Redundancy is a profoundly strange space to inhabit. It often arrives with a heavy mix of shock and grief, but right alongside it, there is that sudden, intoxicating spark of absolute freedom.
For the first time in years, the rigid structure of your calendar is gone, replaced by a blank canvas. It genuinely feels like a threshold and a moment where the horizon widens, and you think, "This is it. This is the point where I completely reinvent my life."
This possibility of a new kind of future is particularly relevant if you have recently taken voluntary redundancy seeing this as a moment when you can make radical change with the security of a small pot of income to see you through the first few months.
Indeed, we can describe this as the Honeymoon Phase which brings:
Relief: The sudden absence of alarm clocks, corporate jargon, and endless meetings brings a deep, physical sense of ease.
The Romanticizing: You picture yourself learning a new language, starting that dream business, having time for exercise or getting a great new job. Every path feels possible.
But navigating this whole new world can be a rollercoaster. Alongside the respite and excitement that all kinds of things might become possible is anxiety and stress, grief and self-doubt. You find you are experiencing:
An Identity Crisis: When people ask, "What do you do?", the lack of an immediate, tidy answer can feel destabilizing. It is easy to underestimate how much of our self-worth is tied to a job title until it's gone.
A Paralysis of Choice: When you can do anything, figuring out exactly what to do next can feel incredibly overwhelming.
For many, this period of your life can be disorienting but not necessarily more than that. And then a new job or opportunity comes along and we move on.
But for some, that simply doesn’t happen. You find that those incredible skills you have amassed through a lifetime of work are not helping you cut through to something new. You begin to realise that you are being seen as too old or too experienced for entry level roles and yet you know you are far too young to retire.
You find yourself reflecting, far too often, about where the justice is in your situation. You were so committed to a job that it was pretty much your whole life but found yourself burnt-out or feeling your values were being compromised and so you took voluntary severance, knowing you are skilled, capable and have loads to offer. And then .... there is nothing. That new future has failed to appear despite enormous efforts on your part. You feel trapped and doubly redundant - not only has your. job disappeared, it can feel as if your worth has too.
There are real dangers when you are trapped in grief, identity loss and a perceived lack of control. Psychologists conceptualise this experience as complicated grief – a terminology I find rather odd as grief in and of itself is necessarily complicated. However, this state is described in the following way:
· Identity and self-worth disruption: Feeling that your value, purpose, or place in the world disappeared with your job title.
· Intense yearning or rumination: Constantly replaying the circumstances that led to you taking voluntary redundancy – maybe how poorly you thought the restructure was conducted or how unfair it was – and sofeeling stuck in anger or disbelief, or longing for your former routine and colleagues.
· Avoidance or numbness: Shutting down emotionally, isolating yourself from social settings, or avoiding reminders of your career.
· Prolonged duration: Unlike standard adjustment stress, complicated grief persists past six months and heavily impairs daily functioning.
The research indicates that this is more likely to happen when:
· Work has been central to your identity: Tying your entire self-identity tightly to your career achievement or profession.
· Circumstances of the loss: Experiencing a sudden, hostile, or unjust termination, or facing severe financial and resource strain.
· Disenfranchised grief: Feeling that society or loved ones don't "validate" career loss the way they do a bereavement, leaving you to suffer in silence.
If you are in the thick of this right now, it might help to:
·Remember that redundancy is a structural business decision, not a personal failure. Studies exploring gender differences in career rejection show that women are more prone to internalizing negative professional events and blaming themselves for shortcomings whereas men are more likely to attribute job loss or setbacks to external factors like market conditions or company decision Diversifying your time early on through non-work hobbies, volunteering, or community connection protects your mental health while your career is in flux. As any of you who know me will have heard me say, I spent a lot of time talking to trees when I was in this situation. I know it’s not for everyone. But it worked for me.
Engage in some re-identity work. When I left my role at the University of Kent, I realised I had to redefine who I was. I could no longer say I was DVC – or anything else. So who was I? Clearly I was still a mother, a wife, a sister, a friend and I was still a Professor and engaging in editorial work. So not every part of my identity was gone forever. Which parts of your identity do you still have – not everything has gone with a job title?
But the big part – my executive roles – had gone and that was the work I needed to do on myself. I always describe this time as my “novitiate” phase. The metaphor is from the Catholic Church’s requirement that a woman who decides she would like to become a nun has to spend anything between one and two years as a novitiate experiencing convent life before being allowed to fully transition to the black habit of the nun. This period of time is to allow for the novitiate’s growth and certainty that this is the life for her. Indeed, it follows an initial period of around six months as a postulant.
My own experience is that it does take this long to readjust your sense of self to a new world. It took me a year to work out and set up Women-Space and to begin to embrace the identities of coach, consultant, entrepreneur and freelancer. But that identity only became embedded much later. Which brings me to:
Revisiting that sense of freedom and release you experienced when you realised you no longer had to deal with the politics, frustrations, endless meetings not going anywhere, exhaustion and relentless demands of a university job. Use this time to enjoy this time. It is a gift. And take your time. If my own experience is anything to go by, a big career change takes a lot of time both to work out what that might be and to settle into it.
Wishing you every success in whatever life has for you next,
Christina
Professor Christina Hughes is Founder and Chief Executive of Women-Space Leadership Limited. She is a widely published author and has held executive roles at the Universities of Warwick, Sheffield Hallam and Kent.