The S&P is over 900, the Dow stands firm and valuations are as high as they were the day before Lehman died ( a function of those pesky valuations taken with the off-peak prices). My 401K is still 40% off, despite the recent boom in investor confidence. Housing prices continue to plunge (but less precipitously than last month).  And GM is a step closer to Chapter 11.

There might, however, be a few showers this afternoon.

Frankly, I’m confused.  That was one short 2d Great Depression.

I recognize that a function of leadership is in making sense for  followers. Leaders narrate our experience; and sense-making requires  both that we “get” the cues upon which we base our interpretations of reality and that our continued recalibrations of what makes sense conforms to the “sense” we’re given.

Apart from the wish that things will improve, my cues seem pretty consistent with what they’ve been (despite the economists, who have racked up about the same record this year, as the weather forecasters).

Apart from desire, apart from hope, I’d appreciate some sense-making help: what are the cues to look for, in scouring the world for information, that folded together, justify the hope? That confirm the impression, the belief, that the markets currently trumpet?

I remember ancient history, 6 months ago, when GM’s bankruptcy was an impossibility; but Chrysler’s and the slow back and forth of ups and downs, busts and mini-bubbles, has worn us out: GM’s bankruptcy? Of course. We’ve factored it in. No problem. A given.

As I start off the day today, I am confused. The only reliable cue I’ve got is about possible showers. I will bring an umbrella.

Stunned. Just silence.

But then, I have to be in a state of mind that tolerates all this information as acceptable. Otherwise, I’m a basket case.

Luckily, I was feeling pretty stable when I entered the conference room, not so long ago, to talk with 20 or so high-level professionals, until recently—very well employed, about their lives. As individual after individual contributed to the meeting, the collective angst rocketed, punctuated only by occasional moans and protests along the lines of the Book of Job.

What could help?

Working in break-out groups a bit later, I discovered the beginnings of the same process. But because the groups were smaller (and perhaps, participants’ willingness to marshal collective hope greater….) it was possible to question the kinds of assumptions that had merely gathered anxious emotion, like a snowballing avalanche, in the previous meeting.

Primarily, I found that when individuals were fixed in a solid conviction which admitted no productive possibility, an escalating terror was created. For example, after demonstrating to his own satisfaction that no viable jobs existed any longer in his field, a former executive explained (gritting his teeth) that he would send out even more resumes! Had it occurred to him to stop? STOP???? He asked as if I were mad. STOP???

If he stopped, what would he gain? Well, it seemed to me that he was distraught because this line of action was gaining him nothing anyway. Livid, he told me that it was keeping him busy. Now we were getting somewhere!

He had confirmed that the exercise in resume-submission had purpose and meaning. Only, his outrage at its ineffectiveness in getting work was misplaced. He had proven empirically— through personal experience—that its only current productive use was in keeping him occupied.

The UTILTY of the exercise then, had merit; but not the merit of securing employment. Significantly though, work-seeking was also a crucial challenge; and the merits of resume submission did not address this. In fact, his rage was centered on this inefficiency. Only by clarifying, in tiny steps, what worked and what didn’t and toward what ends, was he able to conclude that some other activity— equally effective in its own sphere—- needed to be added.
My question about stopping the activity he’d complained about had precipitated an outraged response: not so much at me as at the activity’s ineffectiveness in solving all that he’d wished for. Now, holding on to that activity as a partial solution he could bank on, he was ready to consider something else to add to the mix.

Confirming what’s real: putting the brakes on assumptions that lead to non-productive chains of thought, and clarifying what works and what doesn’t, is a beginning level step in getting beyond the personal depression experienced from the current Recession. Like reading the newspaper, we can only think productively when we’re not overwhelmed and disabled.

Studies of unemployment reflect that downsizing is the only traumatizing life event which prevents sufferers from returning to their pre-morbid ‘setpoint” of emotional satisfaction: once fired, you don’t return to your previous levels of happiness. The insecurity gets under your skin, staying with you.

It begins here: not only perhaps within 10-day stays in posh psychiatric spas, but also reflected in the 30% jump in calls, last year, to suicide hotlines; and in the increase of economically-based narratives on presentation to therapists—- citing real home loss, real job loss, and the anticipation of both, as the environmental stressors pushing one’s mental equilibrium over the line.

Unfortunately, while enormously beneficial, conventional “insight” therapies are generally unable to address the core of emotional coping. What is necessary for behavioral change (after remediation of the more severe symptoms of major depression) is a different kind of repair. It is coping through the behavioral response of meaningful work.

Simply put, beyond psychotherapy to address our personal crises of meaning, we must create meaningful work to address the realities of personal and familial survival.