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Sandy

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recovering from redundancy

Losing your job is one of the most hurtful things that can happen to you, so you need to know that...  

  It's all right to feel bad about it 
 
It isn't your fault and you're not a bad person  
 
You can survive this and your life isn't over

It may feel like losing a person

It's quite like living through the death of someone close to you.  Being bereaved of your job often brings up the same painful feelings as a bereavement in the family - disbelief & denial, wanting to escape or hide, guilt, frustration & anger, a deep & long-lasting sadness, a wish to turn the clock back, a sensation of having lost control over events and feeling powerless. If you're feeling any of these then don't be afraid that you're going mad. You're not. You're a normal person suffering something abnormal and anything bad that you're feeling is natural.

But - even though you may be finding this hard to believe just now - "nothing lasts for ever", and you will be able to cope with this severe blow.

Doing the right things can help speed up the recovery process.

Talk about it

Almost the worst thing to do about a hard knock like this is to bottle it up and try to deal with it alone. This is because the strong feelings you're experiencing make it very hard to think straight, make decisions, or take action. "Talking out" the feelings is the best way to get them into proportion and stop them from pulling you about.

You may be a private person who finds it hard to talk about feelings. This, though, is probably the time in your life when you need to make yourself do it.

Try to find somebody who...

  will give you space and really listen to you
  is warm, calm and trustworthy
  won't try to tell you what to do, but will help you work out your own answer
  won't tell you all about their own troubles
  will help you to tell your story in your own way

And if you don't know anybody like that then think about getting help.

Get a balanced view of this experience

However bad this may feel, it's something that's happened to you and it isn't the only thing that's important about you. There's a lot more to you as a person and, since you're probably already feeling negative, the things to focus on are the positive ones to get a bit of balance into this. That means thinking about and writing down all the things you can do and have already done - there will be many of them to counterbalance this bad event. This isn't the time to be modest - it's the time to be fair to yourself.

Be clear about your strengths

Get a piece of paper & head it "Achievements". Write on it all the problems you've solved in your life, all the difficulties you've surmounted, all the things you've done that you're proud of. Write all of them, big and small - there will be a lot of them if you do this honestly and take a day or two over it. Don't knock yourself - look at the good things you've done.

Get another piece of paper and head it "Skills". Write on this one all the things you can do - you might divide them into three columns, "Skilled", "Competent", "Can Cope". Again, take time over it and write down all the things you can do - there are lots of them.

When you feel low, look at your lists and remind yourself: you're able to do many things and you've achieved a lot in your life.

Look for solutions, not at problems

It can be very difficult to see past a problem of this size, because it dominates your field of view and makes it hard to concentrate on anything else. However, the problem has already happened, so it makes more sense to spend time thinking about what could happen.

The past can't be changed, but the future can

Analysing a problem can sometimes be helpful, but analysing redundancy won't change the facts of it, so may not be worth while (but will certainly be depressing).  Try to let go so that you can move on again.

Thinking about solutions and trying them will often break the log-jam of inertia, and I've noticed that if you can get yourself to do something, it will often free you up and give you confidence to go on getting back into control.