You have been in your career for years. It has provided for your family, and there was a time when it felt meaningful. But something has shifted. The Sunday dread has become chronic. You are going through the motions at work, and the gap between what you are doing and what you feel called to do has become impossible to ignore. You have started thinking about a change — maybe something radical, maybe something modest — but the decision feels paralyzing. There are mortgages, tuition, insurance, a spouse whose opinion matters. And underneath all the practical considerations, there is a deeper question: Is this restlessness from God, or is it just burnout? Is this a call to something new, or an avoidance of something hard?
These are discernment questions, and they deserve the tools that the Catholic tradition has developed for exactly this kind of decision.
Ignatian Discernment at a Professional Crossroads
St. Ignatius of Loyola developed his discernment framework for exactly these moments: decisions that cannot be resolved by logic alone because they involve competing goods, uncertain outcomes, and the question of what God is doing in your life. The Ignatian approach does not promise certainty. It promises a process that is more likely to lead you to the right decision than anxiety-driven rumination or impulsive escape.
The first step is to seek interior freedom — what Ignatius called indifference. This does not mean not caring. It means being willing to go in either direction, not already committed to the outcome you secretly want. If you have already decided to leave your job and are looking for spiritual permission, that is not discernment. It is confirmation bias with a prayer veneer. Genuine discernment requires the willingness to hear an answer you do not want.
The second step is to gather data — both external and internal. Externally, this means honestly assessing the practical realities: financial implications, the impact on your family, the viability of the alternative path, the timing. Ignatius was not an impractical mystic. He understood that God works through practical reality, not in spite of it. Internally, it means paying attention to the movements of consolation and desolation as you consider each option. Which direction produces a sense of peace, energy, and alignment with your deepest values? Which produces anxiety, constriction, and a sense of running away?
Distinguishing Call from Escape
This is the critical question, and a therapist can help you answer it. A genuine vocational call typically has certain characteristics: it pulls you toward something rather than just away from something. It is consistent over time rather than arising only in moments of frustration. It aligns with your gifts and the needs of others. And it persists even after the initial emotional intensity fades.
An escape impulse, by contrast, is primarily about getting away from pain. It intensifies during stressful periods and fades when things improve. It is often accompanied by fantasy — an idealized vision of the new path that does not include its own difficulties. And it frequently repeats: you have felt this way before, possibly about the last job too.
Neither pattern disqualifies a career change. Sometimes the right move is both a call and an escape — you are being called away from something that is genuinely bad for you. But distinguishing the two helps you make a decision that is rooted in clarity rather than desperation.
The Role of Therapy in Discernment
A therapist is not a spiritual director, and therapy is not a substitute for discernment prayer. But therapy can remove the obstacles that prevent clear discernment. If you are making a major career decision while clinically anxious, the anxiety will contaminate the discernment process — every option will feel threatening because your nervous system is in threat mode. If you are depressed, your assessment of your current situation and your future prospects will be distorted by the hopelessness that depression produces. If you are burned out, the exhaustion will make any change look attractive simply because it is different.
Therapy can also help you identify the relational dynamics that influence career decisions. Are you staying in a career you hate because your parents would be disappointed? Are you considering a change that would significantly impact your spouse without having the conversation? Are you repeating a pattern of starting something with enthusiasm and then losing interest?
Denver’s professional landscape creates its own particular pressures. The tech industry, the healthcare sector, the energy corridor along the Front Range — these are demanding environments that compensate well but extract a significant toll. Many of the clients we see at Denver Catholic Counseling are high-functioning professionals who are successful by every external measure and miserable by every internal one. The gap between outer achievement and inner alignment is where discernment lives.
Making the Decision
Ignatius offered a practical test for major decisions: imagine yourself at the end of your life, looking back on this choice. From that perspective, which option would you be glad you chose? This is not about predicting the future. It is about accessing your deepest values, the ones that are often buried beneath the noise of daily anxiety and practical concern. When you imagine your eighty-year-old self, the mortgage payment usually does not feature prominently. What features is whether you spent your working years doing something that mattered.
At Denver Catholic Counseling, we help clients navigate major life decisions with both clinical skill and spiritual sensitivity. If you are at a professional crossroads and the path forward is not clear, our Greenwood Village office and telehealth services across Colorado are here.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” — Proverbs 3:5
Trust does not mean passivity. It means doing the honest work of discernment and then having the courage to act on what you find.