Sean Allen

About

The myth worth retiring is that adjustment is a matter of attitude, and that people who struggle simply have not decided to be positive about it. That belief is widely held and it is very unhelpful to anybody actually going through something. Attitude is not the mechanism. Life transitions demand that you rebuild routines, roles, and a sense of competence more or less from scratch, and none of that is achieved by deciding to feel better about it. We do the rebuilding rather than the deciding. It is slower, less inspiring, and a lot more effective. I did my clinical training in community mental health, where positive thinking was in short supply and practical rebuilding was most of what helped. If you have been told to adjust your attitude, that advice was not treatment. Rebuilding is slower than deciding and it is what actually works. Rebuilding is the actual work.