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I’ve been there. At the end of the day there’s absolutely nothing you can do. And it’s way easier for me to say. Give yourself homework to try to control at least some of the thoughts. The homework is update your resume and/or deal sheet if you haven’t already and start applying. Take someone to lunch and feel around whether they’re hiring. Lean on your close friends and family emotionally and make sure you’re spending time with them. If you have faith lean into your faith. That’s the only thing you can do.
Also recommend therapy. It really helped. I’ll tell you what my therapist told me. Ask yourself what the worst case scenario is if you lost your job (literally write that down). I told myself I’d lose my job and then get evicted and be homeless. I told my therapist this and she said “OP you have many many steps between losing your job and being homeless.” She asked me how much savings I have and I told her which wasn’t nearly as much as I wanted to have. She asked me how long till I thought the layoff hit and I said I don’t know, but I assume maybe a few months. She asked how much was in my 401(k) and I told her and she told me I could access some of that money in the event of a hardship so I’d be fine to pay expenses for at least three months. I told her the job market was awful. She said she believes me because she’s had a lot of clients recently who have been coming to her about being laid off despite having high-powered careers and they were getting absolutely no bites so she believes me. She asked me if there were any other careers I could do with my existing skills or law degree and at the time I was so down I told her no. She told me she needed me to go sit down by myself and think about what other careers I could do with those skills. She asked me if I could start my own law firm and I said I have no clients. She asked me if I could go back home to live with family and I said probably she basically said so at the worst scenario the most likely scenario is you do not end up homeless even if you lose your job.
At the end of the day it’s going to suck until you find a new job. For me personally I survived that round of layoffs, but I lost a lot of close friends and I never felt safe there again. My work quality began to decline, which put me in a position that I did not want to be in that I felt more layoffs were probably coming in the guise of “performance” cuts and that my number was probably gonna be called. It’s different for everyone and if you have a family or you have some sort of amazing equity incentives or you otherwise love the environment you may decide to stay if you don’t get chosen for the layoffs.
Maybe it’s not a good decision for you to leave if you survive the layoffs… in my personal experience, however in my case, it made sense for me to leave, and I wish that I would’ve left sooner after surviving the layoffs because I never felt safe there again and it effed with my mind for the next year. If you are like me and need psychological safety to survive and do your best work and there’s not some other compelling reason for you to stay I recommend if you survive still leaving for another job…. but I recommend trying to leave now before you are in a position to see if you survive.
I’m really sorry that this is happening to you and it’s not your fault. There are very few people who know that this happened to me because I feel kind of embarrassed and ashamed. But as I started talking to a few people close to me, I realize that they had been through the exact same thing and never told me because they were also embarrassed and ashamed. it was people I least expected would have faced that because they’re on top of their careers.
The world is brutal, especially the legal field. This happens to more people more often than you think. I read somewhere that the average person goes through two layoffs during the course of their careers and that’s not lawyers that’s just generally people. Losing your job and heartbreak are two things at the average person can relate to. It’s not just you. That’s not gonna make you feel better now but I hope it will eventually… please hang in there OP and if you need anything, please feel free to DM me. I doubt I could help with a job or anything, but even just moral support I’m happy to give.
Sorry DMs are not working for some reason. I keep trying to send the same message and typing long things and they won’t show up.
Basically, I would sit down and ask myself what things would have to happen before the worst case scenario happens. Go through every little step from I’ll lose my job and then I will try to find another job but not be able to find one… and then I will try to find a temporary permanent job. That’s like a six months to a year contract…. And then that won’t work so then I will try a shorter term job for a few weeks or a few months…. And then I will decide to switch to another practice area or to compliance or something like that…. Meanwhile, I will be on unemployment…. I may start my own law firm, but won’t make that much money in the beginning I may have to downsize my lifestyle, including getting a less expensive home for example…. Maybe none of those things work and I end up having to live with a family member if I have that option or having to cash out my retirement account.
I just went through this myself. It’s tough. Maybe get that resume together, start looking around. Taking a proactive approach helped me cope with the stress.
Doing what you can meaning what, exactly?
Update resume, take a hard look at budget and cut back, start looking for alternative jobs.
Not sure if it helps, but I am in the same boat and not for the first time. Hilariously, I picked a social science degree and law school over tech/science degrees because I thought the law was a layoff free, sure ticket to the upper middle class--joke's on me.