Anatomy of a Layoff, Part 1: Living in the Oh Shit

Most of us know the feeling of a falling dream: the loss of control, the terror, and the sudden bump waking us up as we jolt the bed. For the 32,000 of us laid off in tech since the first of the year, the terror and the loss of control are real. While we can have sane moments during the day, often helped by making concrete steps in our job search, it's the nighttime that darkens our journey, the time spent awake with fear in the belly, mind flooded with cortisol. Overwhelming panic, fear, and anxiety are an entirely normal part of a layoff. Our minds naturally perseverate on the age-old question looking into the future: What If? What if I don't find work? What if I run out of money? What if someone in the family gets sick after health insurance runs out? What if I am seen as a failure? What if my deep and unspoken fear that I am not worthy of love is revealed as my one true reality?

What If has a partner that lives in the past: If Only. If only I had collaborated more outside of my team or organization. If only I had taken the initiative to deepen my skillset. If only I had contributed to open-source and had an irresistible Github presence. If only I had . . .

One of my daughters hit me with this: if you have one foot in the past, and one foot in the future, pretty good chance you are pissing on the present. And therein lies the heart of the matter. It is this very moment, this time of profound uncertainty, that reveals so much gold.

Small experiences of uncertainty can be annoying: not knowing if we'll have a parking spot at the airport; the grocery store moved the chicken pot pies; will Amazon ship the Christmas gifts on time. More defining uncertainty can undo us: what is this lump; will I ever find love again; will our country find a footing based on real mutual regard and respect, or will public policy be shaped by cruelty and fear. Profound uncertainty, especially the existential variety that affects how we define our lives, provides a crystal clear lens into our inner workings, both the dark bits and the light, if we have the courage and eyes to see what is there.

No one reading this has been untouched by addiction. Either we know someone whose life has been upended by addiction or we ourselves have lived in its grip. Get this: almost all of us have an addiction to security. When the power goes out; when a tree falls into our home; when we lose our job; something fundamental is threatened, something that we believe to be foundational to our survival. As we spend a moment with this to take a look at what is actually being threatened, we might find a surprising result. Here I will be personal. When I lost my job, especially the first time I lost my job years ago, I most definitely felt something fundamental was threatened. The loss of my job echoed off a much deeper and older loss: a primal wound given at a very early age, a wound at my core that continues to throb unhealed to this day. This wound, and others like it, set a belief in place, a belief that I am broken and unworthy of love. I have never met a person who did not carry this wound to some degree. This defining wound is extraordinarily painful, and for a good reason. We were never meant to have it. We were never meant to know the absence of love. Pretty bold statement, given the reality of everyone's life, to varying degrees.

To provide context for this, allow me to propose a model of what it means to be human. I have no proof of this, yet is seems experientially true for me and everyone I have kicked this around with. And umpity-ump hours of therapy have supported this model. Some of this is pretty basic human development. Here goes.

When we are born, we have no sense of self. We have plenty of hard-wiring and genetic expression, but we have no boundaries with the world we have just entered. We are wide open to the universe, undifferentiated, and completely trusting that we are floating in a sea of love. For those of us in reasonably healthy families, this is true. We are held; we are fed; we grow in a deep bond with our primary caregivers. All is well. Until it isn't.

At some point, for everyone of us, we experience a sudden and unexpected withdrawal of love. One of our parents or guardians has an ordinary human moment, feels shame of their own, and sends that message downhill to us. We get blamed for something that has nothing to do with us. The universe darkens for our very young selves in an event that is probably too early for memory. But that does not mean that we aren't marked by it. We are meant, all of us, to live in a continuous flow of love, to be shaped by love, to give and receive love our whole lives. We are meant to serve one another without fear, to see suffering and not shrink away. We are meant to live in and create beauty. We are meant to know and be known, to love and be loved. To part of us this sounds preposterous; there is another part of us that knows it's true.

Creation myths, in part, are developed to explain what the heck happened. Who turned out the lights? How did evil enter our experience? If everything was meant to be so hunky-dory, why am I afraid so much of the time, when I am honest with myself? We might never know how the thread of darkness entered human experience; in the end, it's not important. Our journey through this life of hope and pain, of beauty and darkness, the light we choose and the light we give, the raw courage required to open ourselves to love, that's what matters.

When our security is threatened by a layoff, the fear we are feeling, the loss of control, can be traced right back to this primal wound. For myself, getting personal again, the thing I am afraid of is abandonment. If I never get work again, if I run out of money, if I end up with my family living on the street, if the worst scenario I can imagine comes true, I will lose my place in my community. I will lose my belonging. The old defining wound will be struck at its raw core and be deepened. In a fundamental way, I will cease to be. That's the belief of this deep wound: where there should be love, there is a hole, and that hole is us. It's simply not true, but try telling your wound that. Actually, that's the very thing we end up doing as a part of healing and restoration, but we have to earn the trust of that wound first. I'll get to that in the next article. For now, please believe me when I say that in this very moment, especially if you are overwhelmed by the dread of uncertainty, in this very moment you are surrounded by so much light, if you can just open your eyes. You are already where you need to be.