The Truth about What we Lose when we Lose our Job

It’s so much more than just an income.

It always hurts like a really hard punch to the stomach.

Not just any gut punch, this one feels like it was delivered by someone who really hates you. Even if you’ve known you were going to be fired, and I know those who were forewarned, the day the hammer landed it cracked them all the way through.

Here’s the bad part: What follows is even worse.

I’m writing this piece for two reasons.

One, this is as an empathetic articulation of the feelings people experience after a job loss but don’t quite understand. When it comes to feelings, verbalising leads to exorcising, and hopefully, this piece can help them breathe a little better.

Two, this is also a public awareness poster for the partners, spouses, friends and siblings of those who have been laid off. What you diagnose broadly as being depressed or upset is much more expansive, unconscious, and damaging. It looks like a bad cough but it’s actually lung cancer.

The key assertion of this piece is that the loss of a job is not just the loss of income or work. Of course, those are the immediate physical symptoms of this unfortunate event. But given the importance of occupation to a person’s existence, the loss of a job goes well beyond one’s financial status.

If not more, there are at least five losses that a person has to deal with. Some they realise but most of the time, these losses play out subconsciously and rise up in inexplicable behaviour.

In other words, if you know someone who has lost their job and is now making some odd decisions, it’s because one or more of these five may be at work.

Though it must be added that not all five may be working with the same intensity in every person, depending on their personality type and background. Some may matter a lot and some you may never have to worry about.

The five true losses from being laid off are -

1. Loss of Structure

2. Loss of Power

3. Loss of Purpose

4. Loss of Community

5. Loss of Identity

Loss of Structure:

I realised after I left my job that three-quarters of my day was actually decided by others through their meeting requests and standing reviews. The job structured my day and an average day was rarely without order and a clear to-do list.

This newly-acquired free time seems terrific at first, but soon becomes disorienting. Yes, you can catch up on your reading or exercise or meeting old friends, but you can’t do that all day. There’s a limit to how many hours you can read or run or binge watch or surf the net.

After the first few weeks, the days will start seeming empty and uncertain. For someone who has spent a lifetime on timetables with goals, they will feel lost, befuddled, and frustrated at having to spend yet another day without a plan and knowing what to expect.

This often results in falling into the easiest continuous activity in sight - something that rhymes with 'Fetlix'. It eats up hours at a time and provides some order and point to the day. Though, the feeling of being lost returns with a vengeance once the last episode ends.

“When we look in the mirror, we don’t see a person, we see a resume.”

Loss of Power:

The corporate environment awards its inhabitants with some measure of power to exercise over others, increasing in reach and potency as one ascends the ladder.

You can ask someone to get you coffee or the other extreme where you can decide if, unironically, someone gets fired. In between those two, you make decisions, order people to do things, and move metaphorical mountains because you will it.

Now you can’t do any of that.

Do your own work, get your printouts, set up your appointments, and organise your own lunch. But more than that, you are no longer working on anything and therefore have no power to exercise anywhere. You make no difference each day and no one cares what you think or want.

People will spend a regrettable amount of time arguing with everyone from the maid to the supermarket cashier because they desperately want to make someone do their bidding and feel powerful again.

“You’re not just away from people and society, it would seem that society has moved away from you.”

Loss of Purpose:

Even working for an evil corporation lends to life a purpose and a point of getting up in the morning. There’s a result needed for each day, each quarter and a larger goal on top of it all that everyone is aiming towards. It could be a sales goal or a project completion goal, but it provides a destination and a road to everyone’s career vehicle.

This loss is probably felt the most sharply because it’s the first thing one notices on the first morning. There’s nothing to do.

Yes, there is job hunting to start or maybe one would like to relax for a few days. But those are activities, not a purpose that will pervade all your waking hours.

Enter trivial projects and housekeeping activities. All of a sudden there is a renewed interest in the imagined dust on all the shelves, the homework the children bring home, and the painting that you always wanted to complete.

Anything to claim that one is busy towards a useful objective. As substitutes, most of these don’t match up to the real thing at office. Compared to the original, they prove as short-lived and disappointing as knockoff sneakers labelled ‘Rebok’.

Loss of Community:

In the society of this century, community at the workplace is sometimes as important as one’s family. They not only provide someone to talk to, share the good times, and relieve the bad ones, but also more subtly, someone to make you feel wanted.

In other words, not just a social vent, but also a social validation.

They smile at you in the corridor and wish you, ask about your family, listen to what you have to say, talk to you about their problems, and while it may not be much, all of that added together subconsciously makes you feel a worthwhile and important member of society.

Being trapped at home deprives people of all these social interactions, but more importantly, of all these unspoken cues that made them feel confident about themselves. Self-confidence starts to dip in these situations because one is no longer receiving these signals of support.

You don’t just feel lonely at home, you feel alone. You’re not just away from people and society, it would seem that society has moved away from you.

“Yes, you can catch up on your reading or exercise or meeting old friends, but you can’t do that all day.”

Loss of Identity:

What am I, if I’m not the Regional Sales Manager? What am I if I’m not an executive in the IT industry? What am I, if I’m not an Accounting professional with over twenty years of experience in Banking?

We spend so much time building our careers and very little else, that ultimately that becomes the overwhelmingly dominant part of our self-identity. We are less fathers, or mothers, or runners, or musicians, than we are our occupation and designation. When we look in the mirror, we don’t see a person, we see a resume.

You can therefore see how terrifying it is to now look in the mirror and see nothing.

This is shattering for one’s confidence and also of a sense of self. It’s scary to realise that you have nothing else to your name in all these years, other than pay checks and business cards. Each day brings unmistakeable waves of self-doubt and questions that start hammering at one’s psyche.

With some economic luck, things may not go too far into the darkness. Hopefully, a job or a worthwhile project presents itself and helps battle a lot of maladies described above.

If you’re someone who is in this situation right now, I hope this piece has been able to express your pain. You’re not alone. Keep yourself busy for now. A good day’s work cures all of this like magic.

For those who are helping someone, I hope this piece provides a rationale to the seemingly off-brand behavior you’ve been seeing off late. Be patient. This is temporary. Your partner, spouse or friend has not lost their mind.

Note the problems above and help them through it, with a blend of talk and toil. The first one to make them feel valued by you, and the second to make them feel valued by themselves.

Thank you very much, and as always, stay cool and keep building a better life. Cheers!