The Emotional side of Redundancy
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Redundancy can be both devastating and liberating. On the one hand it's very tough realising there are going to be job cuts and you've been chosen to go over someone else. On the other you may like a change in direction anyway and suddenly losing your job doesn't seem such a bad idea after all. You can actually turn it into a very positive experience. But the fact remains, being made redundant from your job can be mentally, physically and emotionally draining. It's a dramatic change, and one which you need to deal with emotionally head on. There are five emotional stages in any bad news situation and redundancy is no different. The five stages are as follows:
1) Denial
2) Bargaining
3) Anger
4) Despair
5) Acceptance
These five stages can occur in either the sequence presented or in any variety of the sequence. One stage can last a long time while the whole process can take from days to months, depending on the individual. The main thing to note is that these stages are normal and to be expected. Your emotional health will be recovered much more quickly if you accept these stages, and recognise them for what they are rather than fight them off or to ignore them. Getting outside support and help during this process will assist in gaining stability and understanding.
1) Denial
You deny to yourself that you have really been let go and that in reality nothing has changed and all will be fine. This can take the form of not telling family and friends that you have been made redundant, hoping that by ignoring it the situation will go away. This is a classic initial defence mechanism, allowing your mind time to get over the initial shock.
2) Bargaining
You try to get your employer to change their mind and not make you redundant or ask to be reallocated internally rather than be shown the door. This stage can also take the form of you striking a bargain with yourself to take extreme measures to change the situation. Sometimes you will make rash decisions in the heat of the moment in the hope of getting a quick cure to the situation. Again this is a mental defence mechanism giving you the illusion of a quick fix for your predicament.
3) Anger
You become angry with your employer, with colleagues, even with family and friends, using them as scapegoats for what has happened. It is critical to realise that Anger is a normal stage and that it must be expressed and resolved. If anger is suppressed and held in, it can lead to depression and will ultimately drain your emotional energy.
4) Despair
You become overwhelmed by the worry and hurt of your situation. Again this is a normal emotional response and manifests itself in different ways for different people. For some it can be of crying, bouts of deep silence, morose thinking and even melancholy. There can be feelings of guilt, namely that you brought the redundancy on yourself and also a belief that things will never get back to normal again. The most important thing is to recognise this stage and deal with it, ideally by seeking support from family and friends, and should that not be enough, then by seeking professional support. If you do not deal with despair there could be an impact on your personal relationships and by extension on your ability to deal with future interviews.
5) Acceptance
You begin to reach a level of awareness and understanding of your situation and can start to deal with redundancy. You begin to look at your redundancy from a rational perspective and begin to adjust your life to incorporate the changes necessary. This is adaptive behaviour. You can now start to express yourself more freely and can verbalise the pain and hurt you have experienced. More importantly you can now plan ahead and start to set time lines on learning to deal with your new circumstances. At this stage your self-confidence will start to reestablish itself.
It is important to remember that you can be growing in acceptance and still experience denial, bargaining, anger, and despair. To come to full acceptance we need support to gain objectivity and clarity of thinking. It is often useful to gain such assistance from those who have experienced redundancy before you.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
This is not as scary as it sounds. The basis of cognitive behavioural therapy ("CBT") is a psychotherapeutic approach that aims to influence problematic and dysfunctional emotions, behaviours and cognitions through a goal-oriented, systematic procedure.
CBT treatments have been successfully used for a variety of clinical and non-clinical problems, including mood disorders, anxiety disorders, personality disorders, etc. It is often brief and time-limited. It is used in individual therapy as well as group settings, and the techniques are also commonly adapted for self-help applications. The objective is typically to identify and monitor thoughts, assumptions, beliefs and behaviours that are related and accompanied to debilitating negative emotions and to identify those which are dysfunctional, inaccurate, or simply unhelpful. This is done in an effort to replace or transcend them with more realistic and useful ones.
