For those of you out there who have suffered deeply from the loss of your job and for those among us who particularly feel helpless and hopeless, it is important to acknowledge your loss, in order to work through it, and get on with living a satisfying life, despite the job loss.

At first you might feel denial and shock. “This can’t be happening to me,” you might think. Then the numbness and sense of disbelief, confusion, disorientation and bewilderment sets in. These feelings might immobilize you at first. Don’t panic. These unwanted feelings are normal.

Then, you very well may feel anger—justified of course—they are your feelings. Following those emotions is often a sense of being deprived, abandoned and empty. An increasing fear, anxiety and guilt may grip us. We might feel that if only we had appreciated our jobs, we’d still be there. Endless anger and blame may consume us until we can move on. But we can’t move on until we’ve faced the grief of job loss head on and talked it out of ourselves. Then we can get on with the business of trying to reinvent ourselves and see it more as an adventure than a bad luck burden. The experts say we will never go back to where we once were. It sounds frightening, doesn’t it? We’d rather just forget about it.

These stages are all normal thought processes. Everything written about grief tells us we must allow ourselves to be awash with those feelings, to go into the despair in order to come to acceptance and a healthy adjustment so we can start to take the steps necessary to finding our passions in other pursuits. Grieving a job loss is a job in itself. It’s hard work! The experts warn that if we don’t work through the grief, we won’t be able to get passed it and put it behind us.

That sounds like the only thing we should fear: avoiding acknowledging the feelings that prevent us from moving on.

Grief is a journey that we go through during all life transitions and changes that are unexpected and when we perceive results as less than ideal—results that downright stink.  We are faced with the unwanted journey of grieving during divorce, serious illness, death of a loved one and for many people especially lately, loss of a job. We are thrown off base and out of control. Our identities might suffer if we have placed all our eggs in one employment basket.

The depths of job loss grief depends on the level of commitment we had to our jobs, our ages, if we loved our jobs, duration on the job and if the end of the job was anticipated over time or sudden. The scope of pain also depends on our social relationships and life circumstances. Knowing is the first defense.

Job loss dredges up the ugly feelings of our previous losses in life. The extra burden can be daunting.

It’s also important to recognize if and when our stress of job loss causes physical symptoms of illness or causes us to adapt some destructive behaviors, such as heavy alcohol consumption or other harmful feelings, we need to reach out to loved ones and seek mental health counseling. There are sliding scale clinics that charge as little as tend dollars, some non profits providing counseling, and coverage under COBRA. Mental health hotlines are also free. It helps to talk things out when frustration mounts and feelings overwhelm us or gang up on us with no seeming outlet. There’s no need to suffer alone.

It helps to know we are not alone, that millions of people currently and through time have felt what we feel, no matter the cause of grief. For those who have lost a job, it helps to have a sense of community, to join a job loss club or unemployment support group, to support one another with a feeling of camaraderie and a ‘we-are-all-in-this-together’ feeling, to lift one another, share tips, leads and contacts. It also helps to carry on as normally as possible with family, faith, and friends. No need to give up the other areas of joy in life just because we lost our jobs. Volunteering for a charity also provides a healthy outlet and we are told, sometimes leads to opportunities for reemployment down the road. Do what you love, they say, and the money will follow. What have we to lose? Let us turn our fears and anger into something positive for ourselves and others who may have bigger problems. Just ask someone who has done so, if they haven’t forgotten their troubles!

Though we cannot return to the old, if we bring the monsters and demons into the light where we acknowledge and ‘slay’ them, we can look with hope to the day when we are back on the treadmill of productivity, and glance over our shoulders and say, “Yeah, I was there once…but I’m OK again.”

It’s times like these that make life worth living! We have to remember that life has wonderful times, too.Grieve your grief, put it to rest when you are ready and see you on 405!

Some helpful reading:

Grief: The Defining and Inevitable Journey (15pp. document of free reading)

By Eugene Wilson

http://www.ugst.org/uploaded/Symposium/2008/Papers/Grief_TheDefiningAndInevitableJourney_EWilson.pdf

For free books on coping with job loss and keeping feelings in balance and the perspective of reality, visit your local public library.

Mental Health Hotlines in New York State:

http://suicidehotlines.com/newyork.html

Information on a free New York City live, in-person support group:

http://cny.org/archive/ld/ld7022609.htm

-By The Job Enthusiast Who Won’t Rest Till Everyone Is Put To Work!

Read about more helpful resources from The Job Enthusiast here.