There is little to no information about the personal toll job loss takes on employees who are fired or laid off. I often write about severance negotiation and skip over this topic, until now. The irony here is that as an employment attorney I deal with client job loss in every case I have. Although I am not a licensed therapist, I do spend an inordinate about of time counseling clients through the job -oss grieving process.
As a society, we treat job loss and grieving as a taboo subject. Terminated employees are just expected to get over it and move on to the next new gig. There is a great deal of shame in our LinkedIn workforce and people are programmed to only reflect strength and positive attitudes.
Your Professional Identity
If I met you on the street, you would probably tell me about yourself starting with what you do for employment. Most people start random conversations this way to break the ice. I would expect you to say you have been in the same career for quite some time but have changed jobs as the economy ebbed and flowed over the years.
Professors Frank Martela and Anne B. Pessi, writing in Frontiers in Psychology, explained, “Employment is a key element in life that goes beyond basic psychological, social and economic needs … employment not only results in earning an income, it also imposes time structure during the day, implies regularly shared experiences and contacts with people outside the family, links individuals to goals and purposes that transcend their own, defines aspects of personal status and identity, and enforces activity.”
No one is immune from the negative hit the ego takes when the job loss occurs. Years ago, I was working with a female president of a subsidiary to a well-known publicly traded company. I had negotiated the employment agreement that got her there and several years later she came to me because the company had decided they had to move in a different direction, a common explanation given to many of my clients.
I remember the phone call with this executive ”” the call started out normal, but I could sense undertones of sadness, which came in waves during the call and eventually overwhelmed my client. She abruptly burst into tears and commenced five to 10 minutes of sobbing on the phone. At first, this was quite awkward because it was unexpected ”” we had been discussing the noncompete buried in her incentive compensation agreement and what would happen if she went to work for a competitor, that her restricted stock would be forfeited.
I paused and commenced listening to this woman sob uncontrollably, but I realized all she wanted was to be listened to. I guess most people just want to be listened to during this critical period right after they receive the notice of termination.
But what struck me about this conversation was the comments the woman made about herself and how this job was her complete identity and that she worked hard to get to the C-Suite over a long career. She was blown away to see it all ripped away from her in an instant and she remarked she did not know what she was going to do as she believed her career was over, more specifically, her identity as a high-powered executive was over.
Job Loss and Grief
Did you feel any pain when you lost a job? Did you get angry about losing the coveted position you worked so hard for? Did you blame anyone, or did you accept personal responsibility for being terminated? Maybe the termination was out of your control all together?
Here are the stages of the job-loss grieving process, as defined by Vanderbilt University Medical Center:
Initial Shock: Whether terminations come out of the blue or have some advance warning, there can be shock that requires some time to absorb.
Anger: Whether the target of the anger is the employer or yourself or another person, these feelings are a normal part of the grieving process but should not entrap you from moving forward.
Resistance: Sometimes there is difficulty in accepting what occurred.
Sadness: It is normal to experience feelings of sadness and to want to withdraw emotionally after a job loss, but this can become problematic if the search for a new job takes a longer than expected time or if you have predisposing factors that could spark clinical depression.
Acceptance: Eventually, you must accept what transpired and move forward, which is not to say it will be easy to shrug it off.
The Personal Impact
The bottom line in any job loss is the sudden loss of professional and personal identity. As an employment attorney I counsel job loss every day among my clients and accept it as a normal part of my professional life. I am the person you talk to explain why you were fired, whether you had anything to do with it, your shame, your guilt, your victimization from discrimination and a host of complicated personal questions that just run real deep for many people.
Grieving the loss of job for some employees can be very difficult and often compared to grieving the loss of a loved one. But this grief can turn into a long-term mental health crisis.
I remember working with a client many years ago who had a long career in sales in the computer industry. He was in his mid-forties, divorced and had a young son he adored and looked forward to spending time with him during his parenting turns with his ex-wife. The guy was quite personable, and sales seemed like a natural fit for him. He also liked to take diving excursions with sharks in cages all around the world.
However, life somehow just did not seem fair to this fellow after his employment termination and several years later I came across his name in an article in a national newspaper where he had ingested some form of liquid obtained from the dark web, essentially committing suicide in a car in the heat of the summer. No one found him for some time until the smell became unimaginable ”” he was wearing a business suit when the emergency personnel opened the door.
Managing the Stress of Job Loss
Vanderbilt University Medical Center offers a nine-step checklist for managing the new stress that develops after a job loss.
Give yourself time to adjust, because grief is a process rather than a one-and-done event.
Maintain open communications with others who play a significant role in your life, because they can offer you support and perhaps may even have job leads.
Reassure your family members over the economic hardship that a job loss creates.
Make a job-seeking strategy and stay focused on it.
Update your resume.
Tap into all community and networking resources that are available.
Rehearse practice job interviews and prepare answers regarding the reason for changing jobs.
Practice good self-care ”” sleep, exercise, relaxation and good nutrition are crucial in combating the stress of unemployment.
Get professional help, when needed, especially if you find yourself dealing with emotional difficulties or sleep problems.
You Are Not Your Job
So many people get sucked into the false belief that their jobs are who they are as a person and then get completely derailed when they lose their employment.
In another example, I remember recently working with a male executive who suffered from throat cancer and eventually lost his voice box. He had a synthetic device inserted in his windpipe to help facilitate his communication, but his original voice was lost forever.
The client was a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy and extremely well liked. He had been a manager and later an executive in the same industry for the better part of his whole career. He came to me when the employer began interfering with his position and moved him around the company and eventually demoted him back to the same city when he started with the company some 20 years ago.
I handled the matter, put the client onto disability benefits and obtained a very sizable severance package from his employer. I call this the hat trick in employment law. The employer did not like the fact that their once star executive could no longer speak in his original voice and had to use a mechanical voice device when speaking with company clients.
If you were in the executive”™s shoes, you may have thought the world was ending for his career and personal identity was over. But this client was different and his resilience to form a new life left a profound impression on me that your job is not who you are.
Your identity is not derived from what you do for work, your identity is entirely different and separate. Many clients I have dealt with just cannot separate their work identity and their personal sense of self. No one really talks about this issue because people fear it as a sign of weakness to even discuss it. Job loss and the loss of personal self is an enormous issue for many people, but it does not have to be.
Losing a job can also become an unforeseen positive transformation and I have seen clients over the years pivot successfully without losing a sense of self-identity. Many clients do not buy into the idea that their job is who they are. These clients transition between jobs without falling apart and making huge leaps forward in a way thought impossible before the termination. One door closes and another opens. I have to say that most clients I have worked with actually find better paying and more personally satisfying jobs after being terminated or laid off.
Mark P. Carey is managing partner and an employment law attorney at Carey & Associates P.C. in Southport. An earlier version of this article originally appeared on the law firm”™s blog.
