(00:00) Cathy van Poorten: I would say, I've been thinking about this probably like seven years before I actually retired from city planning. There was a shift in how I saw things and how I was dealing with the challenges.

(00:13) Scott Anthony Barlow: Seven years. Seven years of knowing something wasn't right. Seven years of still showing up of being capable, reliable, the one who can handle it.

(00:22) Cathy van Poorten: I start to lose some of the faith in the process, started to feel maybe disillusioned.

(00:29) Scott Anthony Barlow: She built a respected career in city planning, stability, pension, security, but slowly, something eroded. It wasn't her competence, it was her belief.

(00:40) Cathy van Poorten: I really felt that if I don't make a change now, I'm tired enough that I won't have the energy to move on and do whatever it is I need to do next.

(00:51) Scott Anthony Barlow: This wasn't about ambition anymore. It was about energy, about time, about whether or not she would have enough of herself left to build what came next.

(01:00) Cathy van Poorten: I said to my husband, “I think this is it. I'm gonna give my notice.” And he said, “You know, it sort of looks like you're punishing yourself at this point.”

(01:07) Scott Anthony Barlow: Think about that for a second. Punishing yourself.

(01:09) Cathy van Poorten: The mask was the accepting, believe in things. I can manage the emotions and the stress of this, and I can be the capable person who can come up with solutions.

(01:24) Scott Anthony Barlow: Cathy was the capable one until the mask came off. After retiring, Cathy began discovering something she hadn't known was missing.

It was herself. She got a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis, a new relationship with solitude, a new baseline. Today, she's building a business serving women in midlife, helping them question the rules they inherited and design something that actually fits. And in this conversation, you'll hear what finally made her move after seven years of hesitation, how she navigated walking away from a pension and generational scarcity thinking, what unmasking really felt like, and how she learned to trust her own internal voice again.

This is Happen to Your Career, the podcast that brings you real people, real transformations, and the courage to do work that truly fits. If you haven't already subscribed, click follow right now so you don't miss any new episodes. And if you've been quietly sitting with your own seven-year whisper, this episode may help you understand what's really being asked of you.

(02:25) Cathy van Poorten: Seven years before I actually retired from city planning, there was a shift in how I saw things and how I was dealing with the challenges. It was a challenging role and a challenging portfolio, a number of different reasons that were happening sort of in the community, and more broadly, I start to lose some of the faith in the process.

I wasn't feeling as much support within the organization as I felt we needed in order to do the work. And so that, I'd say that feeling sort of started then. So that would've been about 2018. And then I was really tired. I had let my team, my bosses, and colleagues know that I was working towards, I was looking at maybe six months, and then I was gonna transition out, and my interests had changed, and I had some things going on with my family, with my parents, so some additional life pressures, I guess. I really noticed that, I just physically, I really felt that if I don't make a change now, I'm tired enough that I won't have the energy to move on and do whatever it is I need to do next. The projects at work and what work wanted to see, I didn't have the energy for it.

And I also didn't have the drive anymore. I just, I didn't feel that identity. And so I just was really tired, and I think I got to one night and was really struggling, and I said to my husband, “I think this is it. I'm gonna give my notice.” And he said, “I'm glad to hear that, because if he didn't say that, I was gonna intervene and say, you need to cut in now.”

And he said, “You know, it sort of looks like you're punishing yourself at this point.” And I said, “Yeah, I think you're right.”

(04:04) Scott Anthony Barlow: You mentioned that you had, at that point, felt like there was a change in identity, or you're recognizing that you no longer felt that identity. So I'm really curious about that because you've also described the feelings of wearing a mask or a persona for a really long time. And so what I'm curious about is what did that mask looked like for you day to day before you recognized that this mask has to come off.

(04:38) Cathy van Poorten: Yeah, it's really funny looking back at it now. There was a lot going on that was true, and that wasn't part of the mask, but I think the mask was the belief in things that I can find a way I can manage the emotions and the stress of this.

I can be the capable person who can come up with solutions at the same time of holding a lot of the difficult issues and emotions. It was sort of the holder of things. And I would say that the mask was there, and this is how I keep on going and get through. There's like a mask, and then there were, when I probably would've thought were boundaries, but I think they were a little harder than that. There were more walls where, if someone wanted to talk to me about something that was like superfluous information, or I couldn't focus on it at the time. I cleared that noise out of the way and had kind of a force field around me because I felt like, in order to keep on going and be what I thought what I needed to be in order to do that work and keep on doing that work.

I guess I'm a pretty straight shooter in some ways. I was able to kind of like see down the middle and clear out the noise, the mask of being friendly and approachable, along with that kind of harder edge, that was never hopefully harsh, but it was sort of no-nonsense, like a sort of a no-nonsense way.

And I didn't realize until I–this was a couple years before I left my position, but I had a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis, which is at age 49, which, from what I understand, is very common in the, you know, midlife, the hormone changes, perimenopause, it starts to unmask certain things. I didn't realize how much I'd been masking until probably, I'd say, three months after I quit.

You know, it probably took a few months just to decompress, and I was doing the work with your group, and moving ahead, but also really taking it down, just keeping myself kind of contained and resting a lot, et cetera, et cetera. I was spending a lot of time alone, in solitude. And I realized how much I liked that.

Like I always knew, I'm an introvert and I like being alone. It was sort of a remarkable amount that, how much I enjoyed it. And I thought, you know, I need to give it a bit more time and see if this, like, what's my baseline? Like, is this my baseline? It's my baseline, the solitude, and being able to make decisions for myself about how I work, when, and it really is a big drive for me.

And so I think a lot of the masking, I'm thinking about also was maybe the extroversion needed to do big committee meetings and work with people in the community, which I really love doing, but it was, it also drained me, I think.

(07:23) Scott Anthony Barlow: Well, I think that's really fascinating in a few different ways. One, sometimes we need to remove ourselves, if not temporarily, to even recognize that.

You called it your baseline, and what that is, what you need, and where you acclimate to if you don't have all of these external pressures in one way or another. Although that's not necessarily possible for every single person in every single situation, I think that that can be a telling way to understand, you know, “What do I need, where do I acclimate to, where's, you know, center or baseline for me?”

And it sounds like in your case, you found that you were even more of an introvert than what you realized, operating in things that required lots of external engagement and communication, and being on like committee meetings, as an example.

(08:17) Cathy van Poorten: Yeah.

(08:17) Scott Anthony Barlow: Well, one of the things that I'm curious about then. When you realized how much you need a different degree of autonomy and how much you need a different degree of, let's call it introvert, recharge time, solitude, whatever we wanna call that. What did you end up doing with that information?

(08:35) Cathy van Poorten: That information really helped me see and accept that I needed to go back to what I had known about myself when I was really young. It sort of led me back home to things like writing. I had been starting to learn to paint as a way to help myself build some agency to start making changes.

And so spending really kind of leaning into all the things that, like even with the amount of time I had on my own, using that time to make things and do things, and like really going out for walks on my own as well as with my husband, and really using that time to kind of knowing that was the time that really worked for me to help me build ideas of, “Okay, this feels really good to me.”

What does that look like as I move forward and thinking about options, look, that would offer me that ability to have that time. So that's when I really started to accept that I'm probably not suited to work in a corporation. I am probably more suited to work on my own. And you know, the thought of starting a business or doing something that was very different from anything I had ever been taught was the way to go with things.

(09:59) Scott Anthony Barlow: What was the most challenging parts that you experienced as you were trying to make some of those decisions and operate from that place of where you wanted to go and how you wanted to build out your life?

(10:10) Cathy van Poorten: Reminding myself that it was okay, reminding myself that many, many things I had been taught, you know, culturally and within my family of origin, trained that were the right ways to go were really not the right ways to go for me. Diana, she was my lovely coach, appreciated her patience very much because I would start to make some steps towards investigating things or looking at things a different way, and then I would kind of freak out and hide for a bit, and then force myself back out, or like help myself.

I try to think about it in terms of supporting myself to keep on moving forward, reminding myself that it was okay to be seen for who I am and to learn that it's better to be seen for who I fully am. Because who I was in my career was part of who I was. But it ended up becoming it was like the safe place to be at that time. It started to feel like this, like something isn't right. This is not, you know, this safe place, whatever safe looks different to everyone. But reminding myself that the path I was on was the right path, and to keep going. At a certain point, it got easier, but, you know, there was a long period of time where people want to know what you're doing and what does that look like.

Everyone's different, but it was hard for some people to understand, like, “How can you put down that career you had,” and all those sorts of things, and reminding myself that that's okay. People are allowed to wonder, and I mean, I wondered for years. That's why it took so long to make the, you know, finally kind of make that decision.

(11:43) Scott Anthony Barlow: I think this is something that people experience a lot. You've heard the podcast in the past. And so many of the folks that we've had the ability to help and influence as they're making these big changes for themselves and building the life that they want to, it's wonderful. And also, it's not normal in any way whatsoever.

It is absolutely not normal. So you know, the average person is often left wondering, “Why on earth would you make these types of changes?” They just can't fathom. And so one of the things I'm curious about is, do you remember any of those conversations that stood out in your mind as you began having them, as you're trying to figure out for yourself, “Hey, what am I doing going down this path?” How did you handle those conversations?

(12:28) Cathy van Poorten: How I handled it changed over time. I think it was sort of like a practice at the beginning, sort of like finding my feet in terms of, okay, I don't owe people information. I don't have to explain myself to you. Took me a while to get there. It took a while of having practice having those conversations, and it was different with different people.

I probably leaned on my skills from my career of knowing which conversations to have when and who I'm dealing with, and what information to give and how to give it. So there were some people who, say a former colleague who felt, maybe felt shaken by the fact that I was leaving this work that we all put so much value into.

She was shaken, and I had a lot of good conversations. People, and even this one wasn't a bad conversation. She was saying things like, “It's hard to think about you dropping something,” or you know, kind of putting that language around it. Like you abandoned, words like that.

(13:26) Scott Anthony Barlow: Which indicates how she felt about it, not necessarily how you feel about it.

(13:30) Cathy van Poorten: Exactly.

(13:31) Scott Anthony Barlow: Which is the hard, I think the hardest part in some of those conversations?

(13:35) Cathy van Poorten: It is absolutely. I got that feeling from not a lot of people, but a few other people, and knowing that, I guess that is not only their response, but also can be a fairly normal response for people to have. It can be hard to understand when you see someone who you've worked with for years and have kind of watching this person deal with situations and manage things, and then all of a sudden they leave.

It makes sense that this other person might be feeling like you were sort of leading this charge or whatever. How can you just leave it like it was? I'm putting words into her mouth here a bit, but like it was nothing. And I know where those feelings come from. I didn't take it personally. And you're basically going against generations of scarcity thinking.

You get a job with a pension, and you work that thing to death. So you don't leave that. You know, you die. If you work until you die, that's okay. I didn't tell my family for a good three or four months after it had happened because I sort of, because I was scared, frankly. And I didn't, I knew that–

(14:41) Scott Anthony Barlow: It is a scary thing. It’s weird.

(14:42) Cathy van Poorten: It is, it's a scary thing. It's weird, and I knew that probably what I was gonna get back wasn't gonna be necessarily harsh, but it wasn't gonna help me move forward. It was going to activate the guilt. It was a really sort of lovely outpouring of appreciation, and you know, a bit of shock. There was grief that I wasn't expecting from people.

When you're with an organization for that many years, and it was a specialized role, and I was the first person in it and, you know, it was a very tiring two weeks of kind of trying to keep my own boundaries of how much I was going to give to that, but also appreciating the support I got from people. I was able to end on quite a good note, and I think that makes a difference for how you're then able to move forward. It left me more energy than I probably would've had otherwise. You know, sort of that idea of protecting your energy if you're making a big adjustment like that.

(15:44) Scott Anthony Barlow: Let me ask you about that. I think it's really interesting, the nuance that you just described with, yeah, you made the decision to leave at some point, the announcement went out to everyone you work with in the organization and you felt this unexpected outpouring of, you know, people who appreciated working with you and also were grieving in their own way because they didn't expect you to leave.

And simultaneously, I heard you say that, well, that was truly wonderful and changed some of your energy, also you were managing. How much energy do you give to that part of the process? What do you mean by that? How did you manage or draw some of those boundaries so that end result was better than if you had done it differently?

(16:35) Cathy van Poorten: Yeah, I think that I was aware going into it that, inasmuch as I told people within our team, I decide to leave earlier than I had anticipated. And so not only would there be some surprise there, but that throughout the organization there would be a lot of feelings around it and, you know, good, bad, otherwise, everyone was gonna have their own feelings, and I had all my own feelings and I sort of, I knew what I needed to do. You worked for that long somewhere.

You sort of know what things look like when someone leaves, and I knew the things that I needed to kind of save energy for, and I wanted to have that good energy for everyone as I left, so that it could be a good sort of ending and beginning. And so when I was asked if I wanted a sort of a leaving party, I thought about what I would want.

And what I wanted was like coffee and cake. And so they did a really nice job of making that happen. And I guess I sort of strategize within myself how to lead myself through that. I think I followed the path of trying to go with the good and not get bogged down in some of the difficult issues we're dealing with, or like, you know, the burnout I was feeling. I was careful about just how I used my time.

Like if I was gonna go out for lunch with someone, I realized at a certain point that as much as I wanted to talk to kind of the community stakeholders that I'd worked with for a long time and those community committees, that was gonna take me down, I just did not have the energy to put out an announcement.

And so I sort of let that happen naturally. And then I was able to, as the months went by, recontact people. But I just had this feeling that I don't have the energy for that, and I think people will, I don't think people are gonna be offended if I don't have time to make a formal announcement.

So it was just, it was trying to strike a balance between the valuing and like honoring that long career and a lot of great people I worked with. It wasn't gonna be perfect. My priority was myself, and as much as I wanted to say goodbye and make it a good and smooth ending, my priority was to maintain as much energy as I could and get through that process and be able to move on, rest, and move on to whatever else I was going to do.

(18:58) Scott Anthony Barlow: When you were deciding to leave, at some point, you ran the numbers with your husband. What did you have to give up, or what did you feel like you were gaining that was worth it? What were those offs like? What did you learn through that process?

(19:11) Cathy van Poorten: So in terms of the numbers and stuff, I would say, because I knew that some kind of change was coming, you know, the previous years before we had been pretty financially conservative, but we were like extra money that Brett, my husband, did through a contract, we put that down on our mortgage. Like we, it was sort of like squirrels getting ready for winter

(19:32) Scott Anthony Barlow: Bring in all the nuts from all the places

(19:33) Cathy van Poorten: All the nuts, you know, and the tradeoffs. It's hard to know how to prepare yourself from going from a well-paid public sector, pensioned, et cetera, a job to not having a job. And I knew that was gonna be hard, but we knew that we could financially manage it, that we were okay. I knew bone deep that whatever we needed to do on the other end, like I needed to find a better way. And I said to one of my colleagues, “What good is paying my mortgage off early if the stress kills me?”

There was just some things I'd experienced with my own health in the past and things I've seen from other people's journeys, experiences. I just bone deep knew that I would find, whatever my path was, I would be able to find it, but I needed to give up the certainty and the identity of being how I introduced myself at meetings.

Being a professional, I had to give that up. Whatever that looked like. And you know, like I said, at my leaving party, I was gonna miss the people and I was also gonna miss the paycheck because, you know, getting a steady paycheck for that many years, I like, I can't say that I knew what that would look or feel like, but I just knew that it was just a, it was the way it had to be.

I had to kind of give that up and that identity, and yeah, so it was the identity. There was a certain period of time where I had this feeling like I, you know, missing that feeling of knowing I had that steady paycheck coming and et cetera. It didn't bug me as much as I thought it would. I had to kind of learn different ways of looking at things.

For a long time, I had used like, “But my pension, I can't give up my pension.” And in a way that was, it was sort of a delay or avoidance tactic because there are systems set up, like if you've built a pension, then if you leave, then, you know, in 90 days, then you get a letter and then you make a decision. Do I wanna keep the money in there? Do I wanna self-manage it? I had to give up not being brave.

(21:39) Scott Anthony Barlow: That is fascinating right there. So, taking this pathway allowed you to no longer avoid being brave. How does that feel now versus how that felt then before you went down that path?

(21:58) Cathy van Poorten: I'd say it feels normal now in the best way. It's sort of liberating, like the things that I was so scared of for so long, you know, not having stability and not even stability, like I say, stayed in the same position and same organization for so long because I really thought like that's the only place I belong. And I was really sort of tied to that, and I feel so much more solid now in who I am.

And I have some grief for the ways that I held myself back because I was scared to make changes or take risks and do things differently. I feel much more like I understand that I can do this and that anyone can do this. That sort of questioning of things we've been taught, because this is the way society goes, and people get through things. But sometimes if those ways don't meet who you are, and maybe how the world changes, and maybe things look different now than they did 20 years ago.

(23:01) Scott Anthony Barlow: Sure.

(23:01) Cathy van Poorten: 30 years ago, when you were taught these lessons, there are different ways of getting those things that make you feel safe and stable, I guess. Deep down to the bedrock layer, like that, I was only worthy if I was doing this type of work.

That suffering is normal, and you take the good to move forward, like you have to take the small wins, which is very, very true, but there's a certain point at which you have to assess whether those are enough to keep you going, the holding on to that stable paycheck. Not that, I mean, stable paychecks are great, that there was one way of doing things that was the accepted way, and that there's, the catastrophe will happen if you change the way you're doing things or explore something different. Or in simple terms, you are not allowed to give up something like that, that's a transgression. These are things that I don't believe, but I come from a family with that sort of scarcity background, and like that intellectual, high-achieving work it to the bone.

There are different ways of working. Work can look different than that, that I wasn't breaking a law.

(24:15) Scott Anthony Barlow: And it sounds like that's what it felt like when you first started considering, that you were almost breaking a law, which I would imagine as you considered trying other roles and adjacent roles and things like that, that's probably why you were going those routes and with that initial poking and prodding, trying to figure out like, “How do I not break this law?”

(24:36) Cathy van Poorten: Yeah. It was very much like how do I do something that will fit me slightly better? And I guess that is one thing I would say to your audience. Complex trauma is a big factor if we grow up with that. That shapes how our brain develops and how we move through the world, and sort of those survival techniques.

And those things are really, really difficult to break. But there are ways of working with them and supporting yourself if you feel like you wanna make a change, and you have, maybe you have friends, like I did feedback saying, you know, “There are other ways of doing this. You could be happy if you tried this.”

And I wasn't able to seriously consider those things that time because my brain was still, didn't have the capacity to see that I could do that and that would be safe, and there were ways of doing it. Find support for yourself. One of the things I found through this journey is when I came upon a part where I seemed to go to like a deeper element of things, I would access more help in that direction to deal with this specific issue.

And then I could move further on my life design and career journey to figure out what would work for me. So you'll probably hit points of, “I can't get farther with this,” but you can pull in what you may need to get you through that.

(25:55) Scott Anthony Barlow: What advice would you give that person in that place?

(25:57) Cathy van Poorten: Try as much as you can to listen to yourself, to listen to what you may need.

You know, it's hard when people are busy with career and family, et cetera, but try to prioritize some quiet time, wherever you can find it, to sort of sit with yourself, listen to what you need, and then maybe think about what you have going within your life currently that can support you in making a change like that. So in my case, sort of knew that this change was gonna come at some point, using the fact that we could put more money towards mortgage and savings and all the rest that to get ourselves positioned well to weather a big change.

(26:43) Scott Anthony Barlow: Yeah. And setting up your life so that it supports where you're trying to go. Whether it be financially or in any other–that's phenomenal.

(26:51) Cathy van Poorten: Yeah. Try to set up, and whatever that looks like, everyone's life is different. Maybe there are support resources that you can pull in that you haven't considered before, but try to support yourself as much as possible. It feels uncomfortable to make the big changes, but try to remember that the discomfort is that's you– changing things and rewiring your brain, and those are the good feelings. And I know that's part of what you guys teach. And man, it's hard sometimes, and sometimes you're gonna fall back, and the discomfort may be too much, and you need to kind of support yourself back up to a level that you can keep making the changes.

Prioritize supporting yourself and making your system work in as much as possible, give you the sort of guard rails and the push forward so you can focus on making those changes.

If you're ready to stop believing the stories that are actually keeping you stuck and start creating the career in the life that you want, drop me an email directly, scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Put “Conversation” in the subject line. We'll connect you with the right person on our team, and we'll figure out the very best way that we can support you.

Happen To Your Career - Meaningful Work, Career Change, Career Design, & Job Search