It stinks when you lose your job. There’s no getting around it. Your paycheck, identity, routine, and network are all wrapped up in your employment, and it is a deep level of stress-inducing awful when you are let go.
To complicate matters, just as you’re feeling your worst you need to project your best in order to interview well. You want to stay in bed but instead, you need to be perky and articulate. It’s tough.
It’s unrealistic to believe you can be fired and just carry on as if nothing happened. It’s also counterproductive to wallow for any length of time. I describe this juxtaposition as a yin-yang — and encourage those in this situation to keep that balance in mind. You need to be sad — for a bit — then you need to establish boundaries that provide a barrier to the gloom and allow the positive to be put forth.
The yin-yang applies to other traumatic events. A divorce. A death. An accident or trauma. To move forward, work hard to mentally compartmentalize and craft boundaries that juggle the gymnastics of grieving and persisting — not expressing both simultaneously — rather alternately — so that each emotion can be expressed without overriding the other.
