Forty percent of people will lose a job at least once in their lifetime and 23% of people will lose a job three or more times, according to data from Intoo and the Harris Poll. In being fired, laid off, or furloughed, 73% of people will experience anxiety. This easily understandable anxiety may be increased or decreased in intensity depending on how much money you have in savings, whether this loss also means loss of your health insurance, or a need to relocate to a place with more opportunities, and what kind of connections and skills you have, in order to secure another position. It also matters if the industry you are in or the national or global economy is expanding or contracting, or if the cost of living is rising. But let’s shine a light on something mostly overlooked regarding career downturns and job losses–estrangement, that loss of belonging.
Freud called Love and Work, “cornerstones of our humanness.” Many people spend at least as much of their awake time at work as they do outside of it. Social relationship networks form around work assignments, identities are forged and reinforced around job titles and acquired skills. So, to no longer be on friendly terms, to be escorted out of the building by security, to have lost closeness and affection and the support of co-workers, perhaps respect from members of your own profession, is to be suffering estrangement. As with every type of loss, to grieve it, it’s important to be able to name it.
The year was 1997. Our youngest son Kenneth had died in June on the summer solstice, and the sale of our family business was finalized in mid- July of that same year. As we were signing the papers, the owner/manager of the company who purchased us, who happened to be a social worker said, “So much grief, Sheila. Seems like a lot, all at the same time.” It was a lot. A lot that needed grieving.
Changes in the payment structures in the healthcare industry, referred to as “managed care” had made it necessary to become part of a larger organization to be able to stay in business. Our behavioral health care clinic, Iatreia Institute for the Healing Arts had been, for the first 5 years of its operation, a dream come true for my husband and me, a place to birth something new after I failed to get tenue at the university, despite an 8-1 vote in my favor. Its second 5 years of operation, became an example of the nightmare dreams can sometimes turn into. Everything became harder, and the therapists who worked for us had trouble accepting the sea change that had transpired in the marketplace. A change that eventually meant it took 42 steps or behaviors to be completed by a much larger staff, between the time a client first called for an appointment and when we would eventually get paid. The service itself was right in the middle. If the steps were done out of order, no preauthorization, no payment.
The January this transition happened in the insurance industry in our region of the country; the social work intern I was supervising nailed it when she came back from her Christmas break. “It feels like I left the best, close to heavenly field placement anyone could ever have, and returned to one that must surely be in hell.” “You get an A,” I told her.
It is customary for the leadership of a company to stay on for several years after being acquired, and we did, but since the company had little idea of what my role had been in making the business something they wanted to purchase, and they had no women in leadership roles at that time, there wasn’t a place that they or I felt, I truly belonged. After 18 months of their trying to run it without listening to someone who knew what it took to build it, they did ask if we wanted to buy the clinic back. We respectfully declined.
