How to combat unemployment grief

Some good news: The U.S. experienced an increase of 1.8 million jobs last month. And now the bad news: 12.9 million people are still unemployed.

If you’ve ever been laid off or unable to work, you may be familiar with the drop in self-worth that often comes with a job loss. But where do these feelings come from, and why do they persist even at a time when mass layoffs are no worker’s fault?

In May, I reached out to Kelsey Autin, a counseling psychologist and an assistant professor for the department of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, about our complicated feelings about work.

People’s work has become their identity

Work can contribute positively to someone’s sense of identity, says Autin, by providing structure or a sense of purpose and achievement. But there’s a dark side to this: Our competitive, capitalist system leads people to believe that their value is based upon what they can produce. It gives status to the act of “being busy” and fuels a belief in meritocracy – that if you work, you’ll be fine, and if things aren’t fine, you have done something wrong. Further, for people who provide for their families and lose their jobs, they also suffer a blow to their identity as a provider.

“When [these messages are] so baked into us and that's all we’re socialized into [believing], even if we can see objectively that everybody's unemployed right now, our first reaction … is to say, ‘What did I do wrong?’ and to self-blame,” Austin said. “So you’ve got the loss of all those positive things, and, at the same time, we're embedded in this cultural system that blames the victim.”

Lots of myths back up our sense of work failure

While Americans today struggle with multiple jobs and precarious gigs, films and TV shows paint an image of a recent past in which people worked at the same company for their entire careers, then enjoyed a pleasant retirement. But this, says Autin, was rarely a reality for anyone besides upper-middle-class white men.

Developing new forms of identity can help

People who’ve experienced job loss can explore the benefits they get from other identities, perhaps within their family, through a particular skill or hobby or through creative work. It’s also important to acknowledge and mourn a job loss and seek social support through the grieving process, as if it was any other kind of loss in your life.

Above all, people are less likely to self-blame when they seek collective action

“When we have a cycle of self-blame going on, it's really important, especially for people who were vulnerable to begin with, to recognize the social and economic forces [at play] … and engage in some kind of action to feel like they have a bit more control over the situation,” Autin said. “An example of that might be joining an advocacy group that advocates for workers' rights or worker mental health, or writing to your congressperson to advocate for a certain social protection plan. Though there needs to be a lot more done on this, there's a lot of research suggesting that this can be helpful and can help reduce some of that self-blame.”