Coping with Job Loss and other Disasters
My intention this week is to offer some thoughts and resources to those facing or threatened with job loss as the unemployment rate in the United States nears 25%.
And I will do so. But as tragic and traumatizing as the economic effects of the pandemic are, before anything else I have to acknowledge the rage and shame that I am feeling, along with millions of others, at the police murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, the murder by white vigilantes of the unarmed jogger Ahmaud Arbery, the racist threats against Christian Cooper for the crime of “birding while black”. These acts - on top of countless similar incidents in recent years - particularly grieve the communities of color who have also been afflicted with infections and fatalities due to COVID-19 at rates that are multiples of the white communities, the result of social policies that create massive racial disparities in the burden of disease and therefore vulnerability to this new virus.
The protests against the Floyd murder and other racist acts have so far been met with widespread additional police brutality and misconduct, alongside examples of some examples of real leadership. The only facet of this national shame which is not surprising is the role of the present Federal administration in exacerbating rather than healing the injustices and divisions shredding the social fabric of the nation.
The blogger Jason Kottke has done a valuable service in collecting a number of voices from the communities of color that speak to the present moment - I urge you to spend time reading and listening to these voices and reflecting on the path this country must take going forward.
Job Loss
We are a few days away from the release of official statistics which are expected to show that unemployment has reached levels not seen in this country since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. This means that all of you have either lost a job, are made anxious by the potential for job loss or the same happening to a loved one or coworker, or in some cases are in leadership positions tasked with deciding whether job losses will be a necessary part of institutional survival.
After the last economic collapse of 2008/9, we began to recognize that the economic effects of the collapse were mirrored in the body, somatized in the form of “deaths of despair” from suicide and addiction. American life expectancy declined for the several years as a result. Whether this will happen again will be determined by governmental response to the tidal wave of COVID lob losses and the manner in which business and institutions respond. The US suicide rate is already the highest of any of the OECD nations (and of course our healthcare costs are much higher and our outcomes and population health much worse).
Job loss is a narcissistic injury, a blow to our image of ourselves. One does not need to be a narcissist, in the usual pejorative sense in which that term is used, to suffer a narcissistic injury. We need some level of healthy narcissism or ego strength to survive; without it, we would be reduced constantly to puddles of tears.
High-functioning professionals are generally very invested in their jobs, believe themselves to be doing a good job, to be creating value in the enterprise. The loss of a job, whether for performance-related reasons or as a result of economic factors, usually feels terribly unjust to such people, almost like “losing yourself”. Aliya Hamid Rao’s article captures this sense clearly, and also draws attention to the particular psychic impact on men, who have been socialized to believe that they have a special responsibility to provide for their families. I know this feeling.
When it happened to me, it was only with time and reflection that I was able to see the institutional logic behind the blow that I felt, and to no longer take it personally as an injustice. I’ll go further: the setbacks - and the resulting sense-making I went through - were instrumental in setting me on the path to the coaching and consulting work I’m doing now, the most gratifying stage of my career. Out of lemons, lemonade - but it could have been otherwise.
Sally Maitlis does a fine job in this HBR article of outlining the impact of job loss and the pathways that are opened, for good and ill. Virginia Buckingham’s successful career in the Massachusetts public sector came to a screeching halt because she was head of MassPort - the owner of Logan Airport - when terrorists used it as a departure point for two of the airplanes used in the 9/11 attacks. She talks in quite personal terms of the impact that had on her and the lengthy road to recovering her professional equilibrium.
If you know you’re anxious because of job loss or the threat of job loss, you may be one of the lucky ones. Anxiety is the shadow of achievement, its companion. "If you’re anxious and you know it, clap your hands”; most people are anxious and don’t know it, oblivious to their physical, somatic symptoms, or ascribing them to some organic cause or as the inevitable overhead of high performance. Chronic pain, backache, GI distress, headache or migraine, addictive behavior and substance abuse; all can be physical manifestations of anxiety, or worse. As Bessel van der Kolk has written, The Body Keeps The Score.
Modern capitalist society with its civil religion of meritocracy, the belief that winners deserve their success and that losers get what they have coming, has greatly exacerbated the shame of life’s setbacks including job loss. A society that doesn’t believe that bad things befall all of us at times for reasons beyond our control, is a society that can’t be compassionate to those in need and which produces leaders that can’t be compassionate either, to others or to themselves. Most of you, especially in these times, face this challenge of compassion in both directions: in your responsibilities towards your teams, your enterprise, your communities - and to yourselves. We have institutionalized the sin of hubris with results in anxiety, depression, suicide and callous social policy. The good news is: each of us can start to change with how we treat ourselves, and those who depend on us for leadership.