Layoffs, grief, and the long-term ramifications of fears unchecked

When I first started executive coaching, I met a man who was in turmoil around his career. His main concern was that for the past eleven years, he couldn’t seem to grow in any position he took on. 

Despite his many decades of experience and highly relevant skill set, it seemed like even though employers were excited to hire him at first, the good feelings only lasted about two years at most. Inevitably, he would start to get negative feedback. And the harder he worked, and the more he tried, the worse it would get.

This hadn’t always been the case. Earlier on in his career, he had a couple of great long runs full of growth and opportunity. I asked him what he thought the reason was behind this recent run of difficulty. 

His answer: the 2008 recession had ruined his career. 

And as it turns out, he was absolutely right. But not in the way he originally thought. 

Unresolved grief and the meanings we give it

There were a few things I found interesting about this man’s assessment around his career woes. 

First of all, we were speaking in the year 2019. And while he was first laid off from a job in 2008 due to the recession, since then he had held multiple executive level jobs. He had interviewed and been hired many times in positions with great compensation. Technically, in terms of title, his career had grown.

Additionally, he was still working in his field of specialty. He didn’t work in a field that got obliterated in the early 2000s, leaving him to totally reinvent himself. If one was to chart out his path, when zoomed out even only a little bit, it was pretty linear and steep on the upward trajectory, with only a pin prick sized gap around 2008. 

So then why did he attribute all of his recent failures to what had occurred 10 years ago?

I asked him to walk me through what had occurred. And when he did, I heard what I would come to know is a very insidious, very damaging edition of a very common story.

In 2007, this man had been on the rise in his career, and while he loved where he worked, he was looking for what would come next. After putting feelers out there, he found his perfect next step. A great leadership role with a well established company offering amazing compensation and benefits. 

Nine months later, when the recession hit, the company laid off 25% of its employees. As they say: last one in, first to leave. He was unfortunately on the short end of the stick.

However, even though he was lucky in the sense that his newfound unemployment wasn’t crippling to him financially, and even though he was employed again only 5 months later, he took the news very hard and very personally. 

What we sometimes fail to collectively recognize is that we live in a society that pushes us to place so much of our identity in our career. And many of us do - either consciously or subconsciously. 

So when someone is laid off - especially a high achiever who has done all of the ‘right things’ to ‘get ahead’ their whole life - the emotional ramifications of an unexpected, undeserved layoff can feel worse than a divorce and even worse than a death. 

The grief of loss of identity, the mourning of seemingly dissolving possibility, and the fear that the dropping veil of promised stability can be crushing to a person. Regardless of whether or not they’re one of the ‘lucky’ ones who can still afford their mortgage. Regardless of whether or not they’re one of the ‘lucky’ ones who finds a job quickly thereafter. 

The grief, mourning, and fear - if left unresolved and unhealed - will linger. If left unchecked, that’s where extended damage can really start to occur. Not from the original layoff itself, but from the false, self-deprecating, paranoid meanings fabricated to placate the pain that won’t seem to go away. 

And that’s exactly what happened with the main character of my story. 

The 2008 recession did ruin his career - but not because the layoff logistically ruined his career trajectory. 

The 2008 recession ruined his career because while he did his best with what he had at the time, he was not equipped to mindfully face and process the grief that came along with his layoff. Instead, his deepest fears about his own worth started to move from the background of his mind to the forefront of his actions - eventually running the whole show. 

And over the course of a decade, the reality of his career mirrored his internal reality. Both inside and outside, he was walking on a tightrope. He was never quite good enough. Anything good couldn’t be trusted because it wasn’t going to last anyways. 

All of this fear and paranoia initially pushed him into an adrenaline state to work hard at every new job he got. But eventually, the fear and paranoia would distract him from actually doing his job well. His performance, as a result, would decline. And inevitably, each new place reflected back his nightmare scenario to him over and over again. 

The lasting value of feeling your feelings

I know that it might feel like a sad and scary time right now - especially if you or someone you love is currently being affected by the increasing layoffs circling the corporate world. 

It is okay to be sad and it is okay to be scared. But if you are, I implore you to pay attention to your feelings and treat them with care, rather than simply pushing them aside.

Of course, if you have bills to pay tomorrow and physical needs that immediately need to get met, take care of that first. But please consider my above story to be a cautionary tale about the effects of sprinting past the dark emotions that layoffs can bring. 

As I mentioned, the man’s story is unfortunately a common one. And I have found that it tends to be the people who are least into the ‘emotional stuff’ who are most susceptible to the lingering negative effects of fear, grief, and loss. 

Emotions are not logical, but unprocessed emotions can cloud logic in a way that is both harmful and invisible to the one ignoring them.

Sometimes, the most logical, rational, productive thing to do is to recognize the implications that big life events can have on us, and seek help to ensure they don’t create unwanted lingering symptoms that silently stunt our own long-term effectiveness and success.

This may sound cliché and trite, though I don’t mean it to be so: We can’t always control what life hands us. But we can control what we do with it. 

We can control what we learn from it. We can control how we grow from it. 

And a big part of learning and growth is controlling how we sit with ourselves, how we treat ourselves, and how we show up for ourselves when life hands us some of the most sour lemons on the tree.

Show up for yourself now by giving yourself the permission and space to feel. And I promise, your future self - and future career - will be grateful you did.

***If you or someone you know has recently been laid off and you either don’t have productive support or feel like you need additional productive support: I keep a tight group of experienced executive coaches close to me, many of whom work in corporate, have coached people through layoffs, or have been laid off at some point themselves.

If you reach out to me at lisa@lisahusseini.com - I will get you hooked up with a couple sessions with either myself or one of them, entirely free of charge and free of any whiff of a sales pitch.