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Posts Tagged ‘grief and loss counseling’

Life After Layoff

Wednesday, February 17th, 2021

man woman grassGetting fired sucks.

There is nothing I can say, spin, or summarize that will help you feel good about what just happened to you.

Wait, don’t stop reading! There is something in here for you; I promise.

When the company you gave your blood sweat and tears to decides to let you go, it forces you to take a hard look at yourself. That is rarely a voluntary act. Most of us do not wake up in the morning each day and say to ourselves,

“Self, I’m gonna take a hard look at you today.”

So when it’s time to take that hard look we lack practice. Where we lack practice we feel in over our head. Where we feel in over our head, we feel like we are drowning. And that feels hopeless.

This blog is going to help you make sense of what it means to be fired/let go/given your severance package early, etc. It’s going to help you take that hard look at yourself and get your confidence back. Finally, it’s going to give you tools (what good blog wouldn’t?) so you can go out and get the job of your dreams and feel like yourself again.

Dot Dot Dot

There are only a few people who have taken good, hard, looks at us: Parents, coaches, and lovers. A good hard look is that perfect combination of love and criticism. It is,

“I love you but…” or, “I love you and…”

Those dot-dot-dots are where the landmines are though. In fact, most of the criticism we heard as kids is loaded into those dot-dot-dots. This is where our ‘I DO,’ started to become our, ‘I AM.’

From Mom: I love you but…you’re a slob. You don’t do your homework, and you need to take a shower.”

You hear, “I am a slob, I am a slacker, and I stink.”

From Dad: “[I love you – this is in a bracket because although dad may have never said it, you suspect he did, in fact, love you] but…you’re lazy! If you’d just get out there and practice as hard as (insert sporty friend’s name here) you’d succeed.”

You hear, “I am lazy. I don’t measure up to ___.”

From Coach: “[definitely did not say ‘I love you.’] You sucked this week. Hit the bench. (Insert sporty friend’s name here) get in there for Dipshit.”

You hear, “I am not good enough, I am a Dipshit, I am a failure.”

Lovers (hopefully) gave a kinder look at you during courtship and early commitment phase. I really hope you heard things like,

“I love you and I need you to really notice when the trash has to go out and take care of it before I ask you.”

More likely though, no one ever took a good hard look at you in love.

MIA: Love

This great website called fathers.com reported that when they speak to groups of men, only 3% – 4% of attendees indicate they ever heard “I love you” from their dad [https://fathers.com/featured-resource-center-page/the-power-of-i-love-you-from-dad/]. Rather than a trite cliche, think of this is as a ‘missing loving message.’

Like a computer program trying to execute a task with a missing code, your brain tries to solve the problem of ‘why did I lose my job’ with a missing loving message. The efficient machine that it is, when it fails to find a loving message it simply substitutes the next best thing; the harsh criticism from the people who LOVED you. Just like that (snaps fingers) criticism, evaluation, and performance-based assessments from parents, coaches, and teachers become your inner voice. So just when you needed a shot of confidence, your helpful brain called up that inner voice that reminded you,

“I don’t measure up.”

“I am not good enough.”

“I am a failure.”

I AM Beats I DO

Lucky for you this is a quick fix. Not an easy fix, but a quick one. I’ll go Steven-Covey on you and begin with the end:

Your I AM is more important than your I DO.

Imagine you are driving down the road and you hit a puppy. You’re able to safely pull over so you go see what happened to the little guy. You weren’t going that fast and he was almost across the road but you see he’s going to need some vet attention. You decide you have some time so you take the puppy to a vet.

If this doesn’t sound like you, you’ve stuck with me this long, so keep reading.

This puppy has not done anything to earn another shot at life. It’s not some dog that rescues people from avalanches or a seeing-eye dog, it’s just some mangy puppy that wasn’t fast enough to keep up with its momma and got stuck in the road. You decide that even though it hasn’t done anything heroic or worthy, it deserves a chance to live. Because it breathes, it is worthy; it is valuable; it measures up; it is good enough.

Because it breathes. That’s a pretty low bar on the ‘performance-equals-love’ scale. Now go look in the mirror. Doing or not doing is not what determines your worth and value. You are worthy and valuable because you breathe. Ergo, losing a job cannot strip away your worth and your value.

Lucky for you (and the rest of us), we are all worthy and valuable. Worthy and valuable people can do anything.

Reality Saves the Day

Now that we have that settled it’s time to take that good hard look in love and see what you, worthy and valuable person that you are, can DO.

Get a piece of paper and a pencil. Draw a line down the middle of the paper so there is a left side and a right side. On the left side write, “things I have been criticized for.” This can be anything from you didn’t take the trash out before your partner reminded you to do it, to you struggle to get your TPS reports in on time. On the right side, write down the names you have been called or negative feelings you have had. This is anything from ‘lazy’ to ‘unmotivated’ to ‘uncaring.’

The left side is based in reality. You do struggle with certain things, we all do. The right side is the critical inner voice trying to remind you that it is in charge of your ‘I am’ and your confidence. The object is to re-train your inner voice. Here’s how it works: Lovingly remind yourself that just because you did not notice the trash before your partner did and they took it out while giving you the stink-eye does not make you lazy. It just means you didn’t notice the trash. That is a struggle you can improve. Repeat to yourself,

“I am valuable and worthy and I have struggles I can improve.”

Once you get a robust left side, you can start tackling the struggles and get on with your job search.

The Plan

This is that good hard look we’ve been alluding to. Just imagine if your dad had said,

“I love you and I notice your arm doesn’t always follow through when you throw to first base. I can tell your frustrated because you threw wide in the last game. I’ve got a bucket of balls in the back yard – want to make a few throws to me?”

Game changer.

Loving message? ✅

Validated your feelings (a frustrated kid upset about his throw) and didn’t criticize your I AM? ✅

Identified something you could change and offered a plan? ✅

I promise this blog is NOT a condemnation of your dad. He probably did the best he could just like we all do. This blog IS a place for you to learn something new though, so let’s try it out.

Step 1. Say “I love you” to yourself. I don’t care how cheesy this feels; you have to do this part. Tell yourself “I love you.”

Step 2. Identify how you feel. “I feel anxious and afraid. I’m supposed to make my family feel safe but I’ve lost my job. I feel like I’ve lost my confidence.”

Step 3. Look at reality and identify something you can change. “The company we acquired brought in their own people so I know I wasn’t let go because of my skill set. I have been putting off learning that new system though, and I know I have some new things I can learn.

Step 4: Make a plan. “I’ve been meaning to touch base with [insert the name of CEO buddy here] to see if he knows about any openings in the industry. I’ll give him a call.”

Ask for help

It is important that you make sense of what it meant to lose your job early in the game. The longer it takes you to realize it’s not about you, the longer it’s going to take to lovingly look at yourself and get your confidence back. If the tools in this blog haven’t helped you tap into what you need to get back out there, get the job of your dreams, and feel like yourself again, then make a phone call and get into some counseling. Everything is virtual now and you can literally have the session in your truck. There is no shame in asking for help so do it today and get back on track. You are valuable, you are worthy, and your family needs you.

For more resources check out my friend Dawn Owens and her book “Light After Layoff.”

The Life Cycle: from Birth to Funerals

Monday, January 21st, 2013

Life cycle events between birth and death are specific to families and cultures. What happens on the first day of school? What do families do to celebrate weddings or graduations? These are good questions to ask as you observe the rituals that are an integral part of your life and perhaps take the opportunity to create meaningful ones that your family will cherish.

Starting with the birth of a baby, common birth rituals in some cultures to have baby showers, baptisms, christenings, etc. Some families insist the new child be named after a father, mother, grandparent, etc. While many couples consider it a family honor or tradition to carry on this naming process other couples pick trendy names for their children. The birth of the child can be looked upon as a private affair, or in some cultures, a family reunion. When we had our first child, only my husband and I were at the hospital, but in the adjoining room, a young woman of a different culture had at least 20 people with her.

Going all the way to the other end of the life cycle to funeral traditions we see how cultures deal with grief and death. Some cultures have expectations of stoicism while others do not hesitate to wail out loud. When my husband served in Vietnam, he took several pictures of Vietnamese funerals. In these pictures, all participants wore white or bright colors, and the body was placed on a wagon with bright objects on top of it. In the Jewish faith, the bodies are not viewed for long periods of time. In Jewish funerals the body is buried quickly.

There are as many differences of expressing birth and death, joy and grief, within cultures as there are between cultures. Examine your own family traditions and rituals and if you decide they are lacking, create a new one of your very own.

Stages of Grief and Loss Counseling Techniques: Ritual in the Grief Cycle

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

Researchers (Holmes and Rahe, 1967 ) have studied grief cycle processes and assigned stress levels to items. Loss of a spouse and loss of a child are the highest stress levels. Others that we may not often think about are losses that occur with moving, changing schools, financial issues, and health problems.

We cannot generalize about the grief cycle or expect everyone to process through stages of grief and loss in the same way. For example, loss of a spouse is rated the highest for causing stress, but consider it from different perspectives. A spouse who dies suddenly may cause more of a loss than the spouse who has been ill for some time. There is no road map for grief, and each loss must be examined aside from any others. Couples may experience the same loss, but they may grieve very differently. When one spouse does not understand the grieving process of the other, marital problems can surface.  Different grief and loss counseling techniques are often utilized by therapists to be sensitive to the varying needs of couples going through the grief cycle together.

Grief and loss counseling techniques for couples and families can often find a unifying strength in rituals. Rituals are such an important part of our lives. We often take them for granted and do not even realize that we have rituals, or recognize how they impact our lives. This is also true of rituals surrounding death. Every culture approaches death differently, and every family within those cultures may have its own way of experiencing death. We can make statements and generalize to cultures and groups and how they deal with death and how they ritualistically process stages of grief and loss, but we know many divert from the expectations.

An example of a ritualistic approach to addressing stages of grief and loss is the NAMES Project. The NAMES Project began as a way to affirm the life of every man, woman, and child who had died of AIDS. It was a healing grief cycle ritual where people added squares to a quilt, each square representing a person who had died.

Dr. Judy DeTrude is licensed in Texas as a Professional Counselor (LPC) and a Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and is an Authorized Supervisor for each of the licenses.

Resources

Holmes and Rahe ( August,1967). Social readjustment rating scale. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 11(2).

Walsh, F. and McGoldrick, M. (2004). Living beyond loss: Death in the family.W.W. Norton & Company: N.Y.