Getting laid off changes your perception of work forever. Here’s how

Shock gets replaced by trauma-informed familiarity. Grief turns into exhaustion, shame calcifies. The way a person understands work changes, imbuing the next job with cynicism that’s hard to shake. A layoff victim’s relationship with work changes. Sometimes forever. But in order to keep going, it might be best to stop blaming yourself—and start looking at the reasons layoffs happen so often in the first place. Losing your job means losing yourself “The biggest disruption I see is the loss of identity, routine, and predictability,” says New York-based therapist Jacqueline Schmidt. “Work is a world you had, for better or worse.” Schmidt’s clients deal with the typical feelings of disbelief, anger, and shame that come from being laid off. The idea that their work mattered less than they thought, and that their worth came down to a consultant’s number-crunching. “‘I can achieve all my goals, hit the metrics, and I’m still dispensable.’ People can get stuck thinking they were to blame,” she says. When you’re laid off, meritocracy can feel like a myth. David Blustein, a psychology professor at Boston College and author of The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty, says the more people buy into the idea that hard work can insulate them from being laid off, the harder it is to shake self judgment. “If you feel like you’re going to make it on your own and you don’t, it puts all the blame on you,” Blustein says. The meritocracy myth is baked into American work culture. Performance is seen as protection; being let go is a reflection of worth, rather than a belt-tightening decision (or ritual sacrifice to shareholders). This fiction is so deeply internalized that people can understand the logic of their layoff while still feeling like they caused it. Why the first hurts the worst A marketing professional, who agreed to speak to Fast Company on the condition of anonymity, spent most of her career in journalism, and had never been laid off despite working in a field that’s notorious for axing workers. She was laid off in January 2026. “I’d never been laid off before. An industry I thought was more stable turned out to be the least,” she said. How she was laid off also played a major role: an abruptly scheduled Teams call, a senior leader on the other end, and an invitationless HR rep who jumped in moments later. No small talk, just a “difficult decision” followed by the department head dropping off seconds later to let HR discuss severance. She was asked to stay on for several weeks after the layoff. “It reminded me of when I experienced a pregnancy that wasn’t viable: Due to state laws at the time, I had to carry the baby for three weeks. Knowing something is dead that you still need to deal with is heartbreaking,” she said. “Losing the baby was far worse, but on some level, there’s the same level of depression—that you have to keep going forward, putting on a fake face and pretending.” The experience has changed how she thinks about work. “It taught me that effort, performance, and even being valued by your team doesn’t always translate into job security. I didn’t realize that you could do excellent work and still lose your role.” A specific kind of trauma Layoffs are difficult because of the uncertainty and shame that often follow. But this is only half of what makes losing your job so hard. There are major societal and economic elements as well. Blustein says modern economic policy has stripped away the structural supports that once cushioned workers from instability. Being laid off feels like a personal problem, rather than a symptom of systemic societal issues. He calls this psychological condition “precarity.” Kitty, who requested to go by a pseudonym, has 700 in her checking account and is rationing her antidepressants, which cost 450 a month on her healthcare plan. She currently works as a restaurant hostess while fielding interviews for marketing and communications roles. Even if she lands one, she’s more concerned with getting by than getting ahead. “I’m not thinking about the beauty of a new opportunity or how I can make a positive impact on this company,” Kitty says. “I’m already thinking of my survival game plan.” The marketing professional also experiences her own version of precarity. “I accepted the last job when I was already employed. Should I have kept my other position? Fourteen months later I’m job hunting again. You don’t expect to have to go through it that soon, but now I realize that’s a real possibility.” Pushing past disillusionment out of necessity “The way layoffs happen in the United States is really traumatizing,” Blustein says. Oracle slashed as many as 11,000 jobs in March 2026, informing impacted employees through a mass email from an “Oracle Leadership” inbox at 6 a.m. With it came instructions on how to file severance paperwork and a request for a personal email address, rather than a chat with HR about next steps. In January, Amazon Web Services sent an email explaining a series of layoffs a day early. The message indicated that affected employees and departments had been notified already. (They hadn’t). More than 26,000 employees joined a Slack channel to figure out what was going on — and to roast company culture. The impersonal touch makes it hard to cope with a layoff, and even harder to find hope that the next job brings better luck. “Cynicism is the hardest thing to fight. Cynicism about all of it. Cynicism about our society as a whole, cynicism about the system, and about the way work is designed in America,” Kitty says. Schmidt recommends looking inward to cope. “A layoff is just an event. It’s not a verdict on your sense of worth,” she says. “You have to find a way to acknowledge the feelings that come with getting laid off as well as cynicism. Both exist, and both are true. You can resent the structure that’s in place while also recognizing that you need to be gainfully employed.” Blustein points to a technique called “critical consciousness.” Critical consciousness reduces self-blame by identifying structural reasons—labor markets, corporate behavior, economic policies—for your situation, rather than personal failure. For example, the nature of work plays a larger role in why layoffs happen than one worker should feel responsible for. Adopting this mindset may help workers find a way to push through a difficult job market where layoffs are an annual corporate landmine. “People with higher critical consciousness engage in more career exploration, planning, and even have a higher level of vocational hope,” Blustein says. This consciousness may even help your odds at landing your next job. People who develop depression after a job loss are 67 less likely to find a new job within the next four years compared to those who find ways to cope. Finding comfort in these constructs isn’t simple. Even with introspection, self-kindness, and therapy, it’s hard to shake the feeling that things will never materially get better. That you’re one downsizing away from doomscrolling on LinkedIn while collecting unemployment. “I have this constant battle of want versus need. I want to run away so badly. Yet never before have I needed to be more successful,” Kitty says. “I do have a little bit of hope. Maybe I have no choice but to have hope — because I’m too young to leave it all behind.”