Keeping Your Head After Losing Your Job
Read Keeping Your Head After Losing Your Job Online
Authors: Robert L. Leahy
Praise for
Keeping Your Head After Losing Your Job
Losing a job is like losing a piece of yourself. It can cause real damage to your self-image, your mental health and your physical health. Robert Leahy’s
Keeping Your Head After Losing Your Job
is a practical guide to picking yourself up, restoring your health and wellbeing, and getting the motivation and confidence to move forward with your life. This invaluable resource also has tips for family members who want to help, but don’t know how. Leahy is an international expert in teaching people how to recover from setbacks and live healthier, productive lives.
~ Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema
, author of the bestselling
Women Who Think Too Much
Tough economic times bring tough psychological challenges -and that’s where
Keeping Your Head After Losing Your Job
comes in. It’s based on the best research for what really helps people cope - changing your thinking. You might not be able to avoid losing your job, but you can try to avoid the depression that comes along with it. The book also has invaluable practical advice on money management, job searches, and venting without wallowing in victimhood.
~ Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D
., Associate Professor of Psychology (San Diego State University) and author of
The Narcissism Epidemic
and
Generation Me
A great self-esteem book
~ Healthy Magazine
Leahy provides psychological tools to help you handle your unemployment, with simple strategies that can be used immediately
~ Money Magazine
Every unemployed person and their family members will want to read internationally renowned psychologist, Dr. Robert L. Leahy’s book,
Keeping Your Head After Losing Your Job
. Being unemployed is not simply about losing a job, but it also can involve losing hope, feeling ashamed, becoming isolated, financial worries, losing a sense of who you are and increased family conflicts. With powerful self-help tools for the many difficulties that you face, Dr. Leahy gives wise, compassionate, and empowering advice.
~ Aaron T. Beck, MD,
Professor Of Psychiatry, University Of Pennsylvania
KEEPING
YOUR HEAD
AFTER
losing your job
HOW TO SURVIVE UNEMPLOYMENT
ROBERT L. LEAHY, PH.D.
Author of The Worry Cure
USA
Behler Publications
Keeping Your Head After Losing Your Job
A Behler Publications Book
Copyright © 2014 by Robert L. Leahy, PhD.
Cover design by Yvonne Parks -
www.pearcreative.ca
.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leahy, Robert L.
Keeping your head after losing your job : how to survive unemployment / Robert L. Leahy.
pages cm
ISBN-13: 978-1-933016-62-7 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: (invalid) 978-1-933016-61-0 (ebk)
ISBN-10: 1-933016-62-0 (paperback)
1. Unemployment--Psychological aspects. 2. Self-esteem. 3. Self-actualization (Psychology) 4. Stress management. I. Title.
HD5708.L3943 2013
158.7--dc23
2013026416
FIRST PRINTING
ISBN 13: 9781933016-62-7
e-book ISBN 9781933016-61-0
Published by Behler Publications, LLC
North Fayette, PA
Manufactured in the United States of America
To my brother Jim, who is always there
Table of Contents
1
Looking Differently at Where You Are Now,
2
You Have a Right to Your Feelings and the Ability to Change Them,
5
Don’t Get Stuck in Your Head,
6
Why Me? Feeling Like a Victim or Becoming Empowered?,
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is always a challenge to do justice to the many people to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. But I will try.
Let me begin by thanking my many clients, friends, family members and neighbors who have shared their stories about coping with unemployment. It is their voice and experience that I wished to convey in writing this book. Often the unemployed person feels marginalized, forgotten and desperately helpless, but their stories and their examples of courage and perseverance can give hope to others.
Once again I recognize how invaluable my colleagues at the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy in New York City (
www.cognitivetherapynyc.com
) have been. They have been gracious enough to allow me to share my ideas about this book and their insight and experience are reflected in whatever is of value. Thanks, especially, to Dennis Tirch and Laura Oliff, who continue to educate me and support our mutual work together. My research and editorial assistant, Poonam Melwani, has been tireless in her detailed devotion to the many projects that we work on.
In North America I am grateful to the many colleagues and mentors that I have had, including Brad Alford, Aaron Beck, Judy Beck, David Burns, Tom Borkovec, David A. Clark, Frank Dattilio, Allison Harvey, Steve Hayes, Stefan Hoffman, Steve Holland, Steve Hollon, Sheri Johnson, Thomas Joiner, Marsha Linehan, Chris Martell, Lynn McFarr, Lata McGinn, Dean McKay, Cory Newman, Art Nezu, Christine Nezu, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Christine Purdon, John Riskind, Kelly Wilson, Terry Wilson and many others. Writing is a lonely enterprise that, ironically, reflects the voices of a multitude. Thank you to all.
Thanks, also to my many British colleagues over the years whose work continues to inform and inspire: David M. Clark, Christopher Fairburn, Melanie Fennell, Paul Gilbert, Emily Holmes, Warren Mansell, Costas Papageorgeo, Roz Shafran, Adrian Wells, Mark Williams and, of course, my good friend Philip Tata. I have been honored over many years to participate in the conferences held by the British Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Psychotherapies as well as the European and world conferences where I have been fortunate to get to know my international colleagues.
My editor at Behler Publications, Lynn Price, has been immensely supportive. Bob Diforio has been my dedicated, skilled, wise and wonderful agent for many years. His dedication to this work and to the message it represents has been far beyond the call of duty. Thank you, once again, Bob, for your friendship and support. And, to my brother, Jim, I am forever grateful for always being there, always generous, always wise. This book is dedicated to him. Finally, I once again realize that words are not enough to express the gratitude I have for my wife, Helen, who is the wind beneath my wings.
INTRODUCTION
There is no doubt that we are currently in a time of economic crisis. This creates a sense of added urgency for you if you are one of those who are unemployed—and it brings the threat of unemployment closer for many who are currently in work; however, it is important to remember that we always have had, and always will have, a substantial proportion of people who are unemployed. Indeed, many of those who are employed right now may well have been unemployed in the past—or will lose their jobs in the future.
Unemployment is a fact of life. I realize that will be of little consolation to you if you are unemployed, but it is vital to understand that you are not alone. I have seen how unemployment can demoralize and humiliate the very best of people—how unemployment becomes a life experience that people often experience in isolation. But it needn’t be that way. You can survive unemployment and, although it may seem unlikely at present, even turn it into a positive period in your life.
How is that possible? Because you may not have a choice about what happened to you, but you do have a choice about how you handle your period of unemployment. And let’s not underestimate the importance of taking care of yourself during this difficult time. Unsurprisingly, if you are unemployed, you are more likely to suffer a reduction in mental health, life satisfaction and objective physical well-being—and that equates to a greater risk of binge drinking, depression, anxiety and suicide.
Uncomfortable reading, I know, but it highlights how important it is to use all the skills you have—and some new ones—to adjust to your new situation. This book is designed to help you do that. Its purpose is to outline the psychological tools that I believe will help you to cope better with your period of unemployment. It is not a book on how to get a job, succeed at interviews or write a CV. It is far more important. It is a book that will help you—and your family members—cope more effectively during a period that may be the most difficult one you will ever face. Over the years I have worked with many unemployed people and have family members and friends who have faced unemployment, therefore a lot of what is in this book is based on what my clients, friends and family members have taught me about what works—and what doesn’t work—during this time. It may be a difficult period, but there are things that you can learn that will help you deal with this time more productively, and indeed help you to live your life more effectively once you get a job. You can think of this time as “this is happening to me” or you can think of this as “I am going to make things happen.” You can be passive or active; you can wait for the next job or take control of your life today and make your life your job. How you handle the “job” of being in between your last job and the next will be up to you. I have spent many years working as a cognitive behavior therapist and have found that a lot of the ideas that are used in cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT, have been helpful to clients of mine who had to cope with unemployment. Throughout this book I rely on the power of CBT. Quite simply, it is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes changing the way you think (“cognition”) and the way you behave. It isn’t a long, drawn-out process (I won’t ask you to examine your childhood, for example). Yes, it can take a little time to perfect some of the techniques, but rest assured that each self-help chapter will have simple techniques that can be used immediately to help you feel better and to act better. In the book you will find exercises to help you work through the suggestions and techniques that I have described. You may choose to complete some of these in the charts provided or you could use a notebook instead. There is no doubt that unemployment is an unfortunate and difficult time—and for a large number it is the most difficult time that they have ever faced—but by keeping your head and learning how to deal with this time well you can also learn how to live your life more effectively once you get a job. Unemployment is a time for new priorities and new meanings. It can also be a time when you rediscover what truly matters to you.
1
LOOKING DIFFERENTLY AT
WHERE YOU ARE NOW
You have lost your job and find yourself sinking into the depths of painful and confusing feelings. You may feel that this is one of the worst times in your life. Going home to tell your family that you are out of work is the most difficult experience that you have ever had. You feel embarrassed, you feel you have let them down, you feel that your world is crashing down on you. No longer leaving home to go to work, you sit alone, the hours drag on, then the days, and then the endless weeks out of work. You have nowhere to go.
You find yourself dwelling on your situation and think, “I never thought this would ever happen to me.” Often you find yourself alone with your thoughts and feelings, not knowing when you will get out of this, not knowing if you will ever get a job that you would like. You worry about your finances and what your friends and family think, and you feel embarrassed telling people that you are not working. You are angry, confused, anxious, and depressed. At times, you even wonder if this could really be true. If you are unemployed, you are not alone.
I would suggest that you think of this time as “in between”—that is, the time in your life between the last job and the next.
You are not alone
To understand how others cope with this experience, let’s look at a few people who have gone through what you are going through now.
Claire had been working in her marketing job for the last six years and she thought she was doing a good job. But business had been falling off, people were spending less on marketing, and business people were afraid of the condition in the economy. For a while things were not looking good, and then the “axe fell”: Clare got laid off. Unemployed for four months, living alone, worried about finances, feeling like she had failed, and angry that she was in this predicament, Claire felt more and more discouraged.
Ed has three children and had worked at the company for over 15 years, but with new competition in the field, the company no longer needed him. Without a university degree and without a lot of savings, he took “a package” to leave, but he actually had no alternative. With income for a couple of years, he had to work out what to do to take care of his family. A lot of other friends and family over the years had also lost their jobs, so he knew it wasn’t just him. Some had taken to isolating themselves, whereas others had taken to drinking. Ed decided that he would do whatever it took to make things work. Today he has several part-time jobs, none of which pays very well, but all of which add up to enough to live on and enough to support his family. He cuts grass, drives a local school bus and repairs computers. At 60, he looks in better physical shape than most people who are 30. He said to me, “I am working all the time. I have to.”
Tom had been working at his company for over twenty-five years. They were downsizing and laid him off. Prone to depression in the past, he came back into therapy to see me, to get some support and some ideas on how to cope. For two months before coming in he had been sitting at home dwelling on how unfair this was, how he felt ashamed, and how he worried about taking care of his family. He was feeling sad and inclined to isolate himself, but we started working together to turn things around.
I said, “Let’s consider this the time in-between your last job and your next job. Let’s not waste this opportunity to make things better. Let’s develop a plan and follow it through.”
These are three people with three stories and you will meet others in this book. Your story might be similar, but perhaps it’s different. There are tens of millions of stories about people who have been unemployed—or who are now unemployed. Each person copes with it in their own way, often approaching their time of unemployment with some of the same problematic or adaptive styles that they might use with other negative life events. Ironically, even though the chances are quite good that someone will experience unemployment at some point in their work history—or that their spouse will—no one has ever trained us in how to cope with this normal and difficult life event. There is no university course that you can take called “Unemployment Basics”—even though many people with degrees will have a period of unemployment. It may feel like you are a “different kind of person” because you are unemployed, but you are the same as you were before—and what has happened to you can happen to anyone.
Let’s take a look at how widespread unemployment is, so that you will know that you are not alone. And then we will look at the downside of being unemployed, so that you will know that you need to take action to cope with this difficult time. Unemployment can affect your health, your self-esteem, your family relationships, and your risk of depression. It’s important that you do all you can to cope the best you can.
It’s bad enough to be out of work, but you have a choice about how you deal with your repetitive negative thoughts, how you act and how you relate to the people in your life.
Unemployment is everywhere
When I started writing this book the unemployment rate was 9.1% in the US and over 8% in the UK, with the expectation that unemployment would remain historically quite high for a long period of time. As disturbing as these figures are, it is even worse in many other countries, with Spain having a chronically high level of unemployment over the last three decades (averaging 14.2%), France averaging unemployment of 9.5% for the same period, and some countries showing astronomically high levels of unemployment: Zimbabwe reported in 2009 that its unemployment rate was 97%; many African countries are affected—such as South Africa (25%), Kenya (40%); and countries with political conflict report high rates—such as Kosovo (40%), Tajikistan (60%), Iraq (18%).
In many countries—including the US and the UK—the official unemployment figures often underestimate the actual number of people who are “really” unemployed, since many people have stopped looking for jobs (and are therefore not included in these figures), many others are under-employed (working part time) and many others fail to try to enter the workforce because they are discouraged about their prospects.
Another way of looking at employment is the “labor-force participation rate,” which is the percentage of people of working age (16–64) who are actually employed. In the US this had dropped from 68% to 64% between 2008 and late 2011. That means that about 36% of people who are in the employment age range are not working for a salary (Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor, 2011, October 7).
The figures were very similar in the United Kingdom. In 2011 the Labor Participation Rate was 62% (World Bank, June 2012).
Many of these people are homemakers, students or people on disability allowance, some are earlier retirees or people not looking for jobs. It’s interesting, I think, that in the early 1950s the labor participation rate was about 55%—lower than it is today—primarily because a very high percentage of women were full-time homemakers and, therefore, were not counted as employed. Of course, if you had to pay a mother or wife for all the work she is actually doing, it might bankrupt most families. In my view, they have one of the hardest jobs, 24 hours per day, 365 days a year.
Whatever the current unemployment rate is, it will feel too high for those either unemployed or worried about losing their jobs. Adult men are more likely to be unemployed than adult women, and teenagers and blacks show the highest rates of unemployment. In 2010 the rates of unemployment varied considerably depending on ethnic group (Whites= 4.4%; Asian= 7.4%; Black= 12.1%) (Office for National Statistics, UK, July 2012). But unemployment hits all ethnic groups, all levels of income and educational level and, whoever you are, is difficult to cope with.
What are the costs of unemployment?
As widespread as the problem is, the facts about the effects of unemployment on quality of life are even more distressing. Unemployment is not simply a statistical figure, a number or a political point to make. It is about human beings, their families and their future. And the facts are not comforting.
The first fact to consider is that unemployment actually eventually kills some people. Long-term mortality rates are higher for people who have been previously unemployed. In a study in Finland by Pekka Martikainen of the University of Helsinki, mortality for the previously unemployed was 2.5 times higher than for people not previously unemployed.
1
Even when considering initial health differences and other demographics for the unemployed, the increased mortality is 47%. Margaretha Voss and her colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm followed 20,632 twins in Sweden from 1973 to 1996. They found that unemployment increased mortality over this period of time, with significant increases in suicides, injuries and accidents, and with higher mortality rates among the less educated in this group.
2
Secondly, unemployment leaves a scar for many. That is, the effects seem to continue even when people get a job. This lingering problem includes an increased likelihood of future unemployment,
3
decreased life-time earnings (even when discounting the period of lost earnings during the jobless period) and continued worries about losing the next job.
4
Research by Paul Gregg and Emma Tominey of the London School of Economics indicates that youths who suffer periods of unemployment have a 13–21% decrease in earnings by the age of 41.
5
If you have been unemployed as a young person, you may be at risk of lower lifetime earnings. Unemployment, for many, may continue to affect life chances.
Thirdly, people who are unemployed have greater risks of a wide range of medical and psychiatric problems including depression, insomnia, anxiety, worry, suicide, feelings of helplessness, low self-esteem, malnutrition, cardiovascular conditions (especially heart attacks), alcoholism, increased smoking and generally poor physical health.
6
The threat of unemployment leads to increases in cholesterol—that is, thinking that you may become unemployed affects your cholesterol level.
7
According to the Pew Research Center and research by others, the unemployed are also at a greater risk of drug abuse and of engaging in crimes, especially burglary.
8
Relationship conflicts, marital distress and the loss of friends are not uncommon among the unemployed.
Fourthly, many of the unemployed delay important life decisions, such as marriage and having children in both the US and UK.
9
The unemployed, fearing the depletion of their financial resources and the uncertainty of future financial security, often experience this “lost time” during their period of joblessness. Life for many seems delayed. The opportunities and freedoms available to the rest of us are lost—some may have a difficult time recovering.
How you may be thinking today
If you are like a lot of other people who are out of work you know that your mind can be a dangerous place to spend time in. You may have had any or all of the following negative thoughts:
•
I will never get a job.
•
I failed.
•
I am a failure.
•
Nothing I do works out.
•
Everyone will think I’m a loser.
•
This is the worst thing that could happen to me.
•
I have nothing to do with my time.
•
Why me?
These negative thoughts seem to keep coming back; you dwell on them and you think that you will never feel better, never get a job and never get out from where you are. You may also think that “because I am unemployed I have to be unhappy.” We are going to work together to change your mind about your mind—just because you are thinking these negative thoughts over and over doesn’t make them true. Just because you are out of work for now doesn’t mean you can’t make your life better. You don’t have to believe everything that you think.
You can change the way you think
We are going to look at a number of ways that your mind is working, how to change it, and how to act in your interests rather than passively focusing on the negative. Let’s consider the following:
Your feelings matter
If you are unemployed, you are likely to experience a range of feelings—many of which are painful, disturbing and difficult for you. You may experience anger, confusion, frustration, humiliation, anxiety, sadness, hopelessness, helplessness—and even, on occasion, relief that you are no longer working at that job or waiting for the axe to fall. People may have told you to snap out of it, stop feeling sorry for yourself or to think positively. Of course, none of that works, which only makes you feel more alone and more misunderstood. You sometimes feel stuck in the feelings that you have at the moment.
How do you deal with these feelings? Do they make sense? Do you think that your feelings will last forever and do you think anyone understands or cares? Do you isolate yourself, drink, overeat, seek out reassurance or spend endless time surfing the internet to escape these feelings? Are you able to be compassionate and caring towards yourself or do you criticize yourself for the way you feel? Your feelings are important, and the first thing we will deal with in this book is your right to have the feelings you have. You are not a robot.
You need a plan and you need to take action
Have you become passive and isolated without any direction to your daily life? Like many people who lose their job, you wonder what you are going to do with all this time on your hands. You may not have a plan for the day, sitting passively, watching television, worrying, dwelling on the negative. But I am going to suggest that you now have two jobs—the first is looking for a job and the second is taking care of yourself. You have a lot to do, and you need to have a plan. That’s where this book comes in.
You are stuck in your repeated negative thoughts
You sit at home, dwelling on the position you are in. Your repetitive negative thoughts—which we call “ruminations”—keep coming back, over and over: “Why me? I can’t believe that I am in this position. I feel so bad, so alone, so much like a failure. Will this ever get better?” You sit with these thoughts, hour after hour, day after day, isolated in your head, alone, getting more and more depressed. You keep “looking for an answer,” you keep trying to make sense of it, you keep repeating the most negative thoughts, images and feelings. And you get more depressed.