Knowing Why to Quit

My rigidity is a gift and a curse. On the one hand, I’m determined; on the hand, I’m quite stubborn.

To me, quitting anything, no matter how insignificant, is deeply shameful. (I find it challenging to even discard spoiled vegetables, some of which remain in my fridge.) And so many of my clients struggle with the indecision of letting go. “What if I’m wrong?” “What if I just needed more time?” And, “What if I’m just lazy and spoiled?” These questions haunt us long after we’ve made a choice, and long after a choice was made for us.

“Stop being so picky.” “Finish what you started.” My internal guilt-tripper carries those weapons along with the epithets mentioned above. And to be someone who carries on despite suffering is his ultimate aim. But seldom do we inquire about what’s lost in the time we spend pursuing a seemingly lost cause. And even more rare is a grasp of what’s avoided.

On the popular School of Life Twitter page, it reads, “We are worrying about everything, continually, in order to stop ourselves from understanding, and feeling sad about something specific in our pasts. Anxiety has grown into an alternative to self-knowledge.” So, my obsession with my vegetables, my anxiety about being wasteful, is little more than a mask for my regrets. And for those of us who remain obsessed with the mundane, or even with utopian visions of the future, our actions betray desperate attempts to submerge and conquer an ever-present, and enveloping, sense of shame. It’s as though following through on some goal will banish all of my pain. In my attempt to stem the tide, I convince myself that I can leave it buried in my former life.

Regret is much more painful than anxiety. So, we don’t ever allow ourselves to quit. Always moving forward.

Quitting may entail present regret, an awareness of the limitations of our mortality and the delusions used to mask it; it may also mean acknowledging a perpetual avoidance of grief and resentment, bidding farewell to the childhood we deserved but couldn’t have. In what’s presented as a cautionary tale, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character, Jay Gatsby, is preoccupied with recreating his life in a manner that would completely negate the traumas of his past, or so he thinks. He tries to use the pursuit of success to erase his memories (as many pursue happiness as an end-state). Quitting, to him, symbolizes a catapult back into obscurity and, more importantly, back into the depths of shame. Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “Shame has been called the underbelly of narcissism, the underside of a healthy vital self. It is associated with inadequacy, inferiority, a sense of defect, failure, and the perception of scorn by others. So painful are these feelings that we hide them from ourselves, yet they have a profound impact.“

In The Great Gatsby, mirroring the American dream, Jay, like many Americans, believes that prosperity will make all of his suffering worth it and will finally allow him to reframe his narrative. Quitting, in this respect then, becomes a demonic specter, pushing him to glory.

Additionally, quitting may entail a more public form of shame. In her book, Quitting: A Life Strategy, Julia Keller writes, “But pitfalls lurk in this new reality where social media rules, says Dr. Aaron Balick, British psychotherapist and author of The Psychodynamics of Social Networking (2014). “Social media enables identities to become more fixed,” he tells me. “One’s public identity on social media may compromise the decision-making process to persevere or to quit due to the investment into one’s own identity.” If you’ve reinforced a certain view of yourself by frequent postings on social media, then changing that identity—say, quitting a job you claimed to have loved or a relationship that you’d presented as perfect—might be more difficult, he notes.”

Too many of us believe that we can’t tolerate either type of shame, whether embarrassment or self-loathing. Yet, character and maturity, constructs that ought to be meaningful to us, require knowing when to stop. Jay betrays a selfish nature, a myopic vision of a world that placed him at its center. As the story progresses, he inadvertently murders someone and, yet, continues driving. His character was soiled, despite our belief that his hustle somehow indicated virtue. One doesn’t address the shame of her past solely because doing so would free her; she does so because being good necessitates it. To live a good life, one first has to be good. And to be good, she has to be considerate. It’s nearly impossible to think of others when you’re obsessively cultivating the circumstances you believe will finally absolve you of your internal blame. Jay wasn’t happy when he was poor and, from what I gather from the story, he wouldn’t have been happy if he were rich.

Check out our episode with Julia below: