Keeping Your Head After Losing Your Job (22 page)

6: Stretch time

When you are out of work you find yourself focused on getting the answer as soon as you can—“When will I get the job I need?” Solving the problem immediately is a natural part of anxiety. But it only adds to your anxiety if you are focused on the immediacy of your demand—getting it Now. You may not have the answer for a while.

Most people who are out of work get a job in a few weeks or a few months—some linger on longer. You might not know when it will happen—but you still have to live your life, every day, in this time between jobs. For example, you may remember Harry from Chapter Five who had been a chronic ruminator since he was a child. Harry was in his fifties and was out of work for five months. He was worried about when he would get a job. He told me, “I have been trying for months, but it’s not easy. I have to get something near where we live, since we are not going to move, and there aren’t a lot of jobs around here.” I thought for a minute, realizing that Harry had excellent job skills, was a very good worker, but that he really needed to think of giving himself more time. He did have a severance package that fortunately provided him a bit of a cushion, so I asked him, “What if you gave yourself another six months? Why the urgency to get something now?” Harry looked at me and said with a smile, “I never thought of it that way. You’re right. There is no urgency for me to get a job right now. I can continue looking for a while.”

This was an excellent example of the value of stretching time. With more time, he could consider more possibilities. The job market was always fluid, jobs were periodically coming available. He could stretch time for more months, network more, perhaps even acquire new job skills. Stretching time gave Harry more freedom and more options.

Now Harry was in an enviable position because he had a severance package. Stretching time for a possible six months more was not going to cause immediate financial hardship. But he may be unusual in having this kind of cushion. Many people will not be in that position, so increasing the search time for finding a job may require major economizing at home. It may require going into savings, borrowing, downsizing. All of these are unfortunate realities, but it is always possible to consider alternatives to the sense of urgency. Almost everyone can live on less—at least for a while.

What are the implications for you if you stretch time?

Ask yourself if it is possible to give yourself a wider window of time to look for a job. If you changed your expectations and gave yourself a few more months, what would this mean? Would it relieve some of the psychological pressure? Would you be able to consider more options? What would be the costs to you and your family? Would there be some cutbacks in spending? Are there resources you could draw on? I am offering this as a suggestion, and it may be harder for some than for others. Harry was able to get a new job in a few months after our conversation. It was a good job, not ideal, but it did allow him to move on to working, earning, and using his skills. But he told me that giving himself permission to stretch time was immensely helpful to him.

Another way to stretch time is to think of your current unemployment as one point in time. Your life may go on for decades beyond the present moment. Let’s say that you are thirty years old and you can expect to live another fifty-five years. If you are unemployed for several months (or even longer) at this point in your life, does it really have as much impact on your entire future life?

This is what I would call your “time-horizon.” Let’s say that you have been out of work for two months. Let’s assume for right now that you might be out of work for another four months. (You might get a job next week, but let’s just play out this mental experiment.) Now, if you are out of work for six months and you live another fifty-five years, what real difference will it make over the long run? You might have another thirty years of earning. You might take your next job and then “trade up” to a better job in another year of two. You might acquire new skills and get even better work later. Your current unemployment is not a permanent disability from which you will never recover.

If you think about your future earnings over the next thirty years, how much money would that be? If you subtract out the loss of income during the current period of unemployment (while taking into consideration any unemployment compensation), what percent of your total life-time earnings is represented? When I have asked people to do this kind of calculation it really helps them put into perspective that the current setback is a temporary and—for many—ultimately a minor setback.

Putting your period between jobs into perspective over a lifetime

Increasing your time horizon for future earnings and future work not only will allow you to see more options in the future, but it will also help you to recognize that this current problem is a small percentage of your total life. Imagine this: what if everyone in the world was “required” to go through five months of unemployment? This would be a built-in expectation. How would everyone in the world consider how they cope with this and put it into perspective? It might sound a bit unrealistic to imagine this kind of situation, but a lot of people will have a period of unemployment at some time.

What if we all built this into our expectation—at some point we will all be—or could be—unemployed? Then the question would be, what would your expected life-time earnings be? Well, by definition, your lifetime earnings would be what you would expect to earn if you were never unemployed, minus the loss of income during the period of unemployment. This would represent a very small percent of your total lifetime earnings. For example, if you expect to work for a total of forty years, then the loss of six months would be 1.25% of your total lifetime earnings. (This would be with the unrealistic assumption that during the six months you would have absolutely no unemployment benefits.) If we adjusted for unemployment benefits, it might represent about 1% of your total lifetime income. That is, you would be losing 1% of your total lifetime earnings.

I think almost all of us could survive on 1% less over our lifetimes.

By stretching time, getting a longer time horizon for future earnings, you can consider the high likelihood that you will be able to recover your earnings, move forward, put this in perspective, and get on with a productive life. Losing a job is hard—but it is not a death sentence.

Stretching time helps us realize that the financial difficulties and the need to economize may be temporary. It may have almost no long-term implications for our quality of life. You will have time to recover, time to earn again. You might be delayed in buying things you like, but so what? You may have to wait to take that vacation you dreamed of, but it can wait for you. You may have to wait for the new car, but you can live for now.

Stretching time allows you to put the current setback into perspective of a larger life, with more chances for earnings, more opportunities to recover, more of an ability to get on with productive work.

This is just a moment between jobs.

EXERCISE: COULD YOU STRETCH TIME?

Look at the following points to help you decide whether you really need to have a new job right now.

•
Are you telling yourself that you need a job immediately?

•
What is the evidence for and against the idea that you need a job right now?

•
What would be the costs and benefits of extending your time for searching for a job?

•
What additional things can you do to improve your searching if you give yourself more time?

•
If you got a new job in the next couple of months, how many more years of being employed could you expect?

•
What would be your total lifetime income from the beginning of your employment in your early adulthood to your retirement?

•
What percentage of your lifetime income is represented by your lost income during your current period of unemployment?

•
If your current unemployment represents a small percentage, what is the evidence that you will be able to recover financially in the future?

10

GETTING OUTSIDE YOURSELF

You don’t live in a world without people and connections. You were meant to talk to people, get support and support them. When you are unemployed—and you don’t have the regular contact with your co-workers—it’s easy to become isolated. It’s easy to feel all alone, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Brian thought he was an outcast from life. Unemployed and sitting at home brooding about how bad things were, he no longer had the daily contact with his friends at work. He remembered how he would arrive at the office at work, take his coffee out of the bag, and joke around with his colleagues, Laura and Frank, before he had to get down to getting his work done. In fact, he enjoyed the office because he always had someone around to talk to. Now he felt lonely, with nothing to do, and he wondered why his friends from work seemed to have no contact with him since he left. “I thought they were my friends,” he said, looking down at his hands as if he was trying to make sense of something. “It’s as if I disappeared from their lives.”

Brian did have friends outside work, but he said, “They’re too busy. They’re working during the day and they have their families at night. No one has time for me.” And, since he and Jane had broken up after dating for a year, he didn’t have her either. Not that Jane would have been any consolation—she was continually complaining that he didn’t make as much money as her ex-husband. But at least it was something to do—hanging out with her. That had ended four months before he lost his job. “I lost my girlfriend, and then I lost my job,” he said. It’s been a great year for me, hasn’t it?”

I asked Brian what his typical day was. He looked at me with an empty hopelessness in his eyes, his voice becoming softer, more tentative and sadder. “I usually feel there is no reason to get up in the morning. There’s nowhere to go, no one to see. I wake up at around eight, lie there thinking about how my life really sucks, try to get back to sleep. It’s hard. Sometimes I just lie there for an hour, thinking, feeling sadder. When I get up I make some coffee, have some toast, watch the news. It just seems to repeat itself. I sometimes don’t get dressed until the afternoon. Why bother?”

“Do you see anyone during the day?”

“Are you kidding? Who is there to see? I’m alone.”

Understandably, Brian felt lonely, sad, helpless, unsupported, and despondent about the future. The reality was that he was out of a job, didn’t have a girlfriend, and he had lost contact with the structure of going to work and seeing his friends and colleagues. That was the reality. But he was coping with this reality in a way that was making everything worse. He was isolating himself, taking a passive role, giving up before he could get started, and brooding about how bad things were. He was taking a bad situation and making it worse. It was time for a change. You won’t get anything done by
waiting
for things to happen.

1: Turn passivity and isolation into action and engagement

There is nothing bad that can’t be made worse. OK, you are out of work; perhaps you are living alone, but there are better ways of coping than simply lying around waiting for life to get better. Throughout this book I have been repeating the message—perhaps nagging you—that you can take responsibility and take action and do something different. It
can
be different. Isolation, passivity, rumination, and worrying are choices that you make. They are terrible ways to cope—and they may come to you automatically, but there are better alternatives.

I suggested to Brian that it was time to get a plan and carry it out. His current strategy of passivity—lying in bed, moping around his apartment, and isolating himself—was just adding to his depression and helplessness.

“Are you willing to make some changes and take some steps to making it better?” I asked.

“What steps?”

“Is what you are doing really helping?”

“No, I feel miserable.”

“OK. Let’s come up with a plan to take action to deal with your passivity and loneliness. It’s going to require you doing things differently, even doing things that you might feel uncomfortable doing. Are you willing to be uncomfortable?”

Brian said, “I’m uncomfortable now.”

I told Brian that we needed daily goals, daily assignments, that would get him out of his isolation, out of his apartment and out of his ruminating head. We were going to identify possible sources of support and contact, possible activities, possible networks and groups. And he would have to take the first steps to initiate contact and follow through. But first we would have to deal with his shame and embarrassment about being unemployed. You will remember that we looked at the self-esteem issues that arose through feelings of shame and embarrassment in Chapter Four. Here we look at how isolating ourselves can make these feelings worse.

EXERCISE: LOOKING AT THE EFFECTS
OF PASSIVITY AND ISOLATION

Work through the list below to focus on the consequences on your feelings of passivity and isolation.

•
Is passivity and isolation making you feel worse?

•
Why do you feel worse when you are passive and isolated?

•
Are you willing to develop a plan to take action?

•
Are you willing to set daily goals? Weekly goals? What do you want to experience and accomplish that can take you out of your head?

•
Are you willing to do things that are uncomfortable that can help you make progress?

2: Overcome your shame

In Chapter Four we discussed the shameful feelings you might have about being out of work. You think of yourself as a different kind of person, as someone who has a mark on you, as if you are inferior, a burden, a disgrace, a forgotten man or woman that no one would want to be around. Being unemployed is a condition of unemployment, it is not a disease. You are still the person you were when you had a job. You are still a complete human being, still someone with intelligence, values, the capacity to give and receive, and the ability to relate effectively with other people. Once you get past your shame, you can open up your social world and get out of the shell in which you feel trapped. But how do you do that?

Let’s look at Brian’s thoughts—what was he telling himself that was making him feel ashamed? “I feel so embarrassed being out of work. I often think other people are looking at me and thinking there is something wrong with me. I think they are thinking I must have screwed up, perhaps they think I did something at work that caused me to get the sack. I wonder if they think about my ending up homeless, a burden. I think that when I am talking to someone, they are probably thinking, ‘I don’t want to be around this guy. He’s so depressing.’”

Brian thought people looked at him and could see right through him. He was doing a lot of mind-reading about how other people were thinking—with almost no evidence that anyone had these thoughts. In fact, it may be that people were not thinking about his unemployment—or might not even know about it. I know when I meet someone and they tell me they are unemployed, I do think about it. I wonder what it is like for them. But invariably the conversation turns to something else. They might be talking about their family, politics, neighbors, films, their interests, or the latest gossip. People talk about a lot of different things. But Brian felt he was wearing a big “U” around his neck and people were thinking, “He is unemployed.”

Test your shame-thoughts

We’ve already seen how your thoughts can make you miserable—and these thoughts are guaranteed to make you unhappy. But thoughts can be true or false, and you won’t know until you examine them. These shame-thoughts can be tested, put under your mental microscope.

First, as I have mentioned before, you might wonder if anyone you are talking to has ever been unemployed. Perhaps they actually know what you are going through. Or perhaps they have a close family member who has been out of work. Perhaps being unemployed is normal, almost a universal experience for families, friends, and self.

Second, given the fact that there are always millions of people who are unemployed, it’s possible that people think that someone can lose a job because of problems with a company or with the economy in general. Perhaps it’s an external reason, not something intrinsic about you. I’ve known a lot of people who have lost their jobs in construction, services, finance, law firms, public relations, media, college teaching—even psychologists! The job market is fluid and sometimes a job flows out and takes you with the flow.

Third, why would someone think that you are going to end up homeless? Almost everyone gets another job. Unemployment may be longer than you want it to be, but it is almost never permanent. That would be a pretty unusual outcome for someone who has lost a job to end up homeless. Do you think others are thinking that all unemployed people end up on the street? I doubt it.

Fourth, it might be that someone might think it’s depressing or awkward talking to someone who is unemployed. But does it have to be depressing? My sense is that it really depends on what you are talking about. If you continually dwell on the negative, it can be a downer—not only for the other person, but also for you. But you don’t have to ruminate and complain when you talk to people. In fact, you might actually talk about the things we are going to discuss in this chapter. And I’ll bet if you do, it will make both of you feel better.

It’s always better to talk about the action you are taking to make things better than the sense of feeling trapped and defeated. What you talk about is really up to you. It can bring both of you up or put both of you down.

3: Identify friends and family—and reach out

If you are going to build your support network, you need to start with the people that you already know. You might start with your family—your parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and in-laws. There’s a good chance that some of them have gone through periods of unemployment, so they may know what it is like. Since you have more time on your hands, you might have more time to talk with them, see them, and do things together. Brian was able to turn to his brother and spend some time visiting him. It was actually a good experience for both of them. His brother, Dan, was able to feel useful and supportive, and Brian was able to feel a lot less alone. They had dinner together, talked on the phone, emailed each other. This turned out to be a big support to Brian.

Some people are reluctant to turn to family members because they feel embarrassed about their unemployment and they don’t want to lean on someone. Carol was one of these people who thought she should be able to handle everything on her own. Although she had two brothers and a sister, she said, “I don’t feel comfortable talking to them. They all have jobs and families. Why would they want to hear from me?” I asked Carol if her sister, Lara, were out of work if she would feel comfortable talking with her.

“Of course, I’d want to be there for her. She’s my sister.”

“Is there some reason that Lara would feel differently about being a sister to you if you are unemployed?”

Carol began to realize that she had a double standard. She thought she was a burden, but she would have thought it would be OK if her sister turned to her. “In fact, when I think of it, I would actually feel bad if my sister didn’t turn to me if she needed support.” Carol realized that one of the things you want to do if you are a sister or a friend is to support them. You want them to turn to you when they are in need of you.

Carol reluctantly reached out to Lara, called her on the phone and told her that she was out of work and that she was looking for a job. As they talked, Lara told her about some of her friends who had been laid off in recent months and how she was worried about losing her job. “There have been so many layoffs in my business, and I worry that I’ll be next. In fact, it could be me calling you for support. So I’m glad you reached out to me.” Knowing Lara was on her side was a relief for Carol. They began to brainstorm possible leads, people that Carol might contact for possible jobs, and thought about how to expand her network, how to keep herself busy, and how to lift her mood. “Let’s have lunch next week and catch up on things,” Lara said.

Reconnecting

You will want to connect with people in addition to your family. I asked Brian to go through his list of contacts and rate people into three categories—those who would be good people to see for job leads or for social support, those of moderate relevince, and those of the least relevance. Close friends, former business or work colleagues, professional contacts, and other people with whom Brian had closer relationships were the first category. He was able to identify a number of old and current friends—some who could be a source of social support, some who might be professional leads. We decided to start focusing on these people first.

Brian said, “I haven’t been in contact with some of these people for over a year.”

“So what? If one of these people contacted you after a year, what would you do?” I asked.

“I’d think it was unusual, but I imagine I would be curious about what was going on with them.”

“When was the last time someone contacted you who hadn’t been in contact for some time?”

“About six months ago, my friend Phillip emailed me after Christmas and said it had been too long since we had talked. We emailed back and forth and set up a lunch and, you know, it was really good seeing him.”

“You know, Brian, it’s so easy to fall out of contact with people. We get busy with work and family and other things. People move and it feels awkward to initiate that contact, but perhaps it’s worth a try.”

Brian decided he would contact three old friends and see if he could get together with them. “But what do I talk about when I see them?” he asked.

“You might talk about what you talked about when you last saw them.”

Brian recalled that they often talked about his friend’s family—what the kids were doing, their latest holiday, sports teams, politics, mutual friends. Sometimes they would talk about work.

“Now that I think of it, a few years ago one of my friends, Ed, was out of work, and we talked about how he was coping with that. I remember he told me that he felt he got blindsided at work, suddenly they just laid him off, and he was fairly pissed off about that. I could understand that. Especially now.”