Coping with Your Emotions
The basis of the unhappiness and fears of the unemployed older executive is partly related to age. But much is also related to the "death" of a way of life, and to the loss of job-related relationships. It is not unusual for the newly unemployed to remark that losing their jobs "felt like they had just died," "felt like a death in the family," or "was as bad or worse than a divorce."
To become an effective job-seeker, you need to understand why unemployment has such an adverse effect upon you-and to learn that if affects others in the same ways as well. Then you can begin to cope with the job loss and start making the adaptations necessary for relatively normal functioning during your "abnormal" state of unemployment. By discussing the emotional problems of unemployment with others in the same boat and taking some action, you can again feel in charge of yourself and your destiny. You can arrive on the other side of unemployment increased in stature-not destroyed in person.
Emotional Stages of Unemployment
Older executives vary widely in their reaction to unemployment. But regardless of differences in personality and in ability to cope, they can be expected to go through three emotional stages during the period they are unemployed. According to Scott Budge, a group counseling specialist, those stages are: job loss, balance/dismay, and adaptation.
Much of the information in this chapter is based on interviews with Scott Budge, a group counseling specialist formerly at Pace University in New York City. During the early 1980s, Budge worked regularly with a group of unemployed executives, managers and professionals from the New York Forty Plus Club in a one-and-a-half-hour per week.
Stage 1: Job Loss.
During this stage, older executives are disoriented-they have suddenly lost their daily routine. They have to face telling family and friends of the loss, and anticipate their shock and anger. Family reactions are relatively predictable, and executives dread these responses. In fact, many male managers go for weeks without telling their families they're unemployed. Friends, on the other hand, are almost always initially supportive; but too many of them seem to "fade away" as the period of unemployment lengthens.
Older executives' immediate reactions are generally of confusion, not depression. Some have a feeling of suspension of time-they even feel elation. They may take a vacation or time off as a means of avoiding facing what will be a severe loss. Emotionally they flip-flop between concern over economic factors (how will they get along without their income, benefits, etc.? how will they meet their expenses?) and anger over their job loss.
They begin their job search with exaggerated confidence. They're sure they'll have no trouble finding a new job. This confidence remains if they're successful, but soon evaporates if they have to spend eight months or more looking for a replacement position.
Stage 2:Balanced Dismay
Most unemployed older executives make some kind of arrangements about their financial spending within two months-they reduce outgo, refinance, file for unemployment, etc. This reduces their immediate worries about money, although the worry remains just below the surface. And they achieve emotional distance from the job loss.
But the initial feeling of loss is replaced by a growing dismay that finding a job is not within their control and that the most frequent response to their job-search efforts is silence. They become puzzled and may be immobilized. Pessimism takes over. They may reinterpret their preceding weeks' efforts as vain or unrealistic-or a waste of time. As one executive put it:
Self-esteem erodes from within. The unemployed become convinced that "something is wrong with me," They really feel that people can look at them and tell they are unemployed. They ask questions like: "Can anyone tell I'm out of work?" They don't sleep at night. They feel abnormal. They often become depressed.
This is the stage at which older executives seek help from professional counselors, buy self-help books (like this one), go to search firms, even seek psychoanalysis. Budge says they often address questions to counselors which are really requests to know how they are supposed to feel. "I don't sleep at night. Am I depressed?" or "Is it normal to feel this way?"
During this period, they struggle against their loss of self-confidence. A new routine which masks the pain of unemployment with the trappings of daily working life is usually the result.
Stage 3:Adaptation
The newly developed routine becomes the basis for the third stage: adaptation. The routines are a protective ritual against self-doubts and frustration. Unemployed older executives must struggle continually to assure themselves that things are OK, that everything will work out all right, even though they realize their sense of personal worth is tied up with their worth to an organization-and that to be employed is to be employed for someone, not merely by someone.
As time goes on and they still have no employment, the jobless learn to manage their days to protect their positive sense of self and to keep the realities of their situations invisible. They may increase their participation in community affairs, proceed with businesslike activity (appointments, calls) and keep to a time schedule. Their job hunt will probably be more continuous, better organized and sophisticated, even though rejection continues. Because this activity, which should be productive, is not, their notions of reward for effort and activity are upset.
