The work context is one of the areas of life that most easily becomes a source of stress and anxiety.. And the vast majority of working people experience, to a lesser or lesser extent, a friction between their skills and knowledge, on the one hand, and the daily or weekly objectives to be achieved, on the other.
But in addition, to this we must add another element that, although it is not constantly expressed during the day-to-day life of professionals, is almost always there, implicit: the fact that at some point you can lose the job you have, or at least the role he occupies in the organization. And you do not work in an abstract world in which everything is static, but in a very changing environment because the economy is not always stable and demands change.
Therefore, in this article we will see a series of Coping strategies for fear of losing your jobwith instructions on what to do to combat it.
What do we mean by fear of losing your job? It is an emotional state associated with anxiety and intrusive thoughts in which, in most cases, We foresee and imagine situations that we believe could occur in the medium or short term and that would lead to being left out of a professional position. that we want to preserve.
These types of prospective thoughts (that is, projected into the future in the form of a prediction of what will happen) are not experienced as simple pieces of verbalizable information, but rather have a great emotional charge that makes us uncomfortable. In this way, by thinking about these things, a vicious circle of anxiety is generated… unless we do something to avoid it.
Below you will find several coping strategies for the fear of losing your job, although yes, remember that trying to apply them on a daily basis on your own is much less effective than going to a psychologist, and in some cases this last option will be the only thing that will work.
1. Don’t try to completely eliminate fear
Remember that Your goal is to prevent fear from taking control of you and significantly damaging your mental health, not eliminate it in the bud.; the latter is impossible, and furthermore, a certain amount of anxiety or fear can be adaptive and useful. Ultimately, “unpleasant” emotions are one of the sources of motivation that allow us not to adopt a passive role in which we cannot prepare to act in time in the face of danger signals.
Thus, one of the keys to avoiding the fear of losing your job is to accept that this discomfort will be present to a certain extent in you, that you cannot completely block it or make it go away at will. That way you won’t become obsessed with its existence or accidentally feed it.
2. Examine the sources of fear
One of the first actions to take is distinguish between unfounded fears and those real vulnerabilities that could really lead you to lose your job. To do this, it is advisable to carry a small notebook with you in which you write down, as soon as the thoughts associated with that fear pass through your mind. At the end of the day (although preferably not a few hours before going to sleep), organize them according to the degree to which they seem reasonable and adjusted to reality, and when a week has passed, review everything you wrote down to detect patterns. In this way, you will detect thoughts that you have already recognized as clearly very biased towards pessimism.
What are the aspects of your job that you most associate with the fear of losing your job? This emotion can serve as a compass to know which need is the first one you should attend to. at every moment, intervening in the aspects in which you feel most unprotected. Once you have begun to channel that fear to translate it into sequences of concrete actions and short-term goals, it will be very limited and you will stop paying attention to it, because your mind will be occupied with the chain of tasks that you have already started.
4. Include breaks and exercise sessions in your daily life
It is important to know how to disconnect from work, and to do this, the best thing is to make our schedule “oblige” us to do it. That is, print a detailed schedule of everything you should do for the day and include breaks that you should not skip, as well as two or three sessions of moderate exercise lasting at least 40 minutes. Specifically, aerobic exercise has a lot of de-stressing potential.
5. Use imagery to think about alternative lives
Another key to combating the fear of losing your job is assume that even if that scenario occurred, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Losing a professional position is not a sudden interruption, but rather opens the door to other possibilities; Scientific research shows that human beings have an extraordinary capacity for resilience, and we are capable of adapting and being happy in situations that years before, seen “from the outside”, we would have considered the end of a life.
Therefore, at specific and pre-established moments in your schedule, lasting about four or five minutes, go to a quiet place, close your eyes and imagine simple but satisfying lifestyles that you could aspire to if the responsibilities of your current job don’t tie you down Not as what will happen, but as a thought experiment in which it is seen that even assuming that economically we will experience a crisis (something that does not have to happen even if we become unemployed tomorrow), surely we could also be happy like this.
Are you looking for psychological help?
If you are thinking about turning to psychology professionals to overcome any form of discomfort that is affecting you, Get in touch with me. I am a psychologist with many years of experience offering my services to individuals and companies, and I specialize in the cognitive-behavioral model, one of the most effective and versatile forms of psychological intervention. You can count on my professional support both in person at my office in Madrid and online. On this page are my contact information.
