Keeping Your Head After Losing Your Job (16 page)

I want you to think of your family—and friends—as a group of people with shared responsibilities during this time of unemployment. When a friend of mine was unemployed, I chatted to him a couple of times a week for over six months, supporting him, encouraging him to keep looking for the option that would work for him. It was an honor, in fact, to be there for him. If you are a friend or a family member of someone who is unemployed, think of this as the time when you can really matter, when you can really help. Perhaps your family member needs a phone call, someone to have lunch or coffee with, someone to go for a walk with, someone to laugh with. We are our brother’s keeper.

Try to understand each other

If you are not the person who is unemployed, what can you do that would help the unemployed person in your family? Ask them. Perhaps they just want to know that you care enough to ask. Perhaps they want to know you are there to talk. Or perhaps they could ask you for suggestions, for leads, for help. Helping someone who needs help can make you proud of yourself, can make you feel that you are the kind of person others can count on.

If you are the one who is unemployed you also have responsibilities. You can’t just assume that everyone is going to be patient if you aren’t doing something to actively look for a job. They aren’t going to be patient if you don’t take care of yourself. Steven would just lie around, watching television, overeating, and being irritable and self-pitying. He wasn’t doing his part in looking for a job, or of taking care of himself, helping with the chores around the house, and being part of the team. He was AWOL—absent without leave. He acted as if he was entitled to feel sorry for himself and passively lie around. Of course, he was really depressed and his passivity and pessimism were part of it.

Steven also had a responsibility to do something to help himself with his depression. If you have a problem, you have a responsibility to look for a solution. Use the list below to focus on how each person can be helpful:

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Everyone has responsibility for something.

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Teams are better than loners.

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Ask each other what would be helpful.

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What are you willing to do and when will you do it?

3: Talk about it

Many people who are unemployed feel ashamed and feel like a burden. They often say, “People don’t want to be around me.” But it may be that the unemployed person is isolating him- or herself. If your partner is unemployed and remains silent and aloof and isolates him- or herself on a regular basis, reach out, make an offer to talk, show some interest in what they are going through. Your partner might feel they are enough of a burden, that they have failed, and that they have let the family down. They might feel ashamed, all alone, as if no one wants to hear their story, or cares enough about them. Isolated and withdrawn in their own sadness, guilt, and shame, they begin to feel more depressed, ruminating and dwelling on the negative, feeling cut off from all the support that they once thought they had.

If you are the person who is unemployed and prone to avoiding difficult situations, you might find yourself pulling away from your partner. You may feel ashamed, as if you are a burden. Or you might feel your partner could never understand what it’s like. You might even feel you don’t have a right to talk about the difficulties you are facing. As a result, you pull away, remaining silent, brooding alone with your negative thoughts, feeling worse and worse, and alone in your own home.

If it is your partner who is unemployed, you might think that talking about the situation will sound like pressure or criticism. It will only bring up unpleasant thoughts and feelings. You might withdraw from your partner, partly because you are anxious and angry yourself, and partly because you think you don’t know what to say or do. As the two of you withdraw more, both of you get depressed. In fact, the research on couples shows that if one partner is depressed there is an excellent likelihood that the other one will get depressed, too.

Disconnecting is not the answer

Problems don’t get solved by withdrawing. You don’t connect if you are living in a fortress.

Withdrawing from difficult feelings and discussions is perfectly normal—but it’s also something you will want to overcome as soon as possible. You and your partner can support each other during this time. One way of breaking the ice is to talk about talking. Bill’s wife, Ariel, said, “Bill, I know this is a hard time for you losing your job, and I want to be supportive. What can I say or do that will help you right now? If you just want to talk about your feelings, that’s fine. If you want to brainstorm ideas, that’s good, too. I need to know what will help you.”

Bill said, “I suppose I just need to feel you are there if I am feeling down. Sometimes I feel all alone with my feelings, sitting at home all day.”

By talking about what to talk about, you and your partner can come to terms about what you need during this time. Some people when they have lost their job just need to know their partner is there for them, some need to know they are willing to listen, some need to sort out their thoughts and feelings by sharing them, and some want to solve problems together and brainstorm. Others, at least for now, may simply want to be left alone. But the key thing is to start by talking about talking.

It’s not only the unemployed person who needs to talk about feelings. The partner of the unemployed person also has his or her feelings, too. Many partners of unemployed people feel anxious, depressed, angry, confused, hurt, helpless, and hopeless. If your partner is unemployed, and you are going through a tough time, you may need your partner to be supportive to you as well.

You can be better together—by leaning on each other.

EXERCISE: HOW PARTNERS CAN HELP EACH OTHER

Build a bridge between each other for mutual help by thinking about these issues:

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Withdrawing, pouting and refusing to talk won’t help.

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You have a right to the support of your family members.

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Reach out to the person who is most withdrawn.

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Talk about talking—what to talk about, what to do, when to do it.

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Ask your partner what they need to hear.

4: Talk so you will be heard

We’ve been discussing the importance of talking about things, but there are effective and ineffective ways of communicating. Some people, caught up in their negative thoughts and feelings about being unemployed, will focus excessively on repeated negative complaints. This is like the person who always puts a downer on everything: where you just go on and on describing how bad you feel, repeating yourself endlessly without taking a break. This repeated negative complaining is related to the rumination that we described in Chapter Six. When you ruminate, you get stuck on a negative thought or feeling and just keep repeating it to yourself, without solving a problem or making a change. Typical ruminative negative communication sounds like this:

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I can’t believe that this has happened to me.

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Why does this have to happen to me?

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It’s so unfair.

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I can’t stand it.

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I can’t get this stuff out of my head.

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I feel really lousy.

Ruminative complaining is not the same thing as simply having a negative thought or feeling. A negative thought can last five seconds. Here’s an example: “This is crap.” OK, we got the message. How many times do you have to repeat it to yourself or your partner? Every single one of the statements above makes sense to you. You are entitled to have these thoughts. But the nature of ruminative complaining is its relentless repetition—you just keep focusing on the same story over and over. And, unfortunately, you are bringing other people down with you.

It makes sense to talk about the negatives, but if you get stuck on the negative, you will lose your audience and feel worse in the long run. You have a right to your feelings, but there are more constructive ways of sharing them. Some people think they can do an “emotional dump,” just say everything that is on their mind, go on and on forever talking about how bad things are. Three things will happen if you do the emotional dump:

You will feel worse
, since you are only focused on the negative. The more you talk about negatives, the more negative you will feel. You will access more negative thoughts, memories, and feelings—and you will feel worse.

You will alienate the people who could support you.
Your listener might start off feeling like they want to support you, but then they will feel overwhelmed, helpless, and even invisible. That’s bad for both of you.

The problems remain unsolved.
By focusing on doing an emotional dump you sidetrack yourself from solving real problems in the real world. We will look at this later in this chapter, but keep in mind that expressing sometimes may be good, but it won’t solve your real problems.

How to change the ways you talk

Here are some guidelines to keep in mind so that you don’t get stuck in your thoughts:

1.
Try to edit what you say.
Don’t go on for long periods of time without interruption.

2.
Reduce the drama and the negativity.
You don’t have to yell to be heard.

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Let the other person talk, too.
Ask them how they are doing. It’s not only about you.

4.
If you talk about a problem
, talk about a solution. Balance expression with plans for action.

Let’s take each guideline:

1.
Try to edit what you say.
One way of thinking about a conversation is that it’s like playing tennis: both you and your partner hit the ball back and forth. If you are hogging the conversation with repeated negative statements, your partner is going to feel left out. He or she will stop listening. Punctuate your statements with questions and reflections: “Does this make sense to you?”, “What do you think about what I am saying?” Editing what you say also means eliminating the repetition. Your partner already got the message the first time.

2.
Reduce the drama and the negativity.
Your discussions about this between-jobs period does not have to be overly dramatic and negative. Raising your voice, yelling, pouting, being sarcastic may seem like “natural responses,” but they only add to your own misery and the unhappiness of people around you. You can talk about difficulties without making it overly difficult to hear you.

3.
Encourage the other person to talk.
We already can see that editing and asking for feedback is a way of inviting an exchange. But it also may be helpful for you to show an interest in the lives of the other people in your life. How is your partner doing? What did they do today? What’s on the news? What are some plans that the two of you can make? Getting the spotlight off you—at times—can help to improve the communication. After all, the family includes both of you, doesn’t it? “I know I’ve been talking a lot about myself, and I was wondering how your day was. What did you do today?”

4.
Talk about solutions, not just problems.
For example, if you are complaining about feeling lonely, you can always add a few words about what you are doing to connect with other people. “I’ve been feeling isolated since I’ve been out of work. But today I went onto my Facebook page and sent out a few messages to some of my old friends. It was nice to get some responses. Carolyn wrote and said it’s been a while since she’s seen us, so perhaps we can get together with her and Doug.” The thing that is great about discussing solutions is that it gets you out of your negative rumination state—it gets you out into solving the problems, getting back into the world outside you. That’s where the action is. And that helps your listener feel more optimistic about supporting you in making things better.

EXERCISE: COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR
PARTNER AND FAMILY

Here are some reminders about ways to communicate when times are difficult.

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Find the right time to talk.

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Ask for feedback when you are speaking.

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Don’t get stuck on being a downer.

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If you talk about a problem, talk about a solution.

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Try to edit what you say.

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Reduce the drama and the negativity.

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Let the other person talk, too.

5: Blaming won’t help

Many family feuds during this time often start when one partner blames the other. One man told me that his wife turned against him during his period of unemployment, ridiculing him—in front of his daughter—and telling him that he had let them down. Needless to say, this made everything worse. Eventually he did get a job, but he also got divorced. “I realized she was never on my side, it was all about her.”

Partners of unemployed people often have a lot of angry thoughts. See if any of these are familiar to you:

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You did this to yourself.

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It’s all your fault.

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You let us down.

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We can’t count on you.

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You just lie around doing nothing.

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If you don’t get a job right away we will end up homeless.

If you look at these thoughts—and if you say them—I guarantee that everything will get worse. (No one has ever told me it really helped when their partner blamed them, humiliated them, or labeled them.) Let’s examine each one.

Replacing Negative Thoughts with Helpful Ones

Your negative thoughts about your partner	More helpful thoughts to have
You did this to yourself	It’s doubtful that your partner intentionally lost their job. People lose their jobs all the time. There may be other factors involved: changes in the company, the economy
It’s all your fault	This is another blaming thought that won’t help anyone. Unemployment feels like an individual experience, but it’s really part of the economy
You let us down. We can’t count on you	Your partner is not doing this to you, it’s something that happened to them. It’s not like your partner planned this out to harm you and the family. You could be unemployed, too, not because you are negligent, lazy or incompetent but because unemployment can happen to anyone. And, you are over-generalizing by saying that you can’t count on anything from your partner. If that were true then you wouldn’t be let down right now. Losing a job is a temporary setback not a permanent loss of ability to help out. In fact, your partner can help out right now by doing things with and for the family that can be beneficial
You just lie around doing nothing	This is another over-generalization. Your partner is reading this book and doing some of the things suggested here. In fact, your partner will be keeping an activity schedule listing all the activities for each day of the week. When you look at that you might see that there are a number of things he or she is doing
If you don’t get a job right away we will end up homeless	This is very likely fortune-telling and catastrophic thinking. You are predicting a future that is bleak and horrible, based on your emotions, not the facts. Is it really true that if your partner doesn’t get a job this week that you will become homeless? It’s possible, but doubtful. What good will it do to make these dire predictions?