More Than Anxiety

Ep 133 - Now What? - Handling Anxiety When Your Career Changes

• Megan Devito • Episode 133

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Career changes, whether chosen or forced through layoffs, can trigger anxiety about financial security and your identity.

In this episode of More than Anxiety, coach Megan Devito discusses:

  • How leaving or losing a job challenges your identity 
  • Why it's more than financial loss and risk that feels scary and dangerous.
  • Why your brain resists changes - even changes you want to make.
  • Redefine yourself beyond your job title
  • Controlling your focus, your response, and your self-care during transitions
  • Finding small areas where you feel secure can help calm your anxious brain
  •  Support through coaching can provide perspective when anxiety feels overwhelming

    If you're going through a career change or feeling stuck in a job that's making you miserable, schedule a free Boundaries and Balance audit at the link in the show notes or visit the Work With Me page on my website to learn more about coaching.

⭐️ Be sure to listen to Episode 119 to learn from Laura Krauss, author of The Layoff Cooties: Its Them, Not You to hear her layoff story.


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Megan Devito:

Hey there, welcome to the More Than Anxiety podcast. I'm Megan Devito and I help ambitious women break out of the anxiety spiral so they can stop overthinking and actually enjoy life. This podcast is all about real talk, simple shifts and light bulb moments that'll change the way you think, feel and show up for yourself and everybody else in your life too. You'll get straight up truth, actionable steps and the inspiration to finally break free from the stress and second guessing. Let's get to it.

Megan Devito:

Hey, welcome to episode 133 of More Than Anxiety. I might be out of breath when I record this episode. I'm kind of recording it on the fly while I take a walk, and this is really going to be a thought download for me because, honestly, this is the third time I'm recording this episode. And it started as an episode on people being laid off, because I've been doing the Boundaries and Balance audit and I've talked to three people in the last five days who have either been laid off or who fear they're being laid off, and I have a feeling that one of them might have actually been laid off about two days after I talked to her. But it got me thinking about who I'm talking to and what I'm talking about, and how much economic uncertainty and layoffs affect our mental health. But also how just thinking about changing jobs can make us feel really unstable, really anxious and really stressed out because we don't know what's coming next.

Megan Devito:

If you've never heard my backstory before, I was a coach. I was a teacher. I taught on and off for about 15 years in and out of public school and a choice school where I worked with at-risk teenagers, and I was a really good teacher. But I also found myself feeling the Sunday scaries on Thursday and crying in my car over lunch, falling asleep because I was so exhausted just from the morning and really just dreading being there. Not because I didn't like the kids, not because I didn't like my coworkers, but because I was done and I knew it wasn't where I was supposed to be anymore. And I let this go on for a couple of years before I decided to do something about it. Now I had already gotten my life coaching and my health coaching certifications and I was coaching clients one-on-one on the days when I wasn't teaching. I was lucky enough to only teach three days a week, so I had that flexibility. That's a really important step that you want to remember.

Megan Devito:

It's also worth noting that I was making a part-time teacher's income and I ended up making more coaching than I was teaching, which may or may not say a lot, because part-time teachers don't tend to make a lot of money. I mean, we already know that teachers in general don't make a ton of money, so part-time was even less. But everyday I would get up to go to work and I would be very resistant, very, very resistant to going back, having to try to teach, having to try to plan and really just wanting to do something different. I knew it was time for me to go, but I was terrified to take that leap because there's security in teaching. We know we need teachers and I knew I was a good teacher. But I also knew that that wasn't where I was supposed to be anymore. So the idea of giving up that security and that income was keeping me exactly where I did not want to be, and that's what I wonder if you might understand today.

Megan Devito:

Now, to be fair, I realize there's a big difference between choosing to leave your job and being laid off. But the premise I want to get at in this episode is the insecurity and the instability that you might fear when you choose on purpose to lose your income, or when you are forced to lose your income, because either way, there's a lot of similarities that I want to talk about with you. One of those similarities is just the basic security of having that consistent money coming in and how your brain is going to look at that, as you're surely going to die. You'll starve to death, you'll freeze to death, your family won't have anything, you'll be in squalor, and those thoughts feel really, really true and really scary, because your brain is doing its very best work to keep you safe and to keep you going back to what's familiar, even when you don't want it anymore and even if it's not there as an option. What's familiar, even when you don't want it anymore and even if it's not there as an option, brains love things that are familiar. They love to do the same things over and over again. So if you find yourself staying with something that is sucking your soul out and making you snot cry into your salad in your car by yourself at lunch that was me. I knew it was time to go and I wasn't leaving until I got to a point where I was willing to be afraid and to fail, and that's what I can help you do.

Megan Devito:

Let's also talk what it means when you leave your job or when you lose your job, about your identity and who you are. I wish I could tell you that it was super easy for me to transition from saying, "hi, my name is Megan and I'm a teacher to hey, I'm Megan and I'm a coach. And it wasn't. I actually had a coach that I was working with. Say, why do you keep saying I used to be a teacher but now I'm a coach? Why don't you just say I'm a coach? And I thought about it for a while and I was like I don't know, because it was part of my identity, it was who I was and for me that hello, my name is teacher name tag was super sticky. This is true whether you're a teacher, whether you're in finance, whether you are a lawyer or anything else.

Megan Devito:

When you've worked a lot of years or invested a lot of time and energy into perfecting what you do, it becomes part of your entire identity and being. And when that's not there anymore, whether it's because you've been laid off or because you choose to leave. It's going to be sticky and you have to get to know yourself all over again. You have to figure out what you love, what you're good at, what's available to you, and sometimes it's hard to see those things when your entire identity has been wrapped up in one job and identifying as a teacher or a corporate lawyer or anything else for a very long time. However, that doesn't mean it's not possible or that it's a bad idea. It just means that you probably haven't spent a lot of time imagining yourself doing those other things yet. So let's say you get to a point where you're ready to say goodbye, or you're forced to say goodbye, which I'm assuming is a lot harder because I've not ever been in the position of being laid off.

Megan Devito:

However, I have talked with lots of people who have been laid off and did a really fantastic podcast episode with Laura Krauss. It's episode 119. You should definitely go back and listen to that. She's the author of the Layoff Cooties: It's Them, Not You and she talks about the process that she went through when she was laid off and how she went through all of the phases of grief, and I think the wisdom that she shared is super important, because there will be grief involved in this.

Megan Devito:

Even when you want to leave, you will question whether it was the right decision. You will question whether it was safe. You will question whether there's something else on the horizon for you, even if you already went to another job that you really love, you might question if it was the right move, because it's different and it's going to make you feel weird at best and anxious at the worst. This is going to open up an entirely new can of worms for you, but in a really good way, because it's going to force you to see yourself from the outside. Now you might say I don't have any idea how to do that, because I'm inside my own head and inside my own body, and that's true. Good news, I can help you with that. We can do an audit and we can just look at what do you love, what do you not love, what needs some attention, what are your values? We can go there and figure that out on a free call.

Megan Devito:

So when you're at a point where you are either already outside of your old position whether you've left teaching or your corporate position and you're looking back, the past might seem really appealing. You might feel like, geez, maybe I should never have left. You might question yourself. And if you're at a place where you're still looking or trying to figure out what in the world you could do now that you've lost your job or you've chosen to leave your job, it can feel like you're not going to fit into any of the categories. You don't reach the requirements, you're not checking all of the boxes and I read an interesting statistic the other day that said, when men are applying for jobs, they're looking and if they check 60% of the boxes, they apply.

Megan Devito:

But that's not true for women. For whatever reason, we wait until we can check all of the boxes 100% before we apply. We put ourselves inside of our own box so that we don't have to feel embarrassed or small or like we're not where we need to be. We don't want to be told no, we're have to people- please All of those things when we just have to feel brave and confident and calm enough to put ourselves out there. And that, my friends, takes looking at yourself from an entirely new light.

Megan Devito:

So if you are at a place where you're ready to stop feeling sick on Saturday and already looking ahead to Monday, if you know that it's time to go, but you're not sure how everything feels too out of control. Let's find a few places where you actually have had control all along. By the way, I've had to pause recording this like 10 times because I'm walking really fast up a hill and I keep getting really out of breath, so I probably sound crazy in this episode. That's okay, it doesn't happen all the time, but this week we're going to go for it.

Megan Devito:

Let's talk about one thing that you can control. You can always control what you focus on inside your head. What are you thinking? You get to choose? Are you thinking about everything that you've lost, everything that you are not, the places where you don't feel secure, the things that you don't want to happen? These are all super normal things for your brain to do, so there's no shame or embarrassment involved. If you're noticing that that is just your brain trying to protect you.

Megan Devito:

Now, I'm not pretending that losing your job or choosing to leave your job is an easy decision or something that you love, because it's probably not. It's really scary and really hard and it's going to require you to adapt and change. Yikes. Your brain is going to throw a temper tantrum, and it's probably doing that, but it doesn't mean there's actually anything wrong. It just means things are different and your brain's looking for control and certainty, and it may have some that you're not seeing right now, even when you think you don't have any control at all.

Megan Devito:

You could also control how you respond to these thoughts. So if you notice that you think I'm never going to find another job and your solution is to not look for a job so that you don't have to feel disappointed, or to only apply for jobs that are much less than what you actually want, or even to go back to that job that you just left, that's just your brain's way of protecting you to say, oh, don't do these things. Those could feel really bad, they could be embarrassing, you could be disappointed. Just go back to that safe thing that felt terrible when you left it. But you can choose how you react. What I do is, I help people find those feelings inside of their body and then recognize the thoughts that come up when they feel anxious, when they feel stressed, so that we can challenge those thoughts so you can start looking at. Wait a second, is that actually true or am I just really afraid about what would happen? No shame, I did the exact same things when I left my teaching job.

Megan Devito:

And let's not forget that you have control about how you prepare and take care of yourself during the process of leaving your job, preparing to leave your job or finding a new job. Now, this is true, even if you are laid off. You may not have control over the circumstance of being laid off, but you do have control in what you do after you're laid off and, to be fair, there's going to be a period of grieving, just like Laura talked about in episode 119. You're going to be sad, you're going to be angry, you're going to be anxious, you're going to be all these different emotions, and that's to be expected. But what you do to prepare for what comes next or to take care of yourself during that time making sure that you're eating nutritious foods, making sure that you have good coping mechanisms so you're not grabbing bottles of wine every night or anything else those are all inside of your control. You can choose how you react.

Megan Devito:

If you're having some bad reactions or responses right now to being laid off or to leaving your job and you're noticing that you're on a slippery slope, Girlfriend, we need to talk! Let's come up with some really good coping mechanisms that help you feel more energized, that help you have more control, that lower all of that cortisol inside of your body, so that you can start making really good choices for you and for what's coming down the road. Because something else that Laura brought up is that maybe, even when you didn't want it and without pretending that it feels good or that was the right move for you at that moment, maybe something better is waiting for you on the other side. And when you really pause, maybe, just maybe, there might be a tiny part of you that's curious about what that could be or even has an idea about what it already is. Now, I'm not saying you're not terrified to go after it. I'm saying that you might have a little inkling in there that you're ignoring because the anxiety and the fear is so loud inside of your head.

Megan Devito:

So let's talk about what I can do to help you with this. The first thing I can do is I can offer you a free audit. This is not a sales call. It's not a coaching call. It's just a way for you to get a bird's eye view of what's happening in your life, whether you are choosing to make it happen on your own or it's happening outside of your control. We can just look at what's working right now. Let's find the tiny places where you do feel secure, so that you can give your brain just a little bit of peace.

Megan Devito:

We can also look at what's not working and you might say, Megan, everything has fallen apart, it's a catastrophe and nothing's working. I'm going to help you find some at least little places where it is working, and then we can go into the bigger things that aren't working. I'm also going to ask you tell me more. What's that about? Why did you rank it what it was? We were rating everything on a scale of one to 10, and I'm going to see what needs your attention. So if you don't have any idea where to start this process, this is a great starting point for you.

Megan Devito:

Now, after that audit, I'm going to be super excited that I got to know you better, because that's been the most fun for me. But I'm also going to tell you that if you ever decide that you want to talk to me more about coaching, here's how you do it. You can decide at that point, because I told you I'm not going to try to sell you anything on this call. That's not my goal, it's just to help you. That's where we would start. If you already feel that you're past that point and you're like, no 100%, I just need help, okay, then we need to talk about what coaching looks like. That's something that I always do on a Confidence Catalyst Call where we can just say, okay, tell me what you want, tell me why you asked me to help you. Like, what do you want me to help you with? And then I'll show you what coaching with me is like, what the process would be like and what it would be like if we worked together. That's also open for you.

Megan Devito:

I coach people in two different ways. One, if you want really intensive one-on-one personalized work, let's talk about one-on-one coaching. Let's talk about what that looks like. If you're like, yeah, I just want to find a group of people who get it. I want to learn as much as I want coached and I'm just really looking for support that's really flexible, then let's talk about my group.

Megan Devito:

I have a group called Ambitious Overthinkers Anonymous where we get together every week on Monday I get to put my teacher hat back on and I get to talk with you for right around an hour and do a quick lesson, do all the questions that you have during the lesson and explain all the content for the week to you. And then on Wednesdays we come back in and we do group coaching. So bring all your questions, bring all the things you need help with and you get coached. And we also have a forum where you can post pictures of your dog if you want. You can ask questions, you can post where you're hung up. You can also post what you're celebrating, all of the things. It's a fantastic group and it's a great way to support people who don't necessarily want the intensity of one-on-one. But those are both options that I offer in my coaching to help you move through this transition in your life, whether you are choosing it or whether it was forced upon you.

Megan Devito:

So let's go back and review really quickly about why this support is so important. One reason is because your brain is going to freak out when anything changes, even when you choose it. Now, for some people that reaction is a lot more intense than for other people. But if you are feeling terrified about your financial situation, about the state of the economy in general. When I'm recording this today, it's a madhouse out there. It's kind of what inspired this conversation, this and a call I just got off of on LinkedIn. So if you're feeling anxious about all those things like, oh my gosh, what if my job is threatened next, just remember that you have more control than you think you do. You can control what you think, you can control how you respond to what's going on around you, and you can control what you do to take care of yourself in the process. So if this resonated with you, fantastic, be sure to go to the show notes and click the link to schedule a boundaries and balance call. Or you can go to my website, go to the work with me tab. Check out all the ways that you can work with me as your coach. If this sounds like somebody you know, you would be doing them a huge favor to share this episode with them.

Megan Devito:

Thank you for listening. Thank you for following, subscribing, doing all of the things. I totally appreciate it and I hope this was really helpful for you. I will be back again next week. If I don't talk to you, then I'll talk to you. I will be back again next week, and if I don't talk to you before on a call, I will talk to you then. Take care. Hey, there, before you go.

Megan Devito:

I just want to say thanks for hanging out with me on More Than Anxiety. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a review so that other people can find it too. And if you're ready to quiet your mind, stop overthinking and actually enjoy your life, there are two ways I can help. One I have a group called Ambitious Overthinkers Anonymous. It's my monthly coaching community where you'll get live coaching, real talk and a super supportive crew who get it. And the second way is through one-on-one coaching. So if you're ready for a deep, personalized support to help you feel calm, confident and in control head over there, you can find both of these places in the show notes. Just click the link and let's talk.