May is Mental Health Awareness Month. I invited my incredible colleague and fellow career coach, Taylor Gonzalez, to share her thoughts on navigating the trauma of losing a job. Taylor isn’t just a fantastic career coach and former recruiter - she’s also a certified trauma-informed yoga teacher, trauma-informed weight lifting coach, and run coach who is enthralled by epigenetic trauma and nervous system exploration.
Navigating the loss of a job isn’t just a milestone in a career, it’s a full-body, full-system experience. Regardless of how you felt about the role, the team, the organization, our body receives this loss as that.. A loss. There’s certain feelings of shame, failure, grief (and of course, subsequent grief cycle feelings of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.) It’s not about moving past it or shoving it down. It’s about learning to move through it—with presence, compassion, and curiosity.
When I guide clients in breathwork, I often ask: How can you shift from simply being a human who breathes to allowing the breath to move you?
The same invitation applies here. In the wake of job loss, grief, or transition—what if healing isn’t about fixing or pushing through, but about allowing yourself to be moved, slowly and gently, by what’s arising?
Let’s acknowledge the impact and not brush it under the rug, or say, “it could be worse.”
This is a rupture to your day to day, your routine, your income, perhaps even your identity, or sometimes, your self-worth. Further, as educators we’re pretty familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs– and the loss of a job may lead to questioning around our food, our water, our shelter.
It is completely normal to feel grief, confusion, or perhaps, nothing at all. This is a loss- a loss of a role, and any associated perceived or real trajectories you have along with it. You can rationalize any direction you want, however, our body systemically receives this as a trauma- a lack of choice.
You can feel how you want to feel without identifying a story or narrative to the feeling. All emotions are meant to be felt. And if you shame or judge your shame, no sense in judging or shaming that judging or shaming. Welcome to being human.
Tend to your nervous system.
Before jumping into job boards, resume revamping, network and strategy– regulate, regulate, regulate. We want to move through with love for ourselves instead of fear of loss. When we move with love, we attract with love. When we move with fear, we attract with fear.
Permission to move slow. Slowness is not stagnation. Slowness is integration. Sit still and breath. While yes, your body is still, how much action is still happening– your nostrils may be flaring, your heart is beating, your chest is rising and falling. Permission to move slow.
Practices to take action on when you feel like you need to do the thing before you’re regulated: barefoot walks outside, weight lifting, running, and perhaps yoga.
Reconnect with your identity outside of work & reclaim part of yourself.
You are a human BEing first and foremost. What other parts of you can perhaps be dialed up now that your work identity may be dialed up for a moment?
Journal prompts for this: Who am I when I am not producing? Who am I? What am I here to do? What am I doing when I feel most alive?
Rejection is redirection. Create a timeline of your life. Include all the moments. Notice when hindsight became 20/20.
Take intentional & aligned action (not reactive action)
Tend to that nervous system. Ask yourself, am I reacting here or am I responding here?
Reflect & adjust. Just like classroom educators know you can plan the perfect lesson and half way through students are staring right at you…. Here’s your moment. Reflect on what wasn’t working before, whether it’s about the role, the team, the organization, and yourself… reflect on what was working in all those ways.
Begin to explore what kind of work, roles, and organizations align with your current values. Just because the organization or role you had before worked for you then.. Does it actually work for you now? How may you have changed from when you initially started that job or with that organization?
Remember, you’re not alone.
Some of my worst experiences as a classroom educator was thinking I was alone in my second-grade classroom silo. Even now, we are stronger when we’re together. Reach out for support- whether through colleagues, peers, trusted friends, or a coach. A coach may hold up a mirror and help you discern what is actually aligned in a container that is simply for you.
You don’t have to “bounce back,” you get to become.
You deserve to rest down and back. You deserve to feel peace within chaos. You deserve to be held in this season and rewrite what comes next.
