You gave your life to the company you work for, and it threw you away like an old rag?
Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2025 9:19 am
A fairy tale scenario: you are doing a job that you are extremely dedicated to and enviably engaged in, your proactivity at work can be an excellent example to all your colleagues, and you are proud that such a well-known and powerful company name is on your business card below your name. The amount of work you manage to do every day is amazing, which is why your boss constantly gives you praise and recognition. You are popular among your colleagues, and even your clients are very satisfied with your work. It seems that the situation could not be better than it is right now. However, your boss, like a “bolt out of the blue”, suddenly told you that the company no longer needs you, and that all the engagement you gave and that fulfilled you so much is suddenly coming to an end. The fairy tale from the beginning of the chapter suddenly turned into horror.
What happens to you at that moment? Your body suddenly experiences a series of physical and psychological reactions, causing it to practically go into a state of shock. More precisely, it goes into the same state it would end up in if you had just been in a serious car accident or witnessed some great tragedy. According to the official definition, shock lithuania whatsapp data is a psychophysiological state that occurs in response to a frightening or traumatic event, which in itself provokes a strong emotional reaction in the person who experienced it. Some of the symptoms of a state of shock are the inability to experience emotions (so-called “emotional numbness”), a feeling of “separation” from your own body, a reduced ability to perceive events in your environment, and even the feeling that the things happening around you are not actually real.
Let's start from the beginning - why was your reaction so violent in the first place?
In order for an employee to be productive and happy in their workplace, they need to demonstrate a certain level of engagement with the work they do. The better and more successful that employee is at their job, the higher their engagement will generally be. When it reaches a very high level, it often happens that we increasingly begin to perceive work as an integral part of our lives, and even of ourselves. And this is quite logical – we have invested a lot of time and effort into something that we have built with our own knowledge, skills and abilities. In fact, it often happens that over time we begin to perceive that work as part of our own identity.
Identity, psychologists say, is the “deepest” level of our psyche. It contains our basic rules of life by which we live, the beliefs that we consider to be the only correct ones, and our values – what is most important to us in life. Essentially, our identity answers the question “who am I?”. This is precisely why it is easy to conclude that identity is something that cannot be changed so quickly and easily, no matter how much we might want to. Here is an example: we know that our physical appearance is one of the integral parts of our identity. Imagine waking up the next morning as a person of the opposite sex, a different race, or with visible physical deficits. Would you be able to “just accept” that? Of course not.
Yes, the bad news is that it really does take a long time for a change to happen at the level of our identity. However, the good news is that, once that change happens, it is long-lasting and profound. What does this have to do with the job loss we are talking about in this blog? It is about waking up the next morning no longer as an employee of the company you worked for, but rather as a person who has de facto “lost” part of their identity. And of course, you will not be able to accept that today, or tomorrow, or the day after. Take as much time as you need, because that period just needs to be “pushed through” somehow.
What happens to you at that moment? Your body suddenly experiences a series of physical and psychological reactions, causing it to practically go into a state of shock. More precisely, it goes into the same state it would end up in if you had just been in a serious car accident or witnessed some great tragedy. According to the official definition, shock lithuania whatsapp data is a psychophysiological state that occurs in response to a frightening or traumatic event, which in itself provokes a strong emotional reaction in the person who experienced it. Some of the symptoms of a state of shock are the inability to experience emotions (so-called “emotional numbness”), a feeling of “separation” from your own body, a reduced ability to perceive events in your environment, and even the feeling that the things happening around you are not actually real.
Let's start from the beginning - why was your reaction so violent in the first place?
In order for an employee to be productive and happy in their workplace, they need to demonstrate a certain level of engagement with the work they do. The better and more successful that employee is at their job, the higher their engagement will generally be. When it reaches a very high level, it often happens that we increasingly begin to perceive work as an integral part of our lives, and even of ourselves. And this is quite logical – we have invested a lot of time and effort into something that we have built with our own knowledge, skills and abilities. In fact, it often happens that over time we begin to perceive that work as part of our own identity.
Identity, psychologists say, is the “deepest” level of our psyche. It contains our basic rules of life by which we live, the beliefs that we consider to be the only correct ones, and our values – what is most important to us in life. Essentially, our identity answers the question “who am I?”. This is precisely why it is easy to conclude that identity is something that cannot be changed so quickly and easily, no matter how much we might want to. Here is an example: we know that our physical appearance is one of the integral parts of our identity. Imagine waking up the next morning as a person of the opposite sex, a different race, or with visible physical deficits. Would you be able to “just accept” that? Of course not.
Yes, the bad news is that it really does take a long time for a change to happen at the level of our identity. However, the good news is that, once that change happens, it is long-lasting and profound. What does this have to do with the job loss we are talking about in this blog? It is about waking up the next morning no longer as an employee of the company you worked for, but rather as a person who has de facto “lost” part of their identity. And of course, you will not be able to accept that today, or tomorrow, or the day after. Take as much time as you need, because that period just needs to be “pushed through” somehow.