Ask HN: How do you manage the anxiety of losing good job?
Lay offs are common in software industry. I would like to know how do you manage anxitey because of it, specifically when you're looking to raise family.
4 comments
To manage anxiety in general, I take https://goldbee.com/ . I've taken CBD before and it actually helped me feel relaxed and less stressed out. I tried the gummies they tasted pretty good! I get better sleep and feel more rested when I take them.
I have PTSD to the extent that it affects my employability. I've been fired/laid off plenty. It's the worst part of all my symptoms. If I could maintain employment, I could get therapy. It's tough every time I guess.
Determine the root of what gives you anx, is it the not working, not being able to provide, keeping the family afloat? Ways to manage it: Live below your means, diversity your family employment, meaning see if your spouse can be in a different industry that has a different risk profile and save for the rainy day. The feeling won’t ever go away but you can do your best to prep for worst.
Lastly, keep your eyes and ears open. If your company is struggling change jobs on your terms before you take the hit. Good luck.
Lastly, keep your eyes and ears open. If your company is struggling change jobs on your terms before you take the hit. Good luck.
I believe it's best to take a look at the whole context. It's perfectly reasonable to be worried about a realistic thing, but if the anxiety is affecting your life, you need to see what it is about yourself that's having trouble compartmentalizing that anxiety.
A professional therapist is trained to help with that. That's tricky, because you need to find a therapist who clicks with you. (It's weirdly like dating, actually.) And it requires you to be willing to trust them, because they're going to ask you to look at your problems in unexpected ways. They're not going to be able to give you One Simple Trick that solves this problem -- you're plenty smart, and if there were One Simple Trick you'd already have found it. The whole point is being able to get to that difficult point where you're able to reconsider the whole question from a new angle.
If you don't wish to/can't afford/just can't get a professional, you can try to mimic the process yourself. Try to put away the notion that you have this one specific issue to solve and everything else is just fine. Acknowledge that this is a genuine and real fear, and then ask what mechanisms you use to deal with your other genuine and real fears. Ask why they're not working on this.
Use another person you trust -- perhaps your spouse -- to ask you these questions. Let the conversation wander, especially keeping an eye on things that make you uncomfortable. Press on them, gently, and see what happens.
Sorry if this seems like this isn't very helpful. The really critical part is that I'm noticing that you're asking us, and noting that we don't have any simple special insight into this. We're all just getting through our days, too. So to solve this problem you have to try to reframe it and see if you can find a totally different approach, by looking at it from a new angle.
A professional therapist is trained to help with that. That's tricky, because you need to find a therapist who clicks with you. (It's weirdly like dating, actually.) And it requires you to be willing to trust them, because they're going to ask you to look at your problems in unexpected ways. They're not going to be able to give you One Simple Trick that solves this problem -- you're plenty smart, and if there were One Simple Trick you'd already have found it. The whole point is being able to get to that difficult point where you're able to reconsider the whole question from a new angle.
If you don't wish to/can't afford/just can't get a professional, you can try to mimic the process yourself. Try to put away the notion that you have this one specific issue to solve and everything else is just fine. Acknowledge that this is a genuine and real fear, and then ask what mechanisms you use to deal with your other genuine and real fears. Ask why they're not working on this.
Use another person you trust -- perhaps your spouse -- to ask you these questions. Let the conversation wander, especially keeping an eye on things that make you uncomfortable. Press on them, gently, and see what happens.
Sorry if this seems like this isn't very helpful. The really critical part is that I'm noticing that you're asking us, and noting that we don't have any simple special insight into this. We're all just getting through our days, too. So to solve this problem you have to try to reframe it and see if you can find a totally different approach, by looking at it from a new angle.