Emotional Impact

You get completely overwhelmed and it's a life changing event when you lose your job. Your professional career has been taken away from you, just as surely as you've lost a loved one; you need time to overcome the grief.

The trauma of losing a job and the rawness of emotions can become part of a never-ending circle. Even after you've experienced all the stages of job-loss grief and you feel ready to move on with your new career plan, a setback might make you feel like sinking back into the depths of despair again. This explains why the "acceptance" stage of bereavement transforms into "temporary acceptance".

Losing job is a universal phenomenon. Different individual have different experience in such stage. You might pass through all the stages of grief attributed to bereavement at the loss of a loved one. Or you might avoid one stage and jump directly to another or experience the stages in a different order. It might take a week or a month to cycle through the different stages, while at another time you speed through them all in the space of a few minutes.

Emotional issues are most definitely encountered when you lose job, apart from that you might also face physical and behavioral symptoms of job-loss trauma. For example, some report eating and sleeping disorders, dizziness, palpitations, forgetfulness, headaches, hyperventilating, perspiring, repetitive dreams, inordinate risk taking, endless chattering, irritability and hyperactivity.

There's an interaction between the emotional, physical and behavioral symptoms of job-loss. For instance some might have depression or fear because of recurring nightmares; some might get headaches or perspiration due to panic. The actual physical and behavioral manifestations of unemployment vary widely from one person to another.

Symptoms

Physical Symptoms

• Anxiety attacks
• Loss of concentration
• Forgetfulness
• Loss of appetite
• Headaches
• Insomnia

Behavioral Symptoms

• Aching limbs
• Dizziness
• Heart palpitations
• Hyperactivity
• Irritability
• Recurring dreams

Once you understand the impacts of job-loss, you can now predict how it might shape the weeks ahead of you and prepare yourself to deal effectively with all those stage. This is the initial step that leads to interrupting the cycle, regaining control of your life and achieving reemployment.

Understanding the Emotional Impact

Here's an outline of how the Emotional Impact works:

• First, you get the news that you've lost your job.
• Then you go through the various stages of grief such as shock and denial, fear and panic, anger, depression and temporary acceptance.
• Thought you think you've overcome your grief, you again begin to find yourself in its cycle.
• Until and unless you learn to channel it positively, the cycle continues.
• You'll begin to take life as it comes, once you're able to manage and deal with the Emotional Impact effectively.

Shock and Denial

Neal had been the managing director of B & B investment firm in CA for about 3 years. When he was told that his job had been purged. His first reaction to this news was; "No! They can't do this to me."

Like any other person who has just learnt that he has been terminated, Neal's first response was that of skepticism. Deep within him, he didn't really believe it was true. Even as he went through the process of goodbye to his colleagues, he was somehow convinced he'd awaken at any moment from this "nightmare".

Your reaction to such news may be stoic, brave or tearful, depending on the kind of person you are and the attitude you have. It's often difficult to acknowledge and experience the full shock of a loss right away.

No matter what and how you respond, some or all of the following thoughts might come in your mind at such situation:

• How could this happen to ME, of all the people?
• It must be a mistake.
• I have nothing to live for.
• What will I tell my family and friends?
• What will I do tomorrow?

Such thoughts are likely to race through your mind when you get bad news. Termination announcement won't seem quite real and at the time nothing else will either. You may keep saying, "No! They can't do this to me!" but the reality of your job loss will sink in within days or weeks, if not hours.

Dealing with Shock and Denial

John, an out-of-work marketing executive recalls, "In the beginning, all I wanted to do was shut myself in my bedroom all day,'' and adds, "I simply didn't have the courage to face the outside world. I felt like doing nothing at all." When people are going through the shock and denial stage of job loss, the best thing to do is exactly what John felt like doing: nothing.

All you need to do is give yourself the time and privacy required to build up your strength.

• Do not do the things like calling people and writing emails; broadcasting the news to the world. Share it with your close family members; keep the news to yourself until you are more prepared to deal with reactions and comments of the outsiders.
• Take your time and get comfortable with your termination, don't act desperate and try to find another job. In such case everyone will see the trauma in your eyes and hear it in your voice.
• It's okay to detach yourself, but you never know whose help you'll need down the road when you begin your job search.
• You've suffered a setback in your professional life, and may feel a generalized sense of dread and even insignificant things can become menacing.

Fear and Panic

Frank, an FS manager, explains how he was obsessed about his car while he was out if work. "I thought of the expenses whenever I had to drive anywhere," and kept asking myself, "How long will I be able to refuel? How will I maintain cost? What will happen if my car suddenly breaks down?" Such thoughts never occurred to Frank while he was employed and now they haunted him constantly.

You might spend your time and energy contemplating about different issues during the fear and panic stage. The issues as:

• Is this the end of my career?
• What if I have to declare bankruptcy?
• Will my family and friends abandon me?
• Will I ever get re-employed?

Fear does not have any power in itself. It is a feeling that your personality calls forth, and thus it is a feeling that you yourself can face and choose to no longer reinforce its mechanisms. Fear is known under different names, and has varying intensities. Intense fear can be called panic. Rampant fear, panic and indecision are typical responses to losing your job. Nothing could be more natural than to worry about your future when your livelihood has just been snatched away from you and you don't know what tomorrow will bring. However, uncontrolled and disproportionate fright can quickly drain your time and energy and immobilize you, if you let it take hold of your imagination.

The following situations/questions are invented during the stage of fear and panic:

• Will I lose everything I own?
• Is this the end of my career?
• Will any employer ever give me another chance?

Dealing with Fear and Panic

In order to minimize and survive Fear and Panic, you have to put you concerns back into perspective. Neither repressing your worries nor struggling with them will work. So confront your fears on a reasonable timetable. Give yourself a certain period-say 10 minutes each day and restrict your worrying to that time period. If you catch yourself slipping up and fretting about the future outside of the designated time period, STOP. Think of dealing with it the next day, during your sanctioned worrying time.

If you have not yet written a fear list, do so now. Writing down your fears is a powerful step in dealing with fears and anxiety and eventually managing them. Until you write them down, they are like so many vehicles in gridlock. Once you have them on paper, you can park some and move others, clearing a space for forward movement. In this way, writing down your fears creates a space for awareness and choice.

If you're having trouble making decisions, limit the time you give yourself to choose. Give yourself, say, two minutes to make a choice - such as should you or shouldn't you meet a friend? - stick with your decision. Take a step back from the problem, if you can, and consider it. You'll probably find that few choices you make are of the "forever" variety. In all likelihood, you'll get a chance to resolve any mistakes you happen to make, so it's okay to forge ahead for the moment Learning to deal with fears in this manner takes practice. The pay off is potentially unlimited as you remove barriers to learning, performance and joy.

Anger

Grace lost her job as a lab assistant. She recalls, "People wouldn't return my phone calls or respond to my letters. Once when I went to a mall and saw a former associate walking down the aisle beside me, our eyes met, but she raced past me without acknowledging me.

It was as though I'd suddenly become a plague victim, and no one would humble themselves to come anywhere near me." I was furious. "All I wanted to do was get even with everyone - from my former associates to my next-door neighbors who'd stopped making eye contact with me. I just needed for everyone to know how I felt." Once the fear and panic takes hold of you, you fume about your former workplace and whatever else that thwarts you:

• This isn't fair.
• How can they do it to me?
• This is an outrage.
• They have no right.
• They can't imagine how I feel.
• They're rude and insensitive
• How can I get through to them?

The anger accumulates inside you because there's no specific person to whom you can vent your rage. You can't sit still or you'll explode, you want action now. It would feel great to reach out and throttle someone, knock others out of their routines, wipe the smug look off their faces and spread agony. Revenge dominates your thinking.

Don't give into your anger, rather use it positively. The secret to deal effectively is to channel your anger. When you properly channel it, anger will make difference between your being successful and unsuccessful in your job search. Also you can use your anger to propel yourself into positive activities that will lead to reemployment, when the time is right.

If you let your anger fester, it will overwhelm and immobilize you. Not only you'll be unemployed but also you'll be impossible to live with or accompany. The result of your anger is alienation, which will lead to more fury and the cycle will continue again and again. To get out of this stage and put the trauma of unemployment behind you, you must learn to work through your anger and learn to forgive. If you kick a stone in anger, you'll hurt your own foot.

Dealing with Anger

The goal of anger management is to reduce both your emotional feelings and the physiological arousal that anger causes. You can't get rid of, or avoid, the things or the people that enrage you, nor can you change them, but you can learn to control your reactions.

There are some ways in which you can channel out of anger.

• Shouting in private setting-inside your basement or garage when you are all by yourself. Your body will take the liberty of translating your emotions into physical actions, so take the advantage of it.
• There has never been a better time to install a punching bag in your spare room, wear the gloves and go punching it long and hard until you feel your anger getting gradually subsided.
• Beside those you can also walk, run or go to the soccer field and kick the goals until you're exhausted. Kneading bread dough, beating sofa cushions or throwing pillows until you are tired and subsequently relaxed are also other good options.

Use imagery; visualize a relaxing experience, from either your memory or your imagination.

• In your imagination, you can empty a ten pound bag salt into your boss's brand new Mercedes.
• Overlay the picture of your supervisor on the dart board and throw the darts until it is worn out.
• Do whatever you please if that is going to burn your anger. In your fantasy, of course.

Never suck your rage in or air it at the wrong time or wrong place.

• Avoid the temptation to disparage your company and former employer in profession settings, such as during interviews or networking sessions, because a person that has no control over his anger-rightfully-is perceived as unemployable.
• The most important thing; never pretend that your anger does not exist. Accept that it exists, but learn to coexist with it.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

Bargaining

After the fires of anger have been blow out, the next stage is a desperate round of bargaining, seeking ways to avoid having the bad thing happen. Bargaining is thus a vain expression of hope that the bad news is reversible.

Bargaining in illness includes seeking alternative therapies and experimental drugs. In organizations, it includes offering to work for less money (or even none!), offering to do alternative work or be demoted down the hierarchy. One's loyalties, debts and dependants may be paraded as evidence of the essentiality of being saved.

Thought like the following will start occurring to you then:

• Perhaps it was all a mistake.
• Perhaps they'll apologize and take me back.
• After all, the situation can't be as bad as it seems.
• I'm due for something good to happen.
• I can always get another job.

You'll also begin experiencing a painless ending to your unemployment crisis. "I'm sure my buddies will help me find a job, because I'm a good person," you'll tell yourself. "I have to keep trying and I will surely find my dream job within weeks, if not days."

Dealing with Bargaining

No matter how much you might want to rely on fate, friends, or strangers to bail you out of the situation you're in, you have to accept the fact that finding a job is very much your own responsibility.

People will call to express concern and surprise about your job loss and talk for a while. Then their job is done, they may act like their duty is over. They will feel bad till the time you talk with them after that they will want to move on with their own lives. If you are still expecting your old buddies to pull you out from the pit, investigate the reality of what you are telling yourself. Of course you will find a job-but it will happen through your own efforts, not those of others around you.

Depression

After denial, anger and bargaining, the inevitability of the news eventually (and not before time) sinks in and the person reluctantly accepts that it is going to happen. From the animation of anger and bargaining, they slump into a slough of despond. In this deep depression, they see only a horrible end with nothing beyond it. In turning in towards themselves, they turn away from any solution and any help that others can give them.

Depression may be seen in a number of passive behaviors. It can also appear in tearful and morose episodes where the person's main concern is focused on their own world.

Some of the feelings that creep into your minds are:

• It's entirely my fault
• They gave me enough rope and I hanged myself
• If only I hadn't done that
• I'm worthless
• This is the end of the road for me

Ashley vividly recalls how she felt when depression hit her hard. "All I wanted to do was sleep. I didn't have the courage to answer the phone, stopped venturing outside, and basically gave up on life. People would knock on the door, and I wouldn't answer. I had no energy or desire to face people. I felt stupid and ashamed of losing my job. I just wanted to be left alone." She constantly felt that her world had ended. She was a loser and a coward with nothing to live for, and nothing to do in life.

It's common to hit bottom when you're in the throes of depression. Anything - a lost key, a missed appointment, an argument with your spouse - can propel you into an abyss of despair.

Unfortunately, hitting bottom isn't necessarily something that only happens once during your voyage through the wave of emotional impact. For some, it happens over and over again, and each time it arises they have to deal with it as if they were on their first round. The good news is that there are proven techniques you can use to move from depression to action.

Dealing with Depression

When depression rules, you'll be flooded with feelings of worthlessness, guilt and lethargy. It takes all your energy just to get out of bed in the morning and there isn't much left over for fighting your way out of the gloom. If you will give up into your depression, you'll never get your search into gear. Follow some tested techniques for chasing away the pessimism.

Deconstruct the largely constructed depression which wasn't given to you.

• Pamper yourself. Get a bubble bath, a walk in the woods, a ticket to the opera or whatever makes you feel special.
• Do all the things you never had chance and time to do earlier.
• Visit your old buddies, play with your kids and spend time with your family.
• Humor can be very effective in fighting depression so get your favorite comedy movie or comics.
• Understand the situation of your unemployment, take it as temporary condition.
• Treat yourself as you were own best friend.

Do something productive and be helpful for others around you.

Volunteer to chaperone your child's field trip, serve food at a soup kitchen, clean up the litter in the local playground or raise funds for your favorite charity.

Exercise your body and mind

• Walking, swimming, running and other aerobic activities give you energy.
• Let yourself loose, shake off the blues and do something nice for your mind and body.
• Take up yoga; it can heal your mind better than anything else.
• Exercise will help you sleep better and you'll get the deserved rest to keep yourself healthy enough to execute an effective job search.

Temporary Acceptance

This stage is back to one of stability, where you are ready and actively involved in moving on to the next phase of your lives, no matter how short. Although the crisis of unemployment is still with you, you have got some breathing room. You can think about where you've been, where you are and where you're going. This is the time where you are functioning at the utmost level of emotional impact; you can now create an action plan. Some healthy concepts that begin to sink in are:

• Past is past
• It's time to move on
• Sitting here doing nothing won't help
• I cant change anything by blaming myself
• Why dwell on something I can't change?
• My job search is my responsibility and I cannot make it happen.
• It is all up to me now.

In the temporary acceptance stage, you will want to get on with your life, finally. You free yourself of blame for unemployment and charge yourself with the responsibilities for your career. But it is a temporary and momentary stage, because with every rejection, rude rebuff and insensitive response, you will find yourself in one or the other stage of grief again.

Dealing with Temporary Acceptance

There'd be nothing to deal with temporary acceptance if it was the final stop on the journey to re-employment recovery. It would be time to kick up your heels and celebrate. You'd be able to leave the trauma of unemployment behind for good. However, as pointed out earlier, Emotional Impact is a cycle rather than series of linear stages. You might accept your situation with poise one day and sink back into depression the next. One minute, you might be full of optimism and the next; you might imagine yourself the most worthless person on Earth.

You'll experience extreme mood swings as long as you're unemployed.

• While you're riding the wave of Emotional Impact, your feelings will be exaggerated.
• The highs will be higher and the lows will be lower.
• Even minor events such as a lost key, a missed appointment, an argument with your spouse-can catapult you from temporary acceptance back through any or all of the stages of grief-shock and denial, fear and panic, anger, bargaining or depression.

To prepare yourself for what lies ahead use the safe haven of temporary acceptance. Develop a plan to rescue yourself from the jaws of grief and to find dignity in every stage as you cycle through them. Most importantly, prepare yourself from the perspective of personal responsibility, forgiveness and confidence to face the working world again.