Guest Blog: Unemployed, Depressed and Searching for Hope Part II

Moving On After Professional Disaster Hits
Editor’s note:  This is the first of a two part series.

By Dr. Christina McCale, author, “Waiting for Change”

In the subsequent months after the publication of my book, “Waiting for Change” I have had innumerable people contact me: some thanking me for the book. Others commenting how they could relate to my situation. Others describing their own stories of job loss and the terror that ensues after that catastrophe has been set upon them.

But invariably, as I talk with, thank and continue to share with these incredible human beings, the question comes up: So how do you move on?

I wish I had a good answer. But in this posting, I’ll provide a bit of “framework” for thinking about the grieving process after your loved one has lost their professional identity.

Most times, when I’m asked this question, I compare the experience of the last two years to the grieving process Kubler-Ross describes: you’re going to go through different phases. There really isn’t a logical “pattern” for getting from point A (the day you lose your job) to point B (the day you realize you’ve gotten past the pain).  Not everyone is going to go through all the same phases in the same way or in the same order – because grief is a personal thing.

As I was told by a kind soul, so long ago, upon the death of my own family members:  “I promise you there will come a day – a whole 24 hour time period – when you will forget that they’re gone; that the pain has slipped away. But it may take a whole year of birthdays and holidays and missed vacations to get through all the ‘what might have beens’ before you can move on.”

While I know intellectually that there has been some comment and criticism of the Kubler-Ross model (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance), and I am hardly an expert therapist or knowledgeable about psychology, to me, it does at least seem to provide somewhat of a framework to begin to make some sense of what has just occurred – and perhaps a perspective that can help the loved ones who will now be called on to buoy the unemployed person through the next phase of their life.

A Complicating Factor

What might complicate matters, though, is that as a society we don’t see job loss as a “death” per se – although many have described work as an innate part of our identities and in many cases a cornerstone of one’s social life.  The notion of unemployment – or rather the inability to move on and find a new job – carries a stigma with it that dates back to our colonial America.

The Puritan work ethic, a belief that our dedication to doing a job well is a way of honoring God, is a part of our very social fabric. Our very language is peppered with the language that reinforces the importance of getting the job done and doing it well:

“Make hay while the sun shines.”

“Go the extra mile.”

“Your work should speak for itself.”

“Actions speak louder than words.”

“Don’t waste time.”

“Idleness is the devil’s handmaiden.”

“Don’t put off to tomorrow what you can do today.”

“Don’t just stand there … DO something.”

Some of our most fundamental attitudes come from that colonial society which emphasized the importance of work: where the community had to prioritize and safeguard its resources. Therefore, the poor then fell into two categories: the deserving poor and the non-deserving poor – those who through some character flaw or lacking in their effort to contribute their work. Later these attitudes morphed – that the poor were acculturated to be poor – that they didn’t know how to behave any differently and that their own actions perpetuated their lot in life.

So not only are we as a society taught to believe that work is an important part of our lives, to the degree that we identify ourselves through our work, but we are also then lead to the fallacy that if we are not working there must be something wrong with us.

Or if we were fired, laid off, etc., then we must have done something wrong…  been inadequate in some way.

We failed.

And let’s face it – failure is not something our society talks about willingly, let alone accept and forgive readily.

So understanding that there is a whole host of acculturation, societal expectations and psychological identity elements – not to mention the greater issues of macro-economics, social justice, and equity that I won’t even begin to touch here – how do you get through those stages of grief and attempt to get your life back in some fashion?

Not easily.

When my own identity had been ripped from me, destroying a decade’s worth of effort and dedication to complete my doctorate – something that had cost me dearly in so many other ways –to say that I had been laid low would be too cliché, too much of an understatement for the reality that would ensue. I could barely get off the couch for weeks.  I didn’t sleep more than a few hours a night. I could barely eat. The most mundane tasks of getting kids to school and dinner on the table (which turned into a lot of nights with Domino’s) became insurmountable peaks to climb.

Much like what some may feel when they lose the one they love – a spouse, a parent, a child.  You are now experiencing the unthinkable. The unimaginable is now real. After all,  our profession is a part of our identity. So it follows that we grieve at the loss of a job because we are not only losing a part of ourselves, but experiencing a social death as well.

Editor’s note: Next week Dr. McCale will discuss suggestions for navigating the emotional landscape after layoff, termination or downsizing.

About Waiting for Change:

Part memoir and part social commentary, the book Waiting for Change profiles the very personal realities of job loss during the Great Recession and the domino effect to one’s housing, sustenance, employment, children, and social support systems.  The book takes the reader on a guided tour “behind the story” of all the statistics on the evening news to explore the new and evolving landscape of poverty in the richest country on Earth.  Waiting for Change provides a mental “travelogue” that illuminates not just the immediate impacts of poverty, but the downstream repercussions, all in very personal, relatable and easy to read ways.

About the Author:

Prior to getting her doctorate in Marketing, Christina McCale worked for 17+ years in some of corporate America's biggest companies. For the last 10 years she has taught marketing and management instructional duties at the university level for the last 10 years, she has also been one of the key and has conducted research on how to best prepare our undergraduates for career entry. Today, she lives in Olympia, Washington with her son, daughter, and their two beloved greyhounds.

Guest Blog: Unemployed, Depressed and Searching for Hope

By Dr. Christina McCale

           “I can’t live like this,” I said to the person at the other end of the phone. I’d seen several flyers for free and sliding scale health services, to include mental health while making my very first visit to the Food Bank, and had picked one up. “I just know I can’t go on living this way.”

            It wasn’t the first time I’d come to this conclusion or had this conversation with a medical professional. But it was the first time I was having such a conversation with so few options due to the lack of insurance. I’d lost my health insurance when I had lost my full time job teaching at the university level: a career choice I had loved with every fiber of my being.

            Being a classic over-achiever who had worked three jobs while completing my doctorate; the stress of that coupled with two young children and a deteriorating marriage; and a family history full of stories of women who were plagued with “melancholy” or “the blues” had probably made me a prime candidate for depression, which, perhaps today, might have been diagnosed even earlier.

            So then throughout the remaining years of my doctoral program (and then, later, dissertation), the doctor continued monitoring me, adjusting my medication as need be. And things were relatively fine. Sure, there were bad days, even stressful, horrible days. After all, I passed my comprehensive exams, wrote my dissertation and ended my marriage all during these subsequent years.

            But all of that was manageable by comparison to what was to come.

            When my professional career as an academic, and the entire identity I had built for myself was suddenly yanked out from under me, I was left gasping for air and struggling to find any sense of self outside of what I had loved to do for the previous 10 years. Medication became the only way I could manage through the waves of sadness, the raging anger, and the sense of complete and utter ambiguity.

            I hadn’t even taken time off for maternity leave after the births of both of my children – in part because I had no such time to take as maternity leave did not apply to me as an adjunct faculty – but also because I couldn’t imagine not being in the classroom with my other “kids.” My students were children who were on loan to me from their real parents: kiddos I had an obligation to give my best self to each and every day.

            As I used to explain to my classes of undergraduates: “I’d better be doing what I love because each and every day I choose to leave the three people I love most in the world, and come to be with you.”

            Some people describe the day they were laid off as being the worst day of their lives. That day – and the days to follow – became the worst “life” of my life.

            Some don’t really understand the debilitating blow job loss, and the subsequent emotional turmoil that follows. Maybe that’s because some have been lucky, and have been spared that particular experience during the Great Recession. For others, the notions of unemployment come from deep seated feelings that date all the way back to Puritan America: if you are unemployed, and not infirmed, it must be because there is something deficient about you: you’re not trying hard enough, you deserved to be laid off, or you’re just too lazy to go out there and get another one.

            While I suppose there are exceptions to every situation, I tend to believe that everyone , at some level, wants to feel productive: like they are contributing. Work, as Freud once noted, is a part of who we are.  And to deny that work is a part of our identities is to deny a part of our cultural ethos: Do what you love. That your talents are a part of who you are. That we choose to make our 40-80 working hours a week not just a way to earn a living but to make it a personal expression of self.

            But work is a part of our identity.

            Work is where we find meaning.

            It’s often how we define ourselves.

            So when what we’ve been doing is abruptly taken away, it’s no wonder there can be significant repercussions. So the job loss, at least for me, became a spiral of depression and grieving. It’s nothing so simple as being linear – a straight or even sloped line from bad to worse. No, depression becomes a progression of stages when you’re trying to job hunt. Because each new step forward, puts yourself at risk. The perpetual changes take you through a perpetual cycle:

            You have jobs to apply to, so you’re up.

            When the job doesn’t come through, and you were so sure you did so well on the interview, you become morose.

            A friend doesn’t understand your disappointment, and you feel like it must be something “you’re doing” – so you’re pushed three steps back.

            You find a new job listing you’d be perfect for – so you’re optimistic.

            Weeks go by and you don’t get a call back, so you worry.

            A friend lets you know about a possibility he might be able to get you in to, and you are elated.

             People ask about the job hunt, so you get more down because you have nothing new, and no good news to share.

            You get an email from a potential employer that says you weren’t qualified enough, and so you’re back in the gutter of despair until the cycle starts all over again. The part of your bleeding soul that had started to scab up is now pulled off with the new wound of loss.

            I have a new found respect for actors and other performers who live through this cycle by choice, in pursuit of their craft. I have no idea how they do it and remain sane. Is there an inner sense of balance they draw on? Accepting themselves and knowing their value with or without the gig?

            The lesson so many long term unemployed have had to learn is that it’s not that we all haven’t dealt with sadness. And it’s not like we all haven’t wrestled with disappointment. We all have. We’re human beings. We live in the world. We know there are disappointments, set-backs, and frustrations in career management.

            But this is a new kind of “emotion management” because a person who’s been laid off may not be managing a 3, 6 or 9 month time span… but potentially years where you have to find the strength and the resources to navigate the self-doubt and rejection you experience when one is laid off.  A set of skills to navigate the ambiguity and the rollercoaster of emotions for more than just a few months … but potentially for 12-24 months?

            So what is helpful? That may depend on the person involved, just as the grieving process can look different from person to person. But undoubtedly one of the most important things is to find the resources you need to survive during this time: find the people who are supportive. Find the organizations who can help you.

            Additionally, for the people surrounding the one who has been laid off, this next period of time might seem a bit like being a caregiver. Learning as much as you can about depression and long term unemployment may certainly be helpful.  But just as caregivers of those with Alzheimer’s or Cancer need to take care of themselves and find their own support networks, so do those who are providing care and support to the long term unemployed.

            Because we certainly couldn’t get through those hard times without you.

About the Author:

Dr. Christina McCale, author of Waiting for Change 
www.waitingforchange.us
Prior to getting her doctorate in Marketing, Christina McCale worked for 17+ years in some of corporate America's biggest companies. For the last 10 years she has taught marketing and management instructional duties at the university level for the last 10 years, she has also been one of the key and has conducted research on how to best prepare our undergraduates for career entry. Today, she lives in Olympia, Washington with her son, daughter, and their two beloved greyhounds.

About Waiting for Change:

Part memoir and part social commentary, the book Waiting for Change profiles the very personal realities of job loss during the Great Recession and the domino effect to one’s housing, sustenance, employment, children, and social support systems.  The book takes the reader on a guided tour “behind the story” of all the statistics on the evening news to explore the new and evolving landscape of poverty in the richest country on Earth.  Waiting for Change provides a mental “travelogue” that illuminates not just the immediate impacts of poverty, but the downstream repercussions, all in very personal, relatable and easy to read ways.

GUEST BLOG: Human Resources in the Pressure Hangover

Kate Burke and I met in cyberspace when she reached out to me to interview me for a class project on social entrepreneurship and suicide prevention. Six months later, she is interning for the Carson J Spencer Foundation remotely from Washington, D.C. and helping us build our Working Minds Program. Her blog speaks to the challenges HR professionals face when trying to promote mental health in the workplace.

Unless you’re a park ranger, this image is in stark contrast to the realities most of us face when we head into our days, in particular our workdays.  Instead of calming colors and soothing sounds, the concrete jungle and an impression that challenges loom as large as the buildings can surround us.  On such a day, I came across the following quote by Victor Frankl:

When we are no longer able to change a situation,

we are challenged to change ourselves.

This quote struck a cord with me.  There were quite a few things outside my control, which were consuming my energy and hopes.  I was a manager of 20 administrative staff, which included extensive performance management and employee relations duties, in one of the largest professional services firm in the US and globally.  The economic downturn had required a number of tough staff decisions as well as a restructuring of my team.  These stressors mirror situations faced by many Human Resources professionals noted in an HRCrossing article titled WorkplaceStress and the Human Resources Professional.  One of which is…

Dual allegiance: Trying to be of service both to the managers and blue-collar employees can put enormous stress on the consciences of human resources professionals. If, by chance, adversarial relationships exist between the two groups, then the human resources professionals may get scorned by both sides and viewed as inefficient meddlers.

I felt I was between this proverbial rock and a hard place. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has also noted in their report Stress at Work that “extensive literature links job characteristics (e.g., low levels of control and work overload) to job stress and stress-mediated health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease and psychological disorders”.  Their diagram included here shows how a mixture of work stress and factors from outside work can work for or against people with possible negative outcomes for health.  This stress trap was also termed a “pressure hangover” in an article titled “Creativity Under the Gun” in the Harvard Business Review.  The article notes that working under pressure situations can require a few days for recovery.  This idea supports further the idea that chronic stressful conditions increase risk of illness, by not allowing recuperation time between pressure intensive projects.

For me, the work stresses in addition to other life stressors were making it more difficult to keep my emotions in check.  The phrase “Let it go” was oft repeated by friends and colleagues, with an occasional “You care too much”.  So how does one manage if you want to care about life but have no framework on just how is it you, “Let it go”?  Even while “being proactive” is a catch phrase in corporate America, there is a gap in proactive work being done to create Healthy Workplaces as it relates specifically to mental health.  Seemingly ever-increasing stress levels in the workplace are compounded by evidence I observed that organizational leaders are not fully prepared to handle employees who are facing severe stress, depression or other mental illnesses, and even less those that are contemplating suicide.  I would say this is mostly due to lack of knowledge versus lack of caring.

As is mentioned later in the HRCrossing article, I followed the path of many HR professionals, and took my own advice in making a change.  I resigned after 10 years in an intense corporate environment to pursue a master’s degree in Social Enterprise at American University with the intention to find structural solutions for healthier workplaces and work lives.  This program is allowing me to bring together my experience from business, entrepreneurial practices for new business structures – whether for profit or non-profit – and a commitment to live and encourage more balanced living of integrity.  In the course of my studies, I researched whether there were people applying the methods and ideals of Social Entrepreneurship to the field of mental health in the workplace and came across the Carson J Spencer Foundation (CJSF).  In particular CJSF’s program, Working Minds, is an answer to what I had observed during my time in Human Resources and Management and was encouraged by how they are bringing the entrepreneurial spirit to this conundrum creating healthy workplaces nationally and internationally. 

Working Minds showcase workplaces that practice innovative and effective approaches in promoting mental health at work through contests.  They also open dialogue about mental health in the workplace by providing education and training in suicide prevention.  This approach not only works to help the individuals facing challenges, it also contributes to the organizations through a double bottom line of social/health benefit and financial benefit.  Instead of the costs associated with absenteeism and turnover, Working Minds equips leaders to create a working environment where staff can get assistance and continue to contribute to the organization.  The training normalizes the discussion of mental health, and provides intervention skills when needed.  There is also focus on re-integration after crisis situations, all of which helps create an environment where people can reach out for help as well as continue to contribute.

I am excited about what Carson J Spencer Foundation (CJSF) and Working Minds is accomplishing and being a part of expanding their work.  I encourage you to join in the effort by being a changemaker in your organization.  Open the dialogue with your leaders about creating a healthier workplace.  If you or any colleague you work with is at a crisis point, reach out for help through the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.  This link can also provide more information about warning signs.  Become informed and ask for training from Working Minds.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kate Burke is a consultant with over 15 years of experience in business in the private and non-profit sectors.  Ms. Burke's most recent experience is in operational management and human resources with the professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.  She focused on performance management, process improvement and change management projects in San Francisco Bay Area and Washington Metro Area.  Ms. Burke has also worked with a locally based management company, a national non-profit higher education association and national life insurance company.
Ms. Burke holds a B.A. from Westmont College in International Studies with an emphasis in Latin America, including studies in Costa Rica.  She is a Masters candidate in Social Enterprise with the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC.