Season 3, Episode 9: Moving Forward After Job Loss
Job loss can shake your confidence, your sense of purpose, and even how you see yourself. In this episode, we talk with social worker Jessica Sitko about the emotional toll of losing a job and how to start putting the pieces back together.
We explore why careers often feel so tied to our identity and what it looks like to rebuild self-worth when that identity is shaken. You’ll hear practical advice for managing financial stress, navigating difficult conversations with family, and finding hope when the job search feels overwhelming.
This conversation also dives into the grief that can follow job loss, the mindset shifts that can help you grow through it, and how reaching out—whether for support, connection, or new opportunities—can make all the difference.
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Katherine Hurtig
Welcome to Living Fully. Each episode is a chance to talk about mental health in a way that's simple, honest, and helpful. We'll share stories, tips, and tools to help you feel supported and feel your best. I'm your host, Katherine Hurtig.
When you meet someone new, what's one of the first things you ask? Probably, so what do you do, right? For a lot of us, work isn't just how we spend most of our time. It's a big part of who we are. So what happens when that suddenly changes? Losing a job, no matter the reason, can stir up a mix of emotions. Grief, anxiety, maybe even shame. It's a lot to process. In this episode, I'm joined by social worker Jessica Sitko to talk about what comes next. We'll explore how to navigate all those feelings, find a way forward, And most importantly, rediscover who you are beyond just your job.
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So today we are talking about how to cope if we lose our jobs. There's a lot of feelings that come up when that happens. You know, we're going to talk about themes around identity and, you know, the uncertainty and anxiety when that happens and grief, lots of different feelings. And I'm here with social worker Jessica Sitko. Thanks so much for chatting with me today, Jessica.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Katherine Hurtig
And you haven't been on the podcast before. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Yeah, so like you said, I am a social worker. I've been with the Calgary Counselling Centre for about a year now. I'm originally from Ontario, and I've been living and working in Calgary for almost three years now.
Katherine Hurtig
Excellent. Well, yeah, thanks again. And yeah, we're talking about coping after job loss. So Jessica, like when someone loses a job, it can kind of feel like losing a part of who we are. So why do our careers feel so tied to our identity?
Jessica Sitko
Well, I think it's kind of like increasingly so that they're feeling tied to our identity. You know, I was thinking kind of like even historically, we didn't really choose our jobs. It's kind of like if your dad was a carpenter, you were probably going to be a carpenter.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Jessica Sitko
Or, you know, even those like gendered roles around what employment looked like was a lot more laid out for you. And now this kind of emphasis around choice around careers, I think, really kind of digs in that feeling like culturally that our jobs really are sort of important to us.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure. And I think we're expected to kind of decide and figure that out really early.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah, totally. When you think about like the messaging that teenagers get about kind of like making big choices for their life. those are framed as really big choices that are kind of really tied to, you know, their interests and their values. Like why are you choosing a career path that's, you know, XYZ versus something else?
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Jessica Sitko
Um, it really kind of comes down a lot to values.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. And like, also it's just, it's where we spend so much of our time.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
You know, I mean, if you're working full time, that's 40 plus hours a week. So I think that it'd be difficult not to feel like your job is a part of who you are.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. We start to identify it when we spend so much time there. It's also kind of like social identification. Like when you meet someone new for the first time, what's kind of the first question you ask? Oh, totally. What do you do? Exactly. And so when that's the first question kind of starts to become like, what is important about me is my job is like one of those first things.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Yeah. And so obviously that can be a real hit. Yeah. If we end up losing our jobs for some reason. Yeah. And I think it too, it's like a big part of your routine and like, what is predictable about life is like, you're going to go to work on Monday. You're going to see your coworkers. There's a lot of like social, um, connection that's really built around work for a lot of people. Um, and so if we lose our job, it can feel like a loss of our routine, a loss of our identity, a loss of our social group. Um, it, it can take over like a lot of the different areas of your life for sure.
Katherine Hurtig
So if someone, um, loses their job, what typically are some of the, the feelings, the thoughts that, that they might experience?
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. So, I mean, I think it depends, uh, on individual circumstances, but certainly like feeling of failure or rejection, uh, especially again, depending on the circumstances around the job loss, um, a lot of time embarrassment, it can be really hard to have these conversations with friends and family, regardless of kind of the reason for the job loss that can feel really kind of shameful and difficult to talk about.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Going from there, I mean, these, you know, uncomfortable feelings. I mean, that sounds like it could really impact your self-esteem, your self-worth.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah, entirely. Yeah. Because it's kind of, again, like, what do we get from work? for a lot of people, it's like a main source of, I don't know, like success, like feeling like, you know, you're kind of making progress is a lot of the time in your job. Um, and so to kind of take that away also is, yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Like this societal expectation, like that's kind of a commonly accepted, um, what am I trying to say?
Jessica Sitko
Like a marker of success.
Katherine Hurtig
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. is, you know, progress in your career. Yeah. So I guess kind of a two part question, like, would you say it's kind of important for someone to separate their self-worth a bit from just their job title and what they do? And if so, like, how do you go about doing that?
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. So I think the keyword there is probably like a bit, uh, and maybe like separating from the title. Um, because certainly we want our work to feel meaningful. Like I think that there's, there's nothing wrong with enjoying your job and seeing it as valuable and seeing it as important and, you know, seeing your interactions there as, as meaningful or important, but we, we don't want that to be kind of like the only pillar of your life, so to speak. If you kind of picture that roof of, of a house and we just stick one pillar underneath of it, if that one pillar crumbles, the whole roof is coming down, right? And so when you're asking how do we sort of start to separate that, I think it's about building up some other pillars of your life so that if we were to lose a job and we have to take out that pillar of work, the whole house doesn't crumble. We have other things that we're invested in, other social connections, other hobbies, other interests, other sources of success, other sources of progress, and other sources of value in life such that, you know, if any one of those pillars kind of goes down for a while or, you know, an illness comes in or something else happens in life, we want to be able to maintain the other important things without kind of losing sight of our identity.
Katherine Hurtig
You listed some examples there, but what other kind of quote unquote pillars would a person potentially have?
Jessica Sitko
Yeah, so it could look like friendships, it could look like our intimate relationships, partnerships could look like family and hobbies could look like, um, you know, religious interests. Um, if that's relevant to the person, I think everybody's going to have those different pillars and things that kind of keep them going, but we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. That's funny that you use that. I'm sure everyone who listens to this podcast is sick of hearing me talk about running. Um, but I, I got into running the past few years and I will say that it's taught me so much about my mental health and I like my own therapist I had that conversation with her about you know not putting all my mental health eggs in one basket because you know I was loving running so much it was so great for me but then I got a stress fracture and so I couldn't for a while and I felt a little lost.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
Like okay well now what do I do to feel better. So yeah, I think that's important. I mean, in any aspect of our life is, is to not be like all in with anything.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. To be kind of spreading out our resources. Yeah. Um, and growing in different areas of our life. Like if, you know, again, we kind of sometimes talk about like the work-life balance, um, as being, you know, trying to spend different amounts of time doing different things and putting different emphasis on different areas of our life. And if we're focusing all of that on work, there's not much time left for other things to grow other areas of your life and to spend that time. But I think your example is a really good one because it is kind of like once that illness comes in or you have a stress fracture and we can't have that pillar be so sturdy anymore or so present. It's like, what else is going to hold up the foundation?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, I'm sure like you've worked with your clients on that too. It's like you got to have these different coping tools, not just one coping tool.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
Because if you can't, if that doesn't work or if that isn't accessible to you, you got to be able to pull on something else.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. And I mean, never mind job loss, but just like job change. If we're really like tied to the certain title or certain role and then things shift, maybe it's not even that you've lost your job, but that things are shifting in a way that, you know, no longer is like representative of how you used to view that role. Yeah. We also don't want that to make you crumble either. So we have to kind of be, I think, flexible is maybe the key word here.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, we, yeah, exactly. I was just going to say, we talk about flexibility a lot here. It comes up. If we lose our job, it's like you said, a loss.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
And I don't think we really, we don't really talk about the grief that comes with that. And so why, Jessica, do you think it's important to kind of acknowledge those emotions?
Jessica Sitko
Well, I think grief is the right word, first of all, because it is most times really unexpected, whether it's for cause or for, you know, being laid off or just unexpected changes. That's often how grief presents itself as well. It's not often this thing that we get to really prepare for. And so just the shock alone can feel quite traumatic. Like it is a huge shift. And I think if your question is like, why do we need to talk about these things? Number one, it's real. It's something that we don't really talk about. You know, like I said earlier, I think a lot of the feelings that tend to come up are this feeling of like shame or embarrassment. It's so hard to talk about because it's so tied into this identity piece that we've been mentioning that we got to acknowledge how real that feeling is. Anyone who's been through this, like really knows that feeling. And if we don't acknowledge it, we do kind of run the risk, number one, of having that feeling continue to impact us moving forward in a next role. That's really common as well, right? That fear of losing the next job or of doing something wrong. And, you know, if we're not able to process and acknowledge those emotions and do something about them right now, they're not likely to go away. I often use this analogy of like a pot that's boiling over. like putting a lid on it and kind of like pushing it down doesn't actually really stop the water from boiling over. It just maybe delays it a little bit. And so when we acknowledge it, we give a little bit of space to acknowledge like the realness of those feelings. And then it helps us to figure out what we need. Like if we don't know how we're feeling, I'm not actually sure how to figure out what should be next. If, you know, we're feeling rejected, for example, what might we need? maybe connection, maybe some support, maybe a sense of success, maybe a sense of purpose. Being able to find those things is important, but first we need to know that that's actually something that we're missing, something that we're needing, which often comes from like acknowledging the feelings that are there in the first place.
Katherine Hurtig
I'm sure you've worked with clients, I mean, maybe not necessarily on this exact situation, but this idea of like acknowledging and sitting with these uncomfortable feelings? What does that process look like? How do you help people kind of work on that?
Jessica Sitko
Yeah, so again, I think a little bit depends person to person. But a lot of the time, it's kind of like almost giving permission to feel these things, to not kind of like push them down or bury them, to, you know, normalize it almost. Like there is something that's really human and real about feeling this way and making space for it is going to kind of be that first step, I think.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, I think that's really important because, like, the shame and embarrassment feeling you brought up, like acknowledging, like, yeah, this is a normal way to feel in this scenario. Like it kind of, I don't know, just validating it.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah, and I think being gentle with yourself, too, through that. Like, you know, you're already feeling shame and stress and uncertainty and all of these things. do we also have to kind of dogpile on that and say, well, and I shouldn't be feeling this way. I should just move on and I should just, you know, be strong and I'll just not show anyone how I'm feeling. It's like, I don't know if that helps. It's kind of like, uh, we already have a layer of shame. Do we have to add like a second layer that's now shame about feeling shame? It's like, could we take, if we could take away one of those layers with the lesson, the overall shame, like maybe, could we just make space for it and, and not just try to like feel okay all the time? Yeah. Yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
Okay. So let's, let's turn this around. Let's try to make it a little more positive. Like how, how can someone maybe frame job loss as a chance to, you know, rethink their career path or maybe explore new opportunities?
Jessica Sitko
Yeah, so I often go to this place of getting curious about things. How can we view things with some genuine curiosity, which by that I sort of mean not filling in the blanks ahead of time. So we sometimes say like, well, what's next for me? Probably nothing. Like probably I'll never get anywhere again. Probably I'll never have a job that good. Probably no one's going to hire me. That doesn't sound very curious. It sounds like you've already kind of like decided the outcome. And I think a big piece is like, how can we reframe that into like, what could be next? What have I already gained from this last role? What did I learn from that? and I think also being curious about like what maybe needed to be changed about your past role like what what maybe wasn't working for you or if you had the opportunity in that role to change something what would that have been and how can you kind of build that into the possibilities for the future I'm sure you know we all have things about our jobs that we don't love that are you know maybe not working the best for us or if it was really up to us we might change something about our schedule
Katherine Hurtig
For sure
Jessica Sitko
Or different, different things like that. Um, and so seeing those little desires that you probably, you know, felt or noticed day to day, picking up on those and seeing like, you know, is there an opportunity to do something different for myself in this next stage, knowing that there was some things that maybe weren't a hundred percent perfect, uh, ideal in that last role. Um, and really again, like getting curious about that, being really open about it.
Katherine Hurtig
It's, it's an interesting spot to be in. I remember I was between jobs in my early twenties and it can be a great opportunity. Like you got all, you have all this time on your hands, you know, but there is just always this baseline of worry because I, you know, you didn't, I didn't know when my next paycheck was going to be. So it was difficult to kind of think growth and opportunity when you're also stressed about money.
Jessica Sitko
Sure. Yeah. I mean, it does bring up so much, again, like uncertainty and just the unknown. Although, you know, the unknown is kind of like, again, can we view that as something that is genuinely unknown?
Katherine Hurtig
Right. And not just because it's unknown doesn't mean it's bad.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. And not kind of like filling in those blanks because oftentimes we kind of do like frame even the word unknown sort of like spooky, scary. But if we were like sort of curious about it again, like unknown sounds like a lot of opportunities. Unknown sounds like a lot of unknown in a way that isn't necessarily negative or like scary. It is stressful for sure to be in those places. And I think, again, we go back to like we also need to acknowledge that what we shouldn't do actually is sort of pretend that everything is sunshines and rainbows. Because that doesn't do a great thing for the anxiety either, right? that doesn't really actually do anything that sort of is like putting that lid on the pot again and sort of burying it.
Katherine Hurtig
Like it's a balance, right? It's not, I guess it's all a matter of, of timing with these things. It's not like you should expect yourself, you know, the day you lose your job to have this mindset of, you know, anything's possible. This is a new opportunity. I think we're going in steps. It's probably, that's the time to, you know, acknowledge your feelings and have some self-compassion. But, you know, as you go on, be a bit more curious.
Jessica Sitko
And like giving yourself time to grieve. Like we said earlier, like grief is the right word. We wouldn't expect you also to like, after experiencing, you know, a real big loss in your life to just bounce back the next day either.
Katherine Hurtig
Totally.
Jessica Sitko
We would probably expect, and even like societally, we kind of give people permission to have like a grieving process, a grieving period, like time to do that.
Katherine Hurtig
And in so many ways, like you had mentioned the different aspects of a job, like, yes, it's what we do. It's how we make money. It's, you know, a measure of success, but that social aspect. Yeah. Like when you talked about that, it made me think before working here, I was at a job and like, I, I chose to leave, but there was still definitely grief there because I had worked with this group of people for five plus years. That was my routine of seeing these people every day, seeing them more than my partner, then all of a sudden I wasn't going to see them anymore.
Jessica Sitko
And like, what does that mean for your relationships? Will you continue to keep in touch? Will you, you know, will the friendships go outside of work? Like there's a lot of unknowns again.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. And you, a lot of times you go in with the best intentions thinking like, yeah, we're going to stay in touch. Yeah. Sometimes that happens, but sometimes it doesn't.
Jessica Sitko
For sure. Yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
Have you worked with clients or how would you approach working with clients just around that idea of financial uncertainty? Like how, how do you approach that, that worry?
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. So, I mean, what we know is that anxiety does not like uncertainty. Anxiety hates the uncertainty, the unknown. And that's kind of like the anxiety is sort of what colors that word like unknown with all this, all this bad connotation. Right. Um, and so I think first we got to there's something about this that makes sense. There is a lot of uncertainty. Does it make sense that there's a part of you that's really like pretty worried about all of this? Like totally. What we don't need to do is like, again, pretend everything's sunshines and rainbows and just shut down that feeling. Anxiety is like a tool. There's a reason that anxiety comes up in our bodies and our brains. It's not meant to only sort of debilitate us and make us have a bad day. It's meant to help us prepare to solve problems. That's like the purpose and the function of anxiety.
Katherine Hurtig
Right
Jessica Sitko
Oftentimes our anxiety doesn't know the difference between, you know, preparing to turn around the corner and see a bear and preparing to go to into a job interview. And yet the feeling is kind of the same sometimes, right? And so if we're trying to manage that, I think, again, first thing, there's something about this that makes sense. There's something about anxiety that's helpful. If we weren't anxious at all, you probably wouldn't be out searching for a job. You probably wouldn't care about your financial situation. Like if we took away all the anxiety, I don't know if that would be better. There's something that's useful about it. So we need to hang on to the part that's useful. And we need to be able to tell the difference between like, when is my anxiety productive and helpful to me? When is it, you know, pushing me to grow and to do these applications and to do a budget and to do all these things? And when is it actually holding me back from doing those important things and noticing the difference? And that can be hard sometimes too, to notice like, when is this worry helpful? And when is this worry like holding me in place? Yeah, I would, I would kind of think about getting some info, like knowing that anxiety doesn't like the uncertainty. What is certain about like right now? What, what do we know about your situation?
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Jessica Sitko
Are you eligible for EI? Have you looked into that? What are your savings look like? How long can you actually sustain being unemployed for? And getting really real about those things so that the anxiety knows how worried do we need to be about this?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Jessica Sitko
And, and getting that info a lot of the time takes away some of that uncertainty because there's less questions to be answered. Does that make sense?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. I, yeah, I've talked with counsellors a lot about anxiety over the last few years, obviously with everything that's been going on. Um, and I think, yeah, that's something that has really resonated this idea of, you know, what do you know and what is in your control?
Jessica Sitko
Yes. And I think looking out for those like extreme thoughts, because they can really slip by sometimes the thoughts that are like the worst case scenario, worst case scenario, like, you know, I'm going to end up losing my house, I'm going to be living in my car, I'm gonna, I'm never going to get hired again. Those are like some really all or nothing kind of thoughts. Those are some really extreme thoughts. And just being aware of them. Because again, the anxiety doesn't often know the difference between this uncomfortable feeling and, you know, some real actual imminent threat of danger. And it will start to tell you, you know, the anxiety will start to tell you like really extreme things about what the future is going to hold and try to fill in those blanks, noticing those and being able to step back from it. Ask yourself the question of like, wait a second, do I know that? Like, is that true? Or is the anxiety trying to solve some of this unknown and fill in some of those blanks for me with the worst case scenario?
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. And I think the other thing that I would say about like what do we need to do with this anxiety yeah I think just talking about it again like there's so much guilt and shame and embarrassment and all kinds of stuff wrapped up in this that it becomes very hard for people to talk about it becomes very hard to like ask for support or to express those feelings to express like the real uncertainties that are there it can be kind of a barrier to actually getting that information
Katherine Hurtig
For sure.
Jessica Sitko
When we're able to talk about something out loud it often sounds really different than it does in your head like you know if I come to you and I say I just lost my job and I'm certain I just know I'm gonna end up living my car like what's your kind of natural response to that?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah it would be like okay well that's you know that's one extreme but you know let's look at where you're at now and yeah.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah you kind of like instantly almost want to challenge me you're like wait wait a second. Like, okay, this happened yesterday. Let's back up a little bit. Is that really true? Instantly, when we start talking about this with people, those thoughts don't often get validated.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Jessica Sitko
And in our head, if we keep them all in there, they often are validated again and again and again, because the anxiety feels like it knows that that's what's going to happen. When we say it out loud, suddenly we get some other feedback.
Katherine Hurtig
I mean, lots of, lots of different thoughts, lots of emotions that come up with job loss. I mean, I'm sure at some point, you know, if it, if you're out of work for quite a while, I mean, that could even lead you, you know, to a bit of a depression, you know, a loss of, you know, a purpose. Yeah. So just go like, what advice would you give to someone who feels like, you know, maybe they've, they have lost a bit of their purpose after losing a job?
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. So like, I hear, I think what you're asking with that question, which is like, maybe what might I say to someone who's really sort of experiencing those feelings? I do get a little bit stuck on the word advice though. Cause when I think about my role as a counsellor, giving advice is like not in my job description, which I think a lot of people have that sort of idea that that's what counselling is for, right? Is like, tell me what to do next. And in some ways, like we're not totally off base with that. But what my role definitely is not is to like tell people what to do or to, you know, pretend that I have the perfect right answer. Um, that if they just do that one thing, everything will get better. And I, I think it's sort of an actually important to like make that distinction.
Katherine Hurtig
Oh definitely.
Jessica Sitko
Um, what I can do is like work with people to figure out what is, might be best for them. Ask the questions, get kind of clear, uh, on, on what actually is going on in your life so that we can empower people to make choices that they can deem are right for them or not. But what I'm not going to be doing is, you know, saying, here's the magic key. Go do this and, you know, come back and everything will be fine. And so I guess to come back to your question, when we're thinking about losing a sense of purpose, again, like I come back to, is there something about that that makes sense that, you know, so much of the hours of your week are tied up in work. So much of your social interaction often, not for every job, but often is tied up in work. So much of like your daily routine is really tied up in work. So much of like how we identify is going to have something to do with work. And so does it make sense that like a little piece of what you view as like kind of the purpose of your day or of your week is suddenly not the same anymore? Like for sure. There's something that's really valid about that. That's like a really normal response, right? To kind of have this sudden gap, literally, just in your week, you have like a lot more hours available to you. Can we kind of acknowledge that? And then I guess I'm curious too, to know, like, what is the lost purpose? I was thinking about, is the loss of purpose that, you know, you really had a sense of like value and purpose in your job, like you really felt like you were accomplishing something and maybe doing some good for the world, or there's some value that was lost and the purpose that was lost just in the actual role? Or is the loss of purpose like, well, why do I have to wake up now? Why do I have to leave the house? Those are two really different types of purpose. One of those, we might replace it with a new job. Yeah, if the loss of purpose was the thing that you were accomplishing or doing in that role, yeah, we might not instantly be able to bring that back into your life. But if your question is like, well, what's my reason for getting out of bed? I imagine there would be other purposes, other senses of value, other reasons that we could give you again, coming back to that idea of like the different pillars. Like, yeah, that's kind of a different question.
Katherine Hurtig
Definitely. Yeah. We have to work on not just having a single purpose in our heads.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. And again, it's like that extreme thought, right? It's like my only purpose was doing this job or doing this thing or like seeing my friends at work. And when we zoom out from that extreme thought, there's probably other purposes.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, and other possibilities.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah, other things that are still meaningful to you in your life. We have to kind of draw on those things so that we can figure out in the meantime, like, what will your purpose be? How will we kind of fill in some of those gaps? How will we like keep you moving while we look for that next thing? But to feel that feeling of like, oh, I'm not sure what my purpose is anymore. That seems like a really natural response to me.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Kind of going back to that thing about counselling process, Because I totally remember being in counselling and kind of having, it wasn't the expectation that I'd be given the answers, but there'd be a question. I'm like, what, I don't know, what do you think? Like this, the counsellor was posing it to me. Like, what do you think about the situation? And like, I legit didn't, I didn't know. I didn't know the answer. Yeah. So how do you work with a client in that kind of situation when you're kind of trying to open those doors, but they just, they don't know. Does that make sense? Yeah. Let's say, you know, you're working with a client, lost their job. They're dealing with all these things and they ask you like, what did, what should I do next? I'm assuming in the counselling process, the counsellor is asking a lot of questions to kind of get the client to think about things in a different way. What is kind of the process if they really don't know, if they're kind of stuck on the, on those answers themselves? Is it as simple as just asking a different question or in a different way or?
Jessica Sitko
I mean, I think, again, it kind of like depends person to person. Sometimes it is like, maybe we're asking the wrong question. Like maybe we don't even know the problem that we're trying to solve. It's sometimes people come to counselling, just feeling this general stuckness. We're not sure where it's coming from. So it's very hard to ask the question or to answer the question of, you know, what should I do about this? Cause we don't actually even know what the problem is. So sometimes we have to actually backtrack and maybe ask if we even know what the problem is that we're trying to solve. Because it's going to be quite hard actually to come to a solution if we don't know what the problem is. And then, yeah, I think other times it's like, again, being just kind of like curious in a new way about what we've already tried, what worked about that, what didn't work about that. And most people are not coming to counselling with like zero coping skills. Most people are coming in with something that maybe has worked for them a little bit. They're coming in with something that's working, but maybe it's not sustainable, like all kinds of different things. And so if we're trying to figure out like what to do, sometimes we also have to figure out like what's keeping you going right now? And are those things actually working? Like if we kept doing those same coping strategies moving forward, like would your life get where you want it to be? Would you be living the life you want to live? Sometimes the answer is no. like coping just in a way that is what we can do or with the resources that we have in that moment. And we know that it's not sustainable to keep going forward like that, right?
Katherine Hurtig
So we've talked about how it's important to have these conversations about what we're feeling when it comes to job loss. I don't know if that was like primarily talking to a counsellor, But I mean, the idea of having these conversations with people in your lives, family, partners, friends, that kind of thing. I can imagine that that's like quite the struggle. Like I'm thinking about, you know, times where, you know, I felt ashamed or embarrassed. The last thing I want to want to do is admit that and talk about it with somebody really close to me. But I can also see how it's mental health wise it's a really productive thing. So how do you work with people to kind of push them to have those conversations? How do we practice that, get more comfortable with it?
Jessica Sitko
Yeah, I think, again, coming back to our last little conversation there, I'm not going to be pushing anyone to have any type of conversation. That's not necessary. I think a lot of the time around things like job loss, we actually do really need to figure out, like, who do we need to have this conversation with? Because what's maybe not helpful or necessary is to, you know, go on Facebook and say, I just lost my job. You know, is that helpful? Maybe. I don't, I, my sense is maybe no. Right. But, um…
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, I guess like one extreme to the other, not so good. Like, yeah, probably can't keep it to yourself, but don't need to shout it from the rooftops. Yeah, exactly. Like we don't need to set yourself up to have like a million of these conversations if, if it's, you know, maybe not relevant to everybody. But I imagine that for many people, there would be folks in their lives who are really impacted actually by this. Like if you're thinking about how a job loss impacts your family or your partner and the financial situation that you find yourselves in, that's an important conversation to have because you're not the only one impacted there. And it's not it's it's a weird thing to say, but it's not really like kind of just about the job loss. It's now about how are we planning our future together? What does that look like now that some of the circumstances have changed? And having, I think, a productive conversation in which we're doing a little bit of acknowledging of the facts. We're doing a little bit of planning, getting on the same page about, again, what's true. If we want to, like, rebuild some confidence, if we want to, you know, rebuild our understanding of ourselves and our circumstances. A lot of the time, the first thing we need to do is, like, get really real about what's true, even when it's really uncomfortable. We do probably, you know, with our partners, like, need to talk about what does our savings look like? what are our plans that maybe need to go on hold now given this what will our plan be together moving forward.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, and those conversations like might be difficult they might be uncomfortable but yeah they're important to have.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah and to be sort of again like if we're asking for support can we do that in a way that is like really genuine and vulnerable without sort of falling to this like either minimizing because that's not helpful right we need to have like a realistic plan or just avoiding the conversations altogether. Also, again, not helpful, not really productive towards something. But like you say, it can be really uncomfortable because there is all of that shame and guilt and all kinds of things mixed into this. And being, I think, a little bit okay with that. It's like sitting in that discomfort. There's almost no way, I think, to have this conversation that's going to feel great. Best dinner conversation ever. It's not probably going to feel like that.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Jessica Sitko
But can we approach it in a way that's like, this is going to be uncomfortable. How can we be a team about this?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
And yeah, I mean, speaking of how it, it affects other people in our lives, you know, if, if we have someone in our life who has lost their job, what can we be looking out for in terms of their mental health? Like how, what can we spot, you know, to see if they might be really struggling emotionally.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. I think that's a great question, right? Because there's always two sides to this. It's not just the person who's lost the job, but also like, yeah, the people in their life and how that's impacting. The first thing is kind of that withdrawal, right? If we're not able to have any conversations, they're kind of maybe socially isolating themselves, kind of not doing their regular routines. Like that's often sort of related with depression anyways. you know stop running or stop doing the things that previously were important to us stop you know taking care of ourselves that a lot of the time it's going to look like poor sleep or or not sleeping properly maybe not taking care of like your personal hygiene maybe not eating at regular times like we might start skipping meals loss of appetite or it could kind of go the other way sometimes too or kind of like stress eating um kind of noticing those things feelings of hopelessness or maybe not leaving the house all of those kinds of things and we mentioned earlier about coping mechanisms, we might start to use some maladaptive coping mechanisms. So like if our substance use increases, you know, suddenly instead of just a glass of wine, we're having the whole bottle or something, right? Like we might start to find other ways to cope that again, maybe in the moment sort of like feel like they're doing something helpful. It's like taking us away from some of the more painful feelings, but in the long term, it's not really sustainable. Yeah. And so kind of just keeping an eye on those things. And I think checking in with your loved ones when, when this is going on, because it can feel so isolating and hard to talk about, like making space for that, really asking the questions and kind of maybe trying to be as understanding as you can, even if you've never experienced this.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. So losing a job, I mean, it can, we're talking about this very broadly and there can be many different reasons for that. But if you've been let go from a job, there can be feelings of rejection or failure. And so how can people kind of go through those feelings, process them in a healthy way?
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. I mean, it is one of those things where those feelings are going to like make sense in some way, right? Like in some way you have kind of like faced a real rejection. It's not all in your head, right? There is like something real that's happened. And so I think acknowledging without dwelling, right, we have this real tendency to like, really stick in that like deep, dark spot of either self-blame or really going through the events. And, you know, maybe if I had said this, maybe if I did this differently, maybe all these, you know, really kind of like, staying down in that pit and kind of going in that little spiral. I definitely know that feeling. I don't know if you do, but really getting into that kind of thought spiral there. I think we can acknowledge without kind of dwelling on it and trying to separate out. Like there is a difference between thinking to yourself, I got rejected versus like I am a reject. Like really thinking about how is this permeating into my sense of self and is it going there? Like, you know, trying to kind of notice again, those extreme thoughts of like, I am a failure versus like, I failed at this task or I didn't get the job or I didn't…
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Like, I mean, like situations, they can be fact, but we don't need to make it a reflection on us as a person.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. Oftentimes this kind of delineation comes up with the difference between guilt and shame. We sometimes talk about shame as being like, it's about me. Like, I am bad is kind of what shame says. And guilt says, like, I did something bad.
Katherine Hurtig
I just had this conversation with Lisa in a previous episode.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. And so similar kind of messaging there, right? When we start to personalize this and make it that, like, I am a failure. Really noticing that, like, checking that. Is that true? Or is that one of those really extreme thoughts? Yeah. That's like, can we balance that out a little bit? Like, is it true that you as a person are a failure? Right. That's a huge statement. That's a huge label to put on yourself.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. For all the reasons we've talked about, it's super difficult to not take things about our job personally, but in a lot of ways, we don't need to take it personally. I mean, for like so many reasons, you can like, you could be laid off and that's most often not a personal thing. It's not about you. It's about, you know, something that has absolutely nothing to do with you. So it's just kind of, yeah, taking note of those things and remembering the stuff that, yeah, it's totally with outside of your control.
Jessica Sitko
And I think like a lot of the times too, especially just in the way that the corporate world or, or, you know, things are kind of structured these days, there's a lot of actions that get taken when you are laid off or when you lose a job for any reason that feel really personal. Yeah. that are maybe not personal at all, that are part of like the HR policy of like what it is when somebody loses their job is that it's going to be without notice, is that it's going to be effective immediately. That can feel so personal and so sort of shocking and add to that, like that kind of like, yeah, cold, especially when like a lot of the times, like the person that's coming to you to tell you you're no longer going to be employed here is like someone that you probably have somewhat of a relationship with.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Jessica Sitko
And that can feel so personal and uncomfortable and it's so unfortunate but it is like it can be just one of those things that is no one in the situation is getting to do the thing that they would really like to do or to give the personal touch that they would like to but it can feel so cold and and impersonal and we kind of take that to heart and say oh it's about me yeah I am bad as a person I have failed as a person rather than you know kind of zooming out of that and it's it's hard in the moment and that's why we give ourselves that time to be able to process it, to come to like a slightly different conclusion or to have a more balanced thought. Cause it's not likely that it's going to happen in that moment on that day. You're going to kind of have all these revelations.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. I used to think that like having great mental health was just always reacting positively in negative situations. And like, that would be the automatic thing. Like something bad happens and it doesn't even affect you. But that's like, as I've aged, I've learned that that's not it. It's just kind of going at it with a different mindset because you can't avoid pain. You can't avoid hard things happening to you. And those, it doesn't mean that you're not going to feel badly about those things, but it's just kind of how you choose to navigate that.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. And like, what does it tell you actually about yourself that you're feeling badly about these things like yeah what values does that reflect the fact that you do feel like a little bit guilty about you know something that you did or that you do feel badly that you're no longer in this role like sounds like there's something important to you about that sounds like there's like some values there that are being reflected again we come back to like emotions are generally meant to be helpful yeah right like guilt as a feeling is not very comfortable or fun yeah but it does kind of tell us something about the path we're on if we're making the right moves that are going to take us towards like being the person we want to be. Um, maybe we've made some moves that are taking us actually further away from the life we want to live further away from the person we want to be. The guilt kind of is like a little, uh, arrow that can point us in the direction and let us know when we've gone off track.
Katherine Hurtig
That's a great way to look at it.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. But we can just get kind of tied up just in the guilt and not notice like the little arrow that's telling us, Hey, like just do something different next time. Why don't you try this? Cause it feels so uncomfortable to have that feeling.
Katherine Hurtig
Totally.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Any last, any last things, Jessica, that you want people to know? I mean, it's not really a, you know, quick 10 tip conversation, but, but any last, last thoughts that you want to leave people with about how to deal with job loss?
Jessica Sitko
Yeah. I would say first, you're just not alone. It's such a common experience that we just, as a society, just do not make space to talk about really. Yeah. You're just not alone. Um, and the more that you can have those conversations, the more you're probably going to realize that. I know that when I experienced being laid off, I was shocked actually when I went to some friends because I had never heard their story about that happening to them. And it was extremely validating in that moment to, not everyone has experienced this, but so many more people than you think have kind of been in that position. And it's not fun. It really is not. It's an incredibly common experience. And the best way to find out that you're not alone is to start talking about it and to get some support. You know, our friends and family can sometimes offer that like helping hand or, you know, a shoulder and a listening ear. But there are so many resources that I think a lot of folks don't actually know about for when we're facing these situations, many of which are entirely free to access and are, you know, maybe those stepping stones that a lot of folks need. you don't have to do this alone. Like sometimes we haven't looked at our resume in the last 10 years. Like maybe we need some support with that, especially like the job market is changing and the way that you apply for a job is different maybe than it was the last time that you had to submit an application. There's a lot of things to know about setting yourself up for success and you just like don't have to do it by yourself. There's people who know the answers to these questions who can kind of like support you and guide you along in figuring some of these things out. You just don't have to do it alone. And you're certainly not alone in dealing with this.
Katherine Hurtig
Thanks so much, Jessica.
Jessica Sitko
Yeah, thank you.
Katherine Hurtig
You've been listening to Living Fully, a Calgary Counselling Centre podcast. Thank you for tuning in. This episode was produced by Luiza Campos, Manuel Montano, Jenna Forbes, and by me, Katherine Hurtig. A special thanks to Jessica Sitko. To stay up to date on our latest episodes, be sure to subscribe. We're available in your favorite podcast app. Living Fully is a production of Calgary Counselling Centre and recorded in Calgary on Treaty 7 territory. Living Fully podcast is not a substitute or alternative for professional care or treatment. Calgary Counselling Centre and Counselling Alberta provide effective counselling to anyone in Alberta with no waitlist and no financial barriers. Find us online at calgarycounselling.com and counsellingalberta.com. For help across Canada and the United States, call 211. If you are outside of Canada and the U.S., seek help from your general medical practitioner.