Dreading a Layoff? It’s a Death You Can Survive
- Jun 1
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 2
Jan Turner works at the intersection of leadership, resilience, and conscious transformation. As an executive coach, former C-suite leader, and 2x burnout survivor, she brings the human back to organizations and guides leaders home to themselves.
Can you think about your own death? Many people are unable to contemplate this inevitability for long. Let your thoughts stray there for just a moment, and you may find that you hitch your breath, or even start to develop a feeling of panic. It’s uncomfortable, so we don’t go there.
Now think about getting laid off from your job. Is the feeling you get somewhere along the same spectrum? The specter of job loss, which has become a defining condition of modern professional life, threatens our narrative of self in a way not unlike the specter of death. As organizations continuously reshape themselves in response to uncertainty, instability, and rapid technological change, many professionals are forced to confront the fragility of the identities they have built through work. For millions of people, the threat of being laid off is experienced as the destabilization of identity, purpose, and self-worth. Perhaps that is why an unsettling question now lands with such force, “What do you fear more, losing your job or losing life itself?”
I have asked this question in quiet, one to one coaching conversations with some of the most accomplished professionals I know. The reaction is almost always the same, a pause as eyes widen, followed by a half laugh. Then something more uncomfortable settles in. When people sit with this question, many realize that losing their job frightens them as much as, if not more than, death. That answer speaks volumes about what many adults have built their identities on for years, if not decades.
The pressure is real
We are living in a period of sustained dread around job security. A recent study shows that 81% of U.S. workers say they are worried about losing their jobs, with 20% reporting they are significantly more worried than they were the year before.[1] The main reason, the accumulated weight of various significant forces hitting employers and the job market simultaneously, with no clear end in sight.
There is macroeconomic uncertainty, geopolitical instability, AI driven transformation, and evolving competition, among other factors. By one estimate, the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 projected that 92 million roles will be displaced globally by 2030.[2] This all contributes to a different kind of fear, which is not irrational. Professionals who once considered their jobs more resistant to layoffs, such as senior managers, specialized experts, and longtime contributors, are no longer exempt. For the first time since the corporate downsizing wave of the early 1990s, white collar professionals are finding that no position is truly secure.[3]
The identity crisis behind job loss
Many of us have been taught or have internalized that success in the workplace equals success in life. So if the moment comes when we need to step back or leave a job, where does our sense of self go?
Given cultural norms and expectations, it is no surprise that more than 55% of American workers say they get their sense of self from their job.[4] That number climbs among senior leaders and people who have spent decades building careers in specialized fields. For many of these professionals, their job is who they feel they are. And when it disappears, voluntarily or not, the question that often follows is, “Who am I now?”
Psychology Today has noted that when identity and self-worth are wrapped around one’s career, involuntary job loss goes well beyond practical disruption.[5] It can trigger a full identity crisis, one that tends to arrive as a cascade of quiet losses that include, but are not limited to:
Purpose and structure: The role gave the day shape and direction. Without it, many high achievers describe a surprising and disorienting flatness.
Community: For many professionals, the workplace is also their primary social world. When it disappears overnight, so can a sense of connection and support.
Status and self-worth: Title, institutional rank, and compensation level can seem like hard evidence of one’s value and significance. Senior professionals, in particular, may fear that potential new employers will not value or compensate them fairly for the deep skills and experience they have acquired over their careers.
Financial security: Financial wellbeing can be an immediate concern, especially for those without severance pay or meaningful savings. The increasing length of time it is taking for many to become gainfully re-employed is another key factor, one that can be particularly acute for seasoned professionals.
Grief: Losing organizational affiliations contributes directly to grief symptoms, not just stress.[6] This is more significant than it may initially seem. Research indicates that one in five people experience a lower quality of life for up to five years after job loss, and that naming the experience as grief, rather than just stress or a setback, helps people recognize and begin to process what is actually happening to them.[7]
All of the dynamics that I have described above ultimately impact not only the professionals directly affected by them, but also those who are close to them, especially family, colleagues, and friends.
To illustrate, over the last year, I have spoken with more than a dozen accomplished professionals who have left their jobs voluntarily or involuntarily. All have described feeling a sort of excommunication from the majority of their former colleagues, including those with whom they thought they were friends. While some have described the lack of outreach or engagement with a sense of shock and sadness, others have greeted it with resignation, that they are effectively a social casualty of an awkward, unspoken separation, a sort of death to which many people do not know how to respond.
What is ours to do
Here is what I believe, modern leaders must build an internal, self-oriented stability that fortifies and sustains them, while enabling them to support their teams and organizations more fully.
That means doing the harder work of separating who you are from what you do and reconnecting with the kind of leader you actually want to be, not just the kind your industry or management has rewarded. It also means building practices that make that reconnection stronger day to day.
Here are a few that I return to with the leaders I coach:
Audit your identity. If your job title disappeared tomorrow, what parts of you would remain? Your values, your way of thinking, your capacity to connect with yourself and others, and your ability to lead in an authentic way are not tied to a company logo or an organizational chart. Naming what is truly yours is the first step toward building an identity that cannot be taken from you.
Practice personal inquiry. Self-awareness is a practice. Ask yourself what is driving you before a big decision or around a goal you cannot stop striving toward. Ask what you avoided feeling after a hard conversation. These are not indulgent questions. They are examples of questions that reveal what is underneath your behavior and create space for more intentional choices and leadership.
Separate your worth from your output. Workaholism dressed as dedication and perfectionism dressed as high standards both reinforce the belief that value is earned through performance. Recognizing such patterns is not a small thing, but it is where real change begins, especially for high achievers.
Reimagine your future on your own terms. This is beyond just the next role or the title that comes after this one. The professionals who can withstand disruption are the ones who already know what kind of leader and life they are building toward. Connect with your purpose and take action to live into it daily, before you are standing at the threshold of retirement.
When that foundation exists, a layoff is still difficult. But it is a transition that presents opportunity, rather than a failure or a collapse. It feels like a chapter closing and an invitation into something fresh, not an ending.
Conclusion
So I will leave you with the question I started with. Do you dread the idea of a layoff as much as one might dread death? If so, take it as an important signal. Signals, when we pay attention to them, are how we find our way back home to ourselves.
The high-performing professionals and teams I work with are often already carrying more than they realize. Integrative Coaching creates the space to name what is happening and rebuild from a stronger, sustainable foundation. If you are building an organization that takes the human side of performance seriously, leading a team through uncertainty, or navigating a transition yourself, explore more here.
Read more from Jan Turner
Jan Turner, Executive Coach and Strategic Advisor
Jan Turner is an executive coach, strategic advisor, and former C-suite leader with over 25 years of experience in global financial services. Having led teams across 11 different functions and survived burnout twice, she guides leaders and teams through significant transitions, helping them build trust, grow in confidence, and move beyond self-defeating habits. Jan’s approach combines whole-person development, mindfulness, business acumen, and practical leadership techniques that deepen presence, resilience, and overall impact. She helps organizations and teams to navigate complexity and drive results by fostering personal growth and transformative leadership. Her mission: bring the human back to organizations and leaders, home to themselves.
References:
[1] My Perfect Resume, 2025: The Great Stay: 2025 State of the Labor Market
[2] AI Multiple, 2026: Top 20+ Predictions from Experts on AI Job Loss
[3] Origins, 1998: Downsizing Becomes Normal
[4] Gallup, 2014: In U.S., 55% of Workers Get Sense of Identity From Their Job
[5] Psychology Today, 2026: The Dangers of Over-Identifying With Your Job
[6] National Library of Medicine, 2018: Older Worker Identity and Job Performance: Older Worker Identity and Job Performance: The Moderator Role of Subjective Age and Self-Efficacy
[7] Tilburg University, 2025: Losing a loved one or your job: The grieving process is similar
