In 2013, I started struggling to get out of bed — despite loving my job.
From early in my life, I have been concerned with how to live a purposeful life. I was a believer in Socrates’ dictum that the unexamined life is not worth living. Until 2013, while examining my life, I was most concerned with achieving my professional and personal goals (which were also constantly evolving). But then life forced me to start examining the triggers — both positive and negative — that affected my life, often unconsciously.
I trained as a computer engineer. My first job after graduating in 2004 was to write software for a large global bank. By mid-2005, I had decided to quit my role as a software programmer to get my hands dirty in the world of social change. I never once regretted quitting — not even the fact that I had given up on an opportunity to move to the US so early in my short career. My social sector journey was exactly what I had expected, full of challenge and learning, combined with the opportunity to work for people who lived lives of purpose.
Things started to change drastically in 2013. I loved my job. I worked with a team of passionate people I adored. I had meaningful friendships, lived in a great city, and earned enough to enjoy a lifestyle of my choice. In spite of all this, I was increasingly finding it difficult to get out of bed and go to work. I felt an exhaustion I couldn’t explain.
I had a work trip lined up to New York which included a meeting with my CEO to give her an update on the work I was doing. She was impressed by the progress I had made, and the prospects of the leadership program I had designed and was running. Once I gave her the update, I let her know how I had been feeling and how much energy I had to expend just to function — nowhere near the level I expected of myself. It was a confession of sorts that I was not able to do the job as I would like anymore.
She heard me out, asked a few follow up questions about my symptoms, and said, “You are experiencing transference, and possibly counter-transference.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. Seeing the look on my face, she added, “Based on what you have described, it seems like you unintentionally have been playing the role of a therapist, counselor, coach without the training for it.”
The primary reason to set up the leadership development program was the belief that leadership is often a lonely journey. Partly by design, partly by my ability to connect with people from all walks of life (or across lines of difference as my CEO liked to say), and partly driven by the feeling that it was my job to be there for the leaders, I had ended up becoming the confidant of almost every person who had been through that program. I always found time when someone reached out to me. During seminars, I was often running in the morning with someone as part of our catch-up and drinking into the wee hours with someone else.
Unconsciously, I was not only internalizing what I was being made privy to, but also reacting to it. With zero training myself, I was just not in a position to deal with the myriad of issues I was presented with. I sat and heard experiences ranging from racism to sexism to sexual abuse to marital issues to infidelity to co-founder disagreements. You name it and I was hearing about it. As a listener, I did just that with over forty people who asked for my time just to talk. In most cases, I didn’t know how to offer support. And even if I did, I just listened and asked people to hang in there.
As I read more, I realized it could have been transference, counter-transference, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, burnout — or some combination of them all. The exact label mattered less than the realization: I had been absorbing emotions that were not mine to carry.
I had no idea the toll all these conversations were having on me. What struck me most was that I had triggers that I was not even aware of. And that became a big part of what I have been examining ever since.
My goal was to figure out how to get back to my energetic self that did not suffer from getting out of bed. More than the specific diagnosis, I was keen to figure out my path to recovery. I learned two things. First, I had triggers I didn’t even know of — and I needed to identify them. Second, I had to learn how to better compartmentalize what people were processing with me.
Once you identify a trigger, you have to figure out what to do with it. Most positive triggers are helpful and you can leverage them for a better life.
Negative triggers can be tough, especially if the trigger comes from a person. I now try to tell people when something they do triggers me. But I don’t expect anyone else to change. In such cases, I take it as a challenge to modify my behavior or learn to come to terms with myself once I am triggered. Meditation in the moment helps me a lot. So does anticipating the trigger and my reaction.
Leadership is lonely. But so is carrying everyone else’s loneliness alone. 2013 taught me that purpose without self-awareness is unsustainable. I still discover triggers I didn’t know existed. But now I know to look. Examination, I realized, is not just about the life you want to build — but about the emotional patterns you carry into it. The more I identify my triggers, the more intentional I can be about how I live and lead.