Unemployment Can Be Isolating, Shameful, and Like Grieving Death

Debbie Levitt
Life After Tech
Published in
2 min readSep 25, 2024

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I received this email yesterday from someone buying my new “Life After Tech book. It’s an actionable book and workbook with 18 exercises, designed to help people figure out their next career. Or stay in tech and add non-tech work to your world.

Does this sound like you or someone you know? Or many people you know? You’re far from alone.

This last year has felt like an incredibly isolating experience. I wish I had been more vocal about it but it was kind of shameful. Even seeing your book has validated the last year for me. I’m intrigued to see where others are moving to, career wise.
I’m quite curious to see if others are going through a similar emotional process, and if they’ve also remained silent. The loss of work has impacted me in deeper ways than I ever expected.
I would go as far as to say I’m still massively grieving the loss of a career that was going absolutely brilliantly up until the last year. I feel somewhat duped by the tech industry. My work meant so much to me, and had such significant meaning in my life that I then had an identity crisis throughout the process, as well as burn-out from job searching.

It makes me think of the line from the Ryan George video, “A tornado launched my grandmother into a hurricane.” OK, that was comedy. But I think many people feel like they went from the tornado of working in tech to the hurricane of being unemployed.

Even if you didn’t always have the best jobs working on the best products with the best and highest #empathy people, you now miss that career. Why?

Because it’s how you defined yourself.

As I dive into in Life After Tech, we define ourselves by our work. But that can lead to a lot of trouble and heartbreak.

Define yourself by your Core Personal Qualities. Who are you at your core? What do you like or love about yourself? What do others like or love about you? Not your hair or fave band, but who are you inside. Your true definition.

You may have picked work that matched these Core Personal Qualities, and then blended how you define yourself into that work. It’s time to separate the two. You will find other work that matches your CPQs, and gives you a sense of reward.

Chapter 5 has an exercise on this as phase 1 of the eight-phase Phoenix Flight Plan. Sense of Reward is Chapter 6, and phase 2.

Please check out my book, and spread the word.

🐦🔥 https://lat.link Life After Tech is a book, exercises, coaching, community, and more. You are the phoenix.

Subscribe to my new Medium Publication, Life After Tech.

Too many people are feeling shame and isolation. Start comparing notes. You’re not alone.

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Debbie Levitt
Life After Tech

“The Mary Poppins of CX & UX.” Strategist, Researcher, Architect, Speaker, Trainer. Algorithms suck. Join my Patreon.com/cxcc or Patreon.com/LifeAfterTech