DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

Sacked and Solitary
Dan was sacked when the marketing budgets of his clients were cut. He felt
shocked, betrayed and angry. He received a pay-off, which allows his family to keep
afloat financially for several months, but he feels “an utter failure” (p.4), and “quite
desolate” (p.2). He then has six months without any work at all. After these months
without finding more work and financial problems mounting, Dan breaks down and
describes hitting rock bottom:
“A couple of times I broke down and was crying, in that room. It just got too much
for me, not straight away, just eight or nine months in, I couldn’t get a contract
job…It was pretty desperate times, I’ve never been so desperate in all my life…I did
hit rock bottom.” (p.4)
He finds himself having suicidal thoughts, and further describes experiencing pain
like he had never previously experienced, and a sensed complete lack of control over
his life:
“It’s that pain that I never experienced before, I didn’t think you could experience it
before. It was a complete lack of control that I had over my own life, a complete
sense of worthlessness and emptiness, no sense of direction, no help from any
direction that I felt could help me, it was just that blackness that I saw in front of me.”
(p.8)
Like Dan, Jack is also sacked. He didn’t expect it, as he thought he had been
doing satisfactory work as an accountant. He reacted with minimal emotion initially.
At the time of the separation he said:
“I didn’t think about what I was doing, what I was going to do with the rest of my
life. It was like I’d retired already. Every day was very similar. I didn’t really have a
concept of finding something to do, or retraining, or looking for another job.” (p.2)
He says that the months after the sacking were devoid of any significant memory,
almost as though he had been sleeping. Then an event occurs which brings the crisis
to a head, and acts as a very sudden and profound turning point in his life – a car
crash. The car crash acts as a stimulus for change, as Jack’s confrontation with
mortality shakes him out of his ghostly, inactive stupor into a sudden awareness of the
feelings that had become muted and morbid:
“It felt like the physical impact and the injuries forced me to feel a lot more than I had
been feeling – it forced a lot of my feelings through, and they took a long time to
resolve and to work out.” (p.2)
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