A reader writes:
Like a lot of people, my life fell apart during the pandemic. Within a year I went through a sudden and painful divorce and was laid off from a leadership role in tech. This was the start of the great tech collapse and I was out of work for over a year. After that I’ve been bouncing from job to job and had a few sudden terminations, including one two months ago. It feels like the last five years have been a series of rug pulls, and each time when I get back up, the rug has gotten smaller and dingier.
Each job I’ve settled for is worse than the last one, in both money and title (I went from a well paid director role to an underpaid manager role) and less safety. I’m also working through diagnoses of adult ADHD and autism and with all the other stuff, I must be giving off some kind of unhinged, desperate vibe. I get good reviews from my teams and coworkers, but I’m still blindsided. My friends and former coworkers tell me it’s not me, but it’s lonely being let go, and scary not to have a safety net anymore.
Yet I can’t seem to bring myself to look for another job. I told myself I was going to give myself a break and try not to shame myself for once, but it’s been two months and the thought of job searching makes me want to puke. Maybe it’s that I would have to confront rejection again, or the fact that this could happen to me again (I am in tech, after all) and it feels sickening to put myself through that. Yet I truly can’t think of another way.
There’s nothing I want to go back to school for, or another job I want. I know that white collar tech jobs are a privilege right now, but there’s nothing else I think I’m suited to do. I know I’m smart and compassionate, and my teams tend to be high-performing and grow, but I’m sick of having to prove myself and start from scratch yet again. I am smart enough to understand that nothing will change about my situation unless I do something about it, but I just can’t bring myself to care.
It’s not like me to just bury my head in the sand, but I’ve realized in therapy that I would get myself to do things by shaming myself, and for once I’m not interested in doing that. But I have no idea how else to motivate myself when I can’t see the end goal being worth it. And just because I’m not shaming myself doesn’t mean I’m not ashamed, if that makes sense. Having to explain yet another short job length to strangers or even friends and acquaintances makes me burn up with shame.
I am not expecting you to answer this. You must get these sort of letters a lot. And I’m not sure what practical advice you could give. In my experience people tend to write in to advice columnists because they’re hoping for the advice columnist to say something they want to hear (and when they don’t are the most entertaining posts).
If I am honest with myself, I am hoping you will be kind to me, and tell me to be kind to myself. If that’s the case … how do I do that? And how do I do that AND bring myself to do something about my situation?
My hunch is that your self-worth is all tied up with your job situation.
And understandably so — we live in a culture that trains us to do that. (Well, some of us; it tends to be limited to a specific socioeconomic slice of society, and only certain types of work.) We absorb messages all the time that make us feel our jobs are a reflection of who we are and how worthy we are, and so if we’re struggling professionally or not getting the jobs we want (or any job!) it must be because of some deep deficit within us. Otherwise, things would be working out.
The thing is, though, it’s bullshit. So much of who gets what job is about chance or luck or other things that have nothing to do with merit. Moreover, in a job market like this one, it’s sort of like a game of musical chairs: it doesn’t matter how good you are, there aren’t enough good jobs to go around, and so some people aren’t going to get them. That’s not about you; it’s about economics and the current world.
The key to not letting that reality pull you apart is to depersonalize work — to see it as less a manifestation of you as a person or as a reflection of your worth and simply as the thing you do for money. That’s easier said than done, I know, but it can be hugely liberating to separate the labor you trade for money from your value as a person. Doing that will give shame far less room to creep in, because now it’s just a transaction and not … all that other stuff.
It’s so much kinder to yourself to see things that way (and yes, you should be kind to yourself, because why would you not be worthy of kindness?) but it’s also more accurate, and it might make it feel easier to move forward.
