Help me let go and move on from the toxic job I recently left

July 24, 2023 4:31 AM

I recently resigned from a toxic workplace after months of deep unhappiness and experiencing bullying and gaslighting but I feel like a made a mistake. I am very confident that I will get another job imminently but I feel so overwhelmed and defeated. How do I handle this period of reflection and in between space before I land my next role? Snowflakes inside.

I only spent several months in my old job knowing full well it was the completely wrong fit and career direction. Not only knowing this, I encountered workplace bullying and incompetent line management which caused me to struggle even more with the role and stay during my probation period. The work environment ruined my self esteem and belief in myself as well as made me constantly anxious and depressed due to weak and dysfunctional management. I also felt like I could not be myself and didn't fit in. I really wanted to leave very early on and even started looking for a new position but 'well meaning' friends advised me to stick with it and now it's ended up with my resignation without a new job.

I was in preparation to enter a probation review when I knew my contract would be terminated and then I felt like I had no other choice. At the time of my resignation I felt so empowered and excited for the future but now I feel bleak and hopeless despite my extensive experience and skills in an in demand field. I also know I want to move on from my field and embark on a new profession in the future.

I have been throwing myself into the job search over the past couple of days and things will work out fine if I stick at that and be methodical and focused.

However, how can I navigate the initial confusing period of mourning, depression, freedom, anxiety and excitement for the future?

posted by foxmardou to Work & Money (7 answers total)

I've done this. This is a perfectly natural reaction to that situation. It will most likely take a good while yet until it feels ok. I accidentally, but it turned out to be really smart, took a job almost right after I resigned, even though I had intended to r&r. The job was not really a great fit but the people were kind and it felt amazing to be needed and trusted again. I quit just short of the one year mark in spring, and was sufficiently rejuvenated by that rebound job to land my dream spot that same autumn.
posted by Iteki at 4:51 AM on July 24, 2023 [9 favorites]

Best answer: I'm in your boat, albeit for the totally opposite reason - I had a job I ABSOLUTELY BLOODY FUCKING LOVED, but I got laid off a week ago (it was a tech company, and it fell to the same plague of "massive-ass layoffs" that other tech companies have done recently). My boss pushed back against all the layoffs as long as he possibly could, and when he was breaking the news to me, he was literally crying. I am fucking mourning that job, believe you me.

Ironically - I've been finding that "throwing yourself into the job search" is counter-productive, if what that means is "spending 8 hours on LinkedIn or Indeed reading jobs and sending out your resume". For me, anyway, I find that a good part of the early phase of a job search is fueled by panic ("oh my god what if the money runs out and I lose my apartment and end up having to move back in with my parents OH GOD I CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN LEMME FIND A JOB NOW NOW NOW NOW AAAAAAAAAAAUGH"), and if you do that, you end up applying to things out of desperation and you end up in a toxic job and it sucks. (That's actually what lead me to the job BEFORE my last one, which WAS a toxic workplace situation and I HATED that job).

So with one or two exceptions, I gave myself a week to chill out; I cleaned out the fridge, I updated my contact info for some people, I finally cleaned a closet, I hung around my community garden. The ONLY job-search things I did were to sign back up with the agency that got me that great job, apply to one posting for an office that was three blocks from my house (because COME ON, how awesome would that commute be), sign up for a career-coaching thing that my job gave us all as part of our severance, and to send my resume around to a few people to say "hey, I'm looking, if you hear of anything." I also dealt with the financial-management side of things by taking a good hard look at my budget and seeing what I could trim back - I'm going to be cancelling my gym and walking a lot instead for now, I've put my IRA contributions on pause (I can withstand a couple months of that) and I've shuffled around some savings. (I am lucky in that I don't have any debt and I have some emergency savings...I admit that this is a position of privilege.)

I also reached out to lean on friends and family for some support. I'd already booked and paid for a 3-day weekend vacation this coming weekend, and my mother encouraged me to keep that because it would help my mood; and then she even sent me a check for some "fun money" for that trip. My instinct prior to this would be to grit my teeth when I spoke to my parents and say that everything was FINE, I'm FINE, it's all FINE - and if I'd done that this time, Mom probably wouldn't have sent me that money. It's okay to admit to the people you trust and who love you that you need some extra support right now.

I've been reading a lot about "how to cope and stay positive during a job search" articles this past week, and a number of them say that "okay, that advice to spend 8 hours a day on your job search is kind of nuts". I found a much more realistic approach:

* 5 hours a week on drafting and editing your emails, cover letters, resume and Linked-In portfolio.
* 5 hours a week on networking - reaching out to people you know in careers you were curious about or at companies you think are cool, and doing things like asking what they're looking for or what their jobs are like.
* 3 hours a week on locating jobs and applying to them.
* 3 hours a week on finding and learning about companies that are cool, and figuring out if you can fit in there (or if they actually suck).
* 11 hours a week on any other job-related stuff - going to interviews, job training for a new skill, reading about industries, following up with your career coach, etc.

That's a much more dealable part-time schedule. I've set it up so that I'm doing all that in the morning, and then by 11 am I'm done with the butt-in-chair part of the search and I am free to either go to an interview if I get one, or to start making myself a picnic lunch or to go get dressed for a trip to a museum that has free hours on Tuesdays or whatever.

Because you ALSO need to get out of the house some, and do some NOT job stuff. If there's a museum where you live that has free hours on Tuesday afternoons - well yay, this is your chance to finally take advantage of it. If there's a corner of your town that you've always heard is cool but never gotten to visit - now's your chance, and hey, maybe you'll discover there's a company there with a "Help wanted" sign in the window and it sounds interesting and now you can walk in and say "Hey, what are you looking for?" and look, you've just done some networking. If you have some kind of hobby that you've never had time for, now you do.

Libraries are also a god-damn BOON for both the job-hunt stuff and the non-job-hunt stuff. This afternoon I'm going to be going to a drop-in job search clinic at Brooklyn's main library branch, where someone will help me FOR FREE with things like "how do I network really" and "should I edit my resume" and "what other job seeking resources are out there". And when I'm done with that part, I'm also going to be right there at a library where I can check out books about any damn thing I want, for free, and take them home and read them. Maybe I'll look into "how to brush up your MS Word skills" or maybe I'll get something about baking pie. Who knows.

Libraries also have free courses in things, and links to free resources; I'm going to be signing up for a free course on "Advanced Excel Skills" in a week, and I've bookmarked the list of other job and skill training sites that I can access with a library card. And libraries also have access to fun stuff - if I'm feeling discouraged, I can see if they have a DVD of a comforting movie and go get it and then watch it.

Basically I'm taking a deeeeeeeeeeeep breath, and checking in with myself a little about "okay, hang on - what REALLY is the situation with me, what do I want and what is my budget situation and what can I do". There's something Tori Amos wrote once - she did the introduction for one of Neil Gaiman's graphic novels, but something she wrote in there has some good advice for life overall. A lot of us, when we get stuck in bad situations, try to "stay positive" by sort of denying the situation we're in - "No, I'm not stuck in a swamp, I'm fine! It's fine! I'll be fine!" But if you accept your situation, you can see both the dangers around you - and the way out; if you accept that you're in the swamp, then you can see the alligator behind you - but you can also see the vine in front of you that you can grab on to help pull yourself out. Throwing myself onto Indeed.com 24/7 is my way of saying "I'm not stuck in the swamp" - but stopping to look at myself let me see that the alligator isn't quite as close as I was afraid it was, and also that "oh, hang on, Upwork has some basic MS Word jobs I can bid on and fart out quick for some cash, and oh there's a job course at the library, and oh hang on, there's a friend of a friend on Facebook saying their husband's company is looking for an EA, let me connect with her..."

Memail me if you want to stay in touch for mutual support. I'm serious.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:22 AM on July 24, 2023 [60 favorites]

However, how can I navigate the initial confusing period of mourning, depression, freedom, anxiety and excitement for the future?

I think sometimes it helps to just let the feelings come as they will and not worry about it or about what they mean.

If, say, you ran half a marathon today, you'd probably feel incredibly sore tomorrow - but you probably wouldn't be particularly worried about it or go to the doctor, because you'd know that your body getting sore after a half marathon is expected and natural. In real life you just went through a long hard period, with lots of stress and emotional turbulence, and now that you don't have to gear up and put on a brave face for work every day the flood of feelings can finally spill out for a while. It's natural. For now you don't need to feel confused about what they're telling you, or whether they mean anything real or are just delayed reactions to things. You can just tell yourself 'ah, this one's anxiety' and 'hmm, euphoria' and 'ooh, feelings of defeat, that's okay'. Later, when the roller coaster has calmed down some, you can think about whether there are any lessons you need to take from what you felt. But right now, I'd just ride the emotional stuff out, be gentle with yourself, do some small scale nice things for yourself and accept it as natural.
posted by trig at 5:49 AM on July 24, 2023 [11 favorites]

Keep it simple.

Remember that you will get through this.

Seek out a therapist to process the layoff and the bullying.

Seek out positive connections in spaces where you feel safe, and ways to get out of your head and have a sense of accomplishment. Volunteering, choir, toastmasters, zumba, strength training, knitting class - something that doesn’t demand so much of your time and attention that it detracts from your job search, but gives you a sense of connection and satisfaction.

You were in a shitty environment. You didn’t deserve that. You don’t deserve bullying. You deserve honesty, fairness, and respect in your workplace.
posted by bunderful at 6:01 AM on July 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

Right in the early stages when you're raw and your nervous system is maxed out but it's too soon to productively intellectually process the backlog of trauma, probably the best thing you can do is take a stretch of time to really truly rest. Like yes, update your resume in the places and set your linkedin to "open to work" and spend 15-30 minutes twice a day scheduling recruiter calls and stuff starting this Friday or next Monday, but otherwise spend significant stretches of time in a pillow nest with your feet up.

Fall down the rabbithole of a book, maybe do some binge-watching, spend some time in meditation intended to sweep away - cleanse - flush - purge the negative energy and associations and shame and hurt from the old job, and then drawing in good clean energy from the ground and sky and the world around you, supporting and energizing you for the work ahead. Play tetris, or bejeweled or the matching game of your choice. Let your brain be fully unemployed for a few days. Spend a little time feeling sorry for yourself, and healing the parts that got hurt the worst in this situation.

But also know you're going to recover whether you do anything specific or not. Time will do the bulk of the work. I just think that taking at least a short but meaningful rest to let your body have a minute to unclench can make the process easier.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:46 AM on July 24, 2023 [8 favorites]

I quote this a lot but it bears repeating: A sense that your job is terribly important is a sure sign of an impending nervous breakdown.

My suggestion to you is to remember who you actually are and what you actually want in life. There are very few people who's sole goal is to drown in their career.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:39 PM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Having once had a job where I internalized all the bad stuff my boss said about me (and none of the good stuff others did), I know about the hit to your self-esteem that you describe. What helped most was a friendly coworker who caught me when I was second-guessing myself based on my boss's words who would remind me that, no, I wasn't wrong in that way, and I didn't have to take on-board that way of seeing myself (i.e., see myself through my boss's critical eyes). As much as possible, try to notice when you're channeling the toxic stuff and remind yourself that it's simply not true. I used to feel like my old boss was out there viewing me in this terrible way... then a few things happened that let me shut that off, and that was very helpful. If that's going on for you, block it with whatever kind of internal force field you can set up. Don't think about them; their opinion doesn't matter; pretend they live in another universe; picture your paths diverging in the woods such that you're in different forest rooms now, or whatever works for you. I used to think I needed to try to remember the criticism so I could improve, but all that was doing was blocking my ability to calmly proceed using my own logic and making me into a nervous nelly who couldn't take a step forward without second guessing it. That con of keeping their input in my brain far outweighed any tiny benefit it might provide to the point that it was just not actually useful, and I found it very helpful to just let it all go and forget it. Suppose there were some useful part -- if it's truly something you should learn, then later, someone else with your best interests at heart who generally "gets" and believes in you will communicate that piece in a kind way without bullying or toxic emotions, and you can learn it then. And I found that ironically, deciding to ignore the "you're wrong" and re-learning to rely on myself included being able to rely upon the insights I actually did take on-board from them. For now, you really are best served by trying to flush out the bad stuff, put up a force field against imagining the negative things they might think or say about you, and let positive energy and confidence flow back in. Best of luck with your job search.
posted by slidell at 12:33 AM on July 26, 2023 [3 favorites]