The 5 Emotional Stages of Job Loss
The five basic emotional stages of loss are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. They may or may not happen in a precise sequence. People are unique creatures. One person may be stuck in anger for months before moving on to one of the other stages. Another person may feel angry only briefly and sink into depression. Some people will move predictably through each separate stage at a steady pace. There is no right or wrong way to feel what you’re feeling, but you will likely touch base with all of the following:
Denial
I worked at a big regional bank for two years that was recently sold to prevent FDIC seizure. In other words, the bank failed. Thousands of people lost their jobs, and the few that remain will soon also lose theirs. I quit voluntarily two weeks before the announcement of the end was made, but when I say I quit ‘voluntarily’ I mean that I was about to get fired for taking too many sick days after having an apparent heart attack on the job, so I just didn’t go back. Ever.
I saw the end coming when the bank’s stock fell 80% in a single afternoon (the day Bear Stearns went under), and then watched it continue to fall week after week until it was going for under $2 a share. Yet every time I mentioned that it looked like we were all about to be out of work, I was jumped by my supervisor, my supervisor’s supervisor, and most of my coworkers, all of whom pointed out very aggressively that the bank had been around for 89 years–including all the years of the Great Depression of the 1930s–and that therefore the bank would absolutely positively be around for 89 more, and that besides all that, I should really please shut the hell up.
Um, Ok… The thing about denial is that, irrational as it looks from the outside, it truly is a self-protective mechanism. Michigan, for example, is not a place where anyone of average ability wants to be out of work. That bank was one of the major employers in this town and all of them are falling over, one by one. In retrospect, it’s clear to me that these folks weren’t crazy or lying, they were in denial. Much more invested in their jobs than I ever was in mine, they knew as well as I did what was coming and were already in the first stage of letting go.
Denial gets a bad rap because it looks so demented and dysfunctional, but it is a predictable first response to trauma and a necessary one. That stunned silence and the feeling you’ve been punched in the guy? That’s normal.
Anger
Once a traumatic event begins to break through the protective outer layer of denial and does finally register in one’s conscious mind, anger is often the first response. How dare they let me go? After all I’ve done for that company? Why weren’t they more rational in their business dealings? Who is responsible and when will that person pay? Lots of angry questions and thoughts, as well as a general feeling of resentment and enormous frustration is a common, even necessary emotional response.
Anger contains a lot of energy. When anger kicks in, it is a bit of a rush, almost like a jolt of caffeine. The energy that comes with anger will likely have you cleaning out your desk, scrubbing the basement, organizing the garage, taking brisk walks, and shooting out resumes like bazooka fire. You will possibly get the idea that you can start your own business and make more money in six months than you made all year at your crappy (and now lost) job.Damn straight! You’ll show them.
While much of what we do while angry fizzles when the anger fades and we feel calm again, on an emotional level anger helps us to get in touch with that part of ourselves that really is energetic and powerful, and that is something everyone needs to feel after a loss. Powerlessness is very scary. So when anger arrives, welcome it and use it. Get some stuff done. Run, punch pillows, vent in your journal, or, if you are like a lot of women, clean things until they scream for mercy.
Don’t cut your hair though.
For some reason no one really understands, angry women in crisis tend to immediately run out and get their hair cut very short without thinking too critically about it. If you’ve already done that, no big deal. Your hair will grow back. I’m just giving a “heads up” here (no pun intended) for females who might not yet be aware of this classic hormonal maneuver. Usually the killer cut comes after a boyfriend break-up, but any traumatic event can trigger it. Cut your hair if you must when you get fired. You might even discover you like it short. (I do.) Just realize that afterward you will still be unemployed.
Bargaining
Bargaining can come at any stage of the grieving process, and basically involves negotiating a lesser loss, over and over again, unsuccessfully. You might think, well, they may be all out of full time jobs, but if I’m willing to work part-time I can probably stay on. Or maybe you will consider working for less, or making a lateral move to a position you will totally hate, (that janitorial position looks great!) or convince yourself briefly that you really wanted to be canned all along so you could pursue a different line of work.
If you find yourself considering job moves that make no sense, and everyone around you is looking at you like you might have had a miniature stroke or something when you got your pink slip, you have reached the bargaining stage. By running our minds step by step through all the (actually unavailable) options, bargaining moves us closer to accepting a loss. We have to review every dead end, every retroactive bit of 20/20 hindsight. Rehashing and reliving is part of the process. Just try not to beat yourself up while doing it.
Depression
At some point, when it hits you that you really have lost a big part of your life (like, 8 hours or more of each day) and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, you will start to feel horribly sad and hopeless. It will seem as if nothing good will ever happen to you again, and the well-meaning assurances and pep talks given to you by friends and family will begin to feel like salt poured on an open wound. You may withdraw and avoid people just so you don’t have to listen to their chirpy suggestions or gratingly insensitive questions about, “What are you going to do now?”
You don’t know what you’re going to do now and you don’t care, but you’re pretty sure you need chocolate and lots of it,stat. When I get to this place in my process, I take myself to the movies. I can’t think in there, they do have chocolate, and for about two hours I get legal relief from any difficult feelings I might be having. Sometimes I even come out feeling a bit better.
That’s what works for me. Do what works for you, whatever it is, and do baby yourself a little bit. Take a break from “solving” the problem and just let yourself be sad until you get it all out. Eventually, you will be done being sad. If you rush yourself through this stage and put on a happy face for the sake of other people, or out of guilt at having the audacity to not be smiling like a toothpaste commercial, it will just rebound on you when you least expect it. So let it in, make it a cup of tea, and break out a box of Kleenex. It’s necessary.
Acceptance
Time is what you need. At first, it will seem like you have no time. You must make everything right and you must do it as quickly as possible. You must replace the job with something just like it or at least just as long and tedious, and if you don’t do this as quickly as possible, you will starve in the street. You are absolutely certain of that.
But as time wears on, you realize you will not starve in the street, and this job that let you go is over now. It’s gone, it’s done, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You won’t be sad or mad or glad, you’ll just realize that you are now on to another phase of your life and it will be OK one way or another.
Once you get to the point of acceptance, you may find yourself pulled intuitively in an entirely new direction, maybe even pulled toward something that seems quite impractical and foolish. It’s important to let yourself move in that direction without criticizing yourself or comparing your current yearning to the now defunct job. So often, life’s best opportunities come to us in this way–quietly, in the form of a hunch or an vague longing that is at first hard to understand.
After I lost my bank job, I fumbled through a series of frantic and (in retrospect) grossly inappropriate work applications, trying to convince myself that each one was meant for me and I really, really wanted it. Underneath all that frantic activity was this longing to just stop. Just stop everything and be still. I can see now that stopping is exactly right for me right now, that I need the rest, that the household needs the attention, and that I want to spend more time writing quietly at home. Not long after I accepted that I did want to just stop and indeed I was going to just stop, I landed several good freelance accounts that will keep me busy into summer and keep me from starving, if not actually make me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. It’s enough, and it feels right.
Acceptance is more powerful that most people realize. We are so thoroughly trained to fight our own desires and tailor ourselves to fit social expectations, that we rarely consider there might be a middle way. Sometimes our desires and hunches reveal a direction that is helpful to others and rewarding for ourselves too, something we might not have considered if we hadn’t gotten quiet enough to listen to our hearts.
With so much job loss on the American horizon, my hope is that many people, while scared and alarmed, will have the opportunity for once to listen to their own hearts and move toward work that really matters to them.
That would be a silver lining in the dark cloud currently hovering over the American job market.
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