This is the second in a series on coping with unemployment. In this post we’ll give an overview of the importance of grief management and self-esteem.
Grief Management
Any loss, including a job loss, gives rise to grief. Grief is experienced in many ways. Some of the common emotions are shock or denial (“I can’t believe this is happening to me.”), anger (“My boss never gave me a chance.”), depression― which is usually anger turned inward— (“I should have seen the writing on the wall.”) and despair (“I’ll never find the job I need or want.”)
The way to manage grief is to express it constructively. When we bury our emotions, we bury them alive, and they will assert themselves in destructive ways. We need to befriend our emotions, pay attention to them, and share them with others so that we are not left alone with them.
Self-Esteem
In reality, self-esteem is a misnomer. Ultimately, self-esteem is based on other-esteem.
We need to be with people who love us in order to feel good about ourselves. A study from the University of Newcastle, Australia linking materialism to depression and anger concluded that “one source of depression among dedicated consumers was the fact that the property they acquired tended to lose value quickly.” “If your self-worth [translate “self-esteem”] is invested in what you own, as can be the case in our market-driven society, then these things may not hold their value for very long.”
Motivation to find new employment is almost impossible without self-esteem. There’s a big difference between being motivated in the job search by people who love you, and being driven into the job search by people who fear the consequences of your unemployment. As Brian McLaren asked in another context, “Would you rather be motivated by desperate necessity [fear] or surging creativity [love]?”
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