The Psychological Toll of the Economic Downturn

So I got the dreaded call too. I, like every American, had watched as the economy crumbled around us and jobs started dropping like flies. I, like every American, felt sorry for those who were laid off - pity mixed with fear - that lurking question, "What if it happens to me?" I worried about the future and made contingency plans and held my breath.

But as Wall Street slowed its stomach-turning roller coaster ride and the freefall stabilized and Obama got elected (Hope!) and the weeks turned into months turned into years and disaster never struck, I forgot my earlier fears. I teach at a university, and enrollments were only going up (thanks to all the newly unemployed going back to school). In fact, my director even surprised me with the news that, thanks to a sudden and completely unexpected restructuring of my faculty line, I was going to get a reduction in course load, new administrative responsibilities, and a 20% raise. Wow!

Until, just as suddenly, I wasn't. The director had spoken too soon (a grave miscalculation on his part, for which I forgive him, only because he is an entirely impossible person to hate), and the dean had refused to approve my new status because I lack a PhD. (A PhD. was never required for my faculty line before.) In fact, because I lack a PhD., my contract would not be renewed after this year. Instead of a promotion, I was essentially handed a pink slip.

Oddly enough, I am thankful for the chance to experience the emotions that came rushing in with that dreaded phone call because I had always wondered, watching it happen to others, how it felt. So if it hasn't happened to you, let me tell you how it feels: First, panic. Panic floods in and shuts down all other systems. I spent the first half an hour clutching myself and crying, "I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared - what am I going to do?" Particularly because I support a family, and without my income we could not afford to keep our house, for example. I also don't have the kind of job that is available on every street corner, and I kind of lucked out to land it in the first place. I could not, at least not under the ocean of panic, even think of where else I could go.

The panic, which was like being trapped inside a very bad dream that you wish you could wake yourself up from but can't, eventually subsided into action. I couldn't sleep the first night. I lay awake in bed until I finally had to get up and just DO SOMETHING. (So I applied to grad school. In one night. Seriously!) I started casting the net - grad school, job sites, explore, explore, explore the options. As long as I was doing, I could hold the panic at bay.

As a side note, our house was already on the market. Let me just say that it's a lot more fun to put your house on the market because you want to buy a bigger house. It's a lot less fun to keep your house on the market because you don't know where you will be a year from now and might have to move your family of 5 into your parents' basement.

So now we come to where I feel the psychological toll of the economic downturn the most: the MISERABLE housing market, and the ego-bruising job market. I feel like I'm trying to do the two hardest things to do in America right now: sell my house and find a job. Me and 50 billion other people. So there is just way too much competition out there.

Psychologically, no matter what you tell yourself, when nobody wants to buy your darling, dearly beloved house, it does something to you. I've done everything I know to do. I listed it, I fixed it up, I staged it, I hold open houses almost every week. Hardly anyone even comes to look at it, much less make an offer. Not to mention I'm still addicted to looking at other people's houses that I wish I could buy but can't.

OK, so whatever. Even worse is the job search. So far I've been lucky. Much luckier than I expected to be. I've applied to probably 20-25 jobs in 2 months and gotten 5 interviews. I got one job already (a part-time job online that hasn't started yet), and two more good possibilities. So really, I don't mean to complain; it could be A LOT worse. All I'm trying to say is that putting yourself out there on the job market is really grueling. You basically go before someone and say, "Look at me, judge me, am I good enough?" and they say, "Uh ... no, sorry, you're not." Or they say nothing at all which means, "Uh, you are so not good enough that we don't even have time to acknowledge you." And this, mind you, is when you're stretching yourself to be your very, very best to convince them that you're good enough. So no matter how much you try to tell yourself that the rejection is not personal, uh, it is.

We Americans bank a lot of our self-esteem on 1) our material possessions and 2) our career success. I think there are a lot of hurting people out there today because they have lost both of these. There is a strong case to be made for re-evaluating where our sense of worth comes from, yes, absolutely. But the hurt is still there and it is real.

What I guess we have to do, besides just SURVIVE it, is try and find a way to turn it into something positive, like a chance to take a new direction, to make new priorities, to have more compassion for the disadvantaged because none of us is quite the master of our own fate that we'd like to think we are.