An adult individual must work to ensure the continuity of his life and to be free. The human soul is basically productive, it takes pleasure in working and producing something new. Working at a job fosters a person's feeling of usefulness, value, and belonging. When we look at it from a social perspective, society is success-oriented and gives great value to successful and happy people, especially young people. It ignores the value of anyone who is not like this. Being unemployed in society equates to being useless, and being useless equates to living a meaningless life.
Working allows one to earn money and socialize, gives one power and status, and provides a meaning and purpose for living. Unemployment means the loss of all these. The reaction of an unemployed individual to unemployment varies from person to person. The main reason for this difference is childhood experiences. Unemployment has three basic dimensions; psychological, sociological and economic.
UNEMPLOYMENT DEPRESSION
For an individual, losing his job means a decrease in his standard of living in economic terms. With this feeling of great loss, the person tends to look at the future with more anxiety and concern. He is left with a deep sense of fear and uncertainty that greater disasters will befall him. This is the feeling that affects the unemployed person the most: the feeling of uncertainty. As the unemployment process gets longer, the negative attitude in the individual's emotions, thoughts and behaviors begins to increase. In this process, the person may exhibit an overly critical attitude towards himself, perceiving himself as unsuccessful, useless, incompetent, and worthless.
These feelings experienced by the person vary depending on his childhood experience. An adult who has been known for his school success since childhood feels that he has lost his way of existing in life when he loses his job. An adult who associates his work with power feels powerless when he loses his job. A person who matches his/her way of being valuable in life with his job feels worthless when he loses his job. Therefore, the negative emotions experienced by each person during unemployment differ depending on their individual background. Prolonging the unemployment period causes the person to become traumatized and lose their sense of self-confidence.
As unemployed people receive negative feedback from their job applications, an increase in their tendency to become introverted becomes inevitable. After a while, the introverted person may give up looking for a job and start spending his time by watching television, playing computer games, going to coffee shops, sleeping, overeating, or using drugs in order to suppress the pain he is experiencing. Prolonging the process may lead to consequences leading to suicide.
Especially adulthood is the period in which people are most productive. Research shows that unemployment, especially in adulthood (30 years of age and above), causes a deep feeling of depression in the person. Unemployment during this period creates a feeling of helplessness in the person and causes the person to lose hope for the future.
UNEMPLOYMENT AFFECTS MEN MORE THAN WOMEN
Research shows that unemployed men criticize themselves more and lower their self-esteem than women. It shows you are losing more. While men's way of existing in society is perceived as their profession, success at work, and status, women's way of existing is perceived as their physical appearance, giving birth to and raising a child, and their skills in housework. Although this situation seems to have changed with the increase in the education rate of women, from the perspective of society, the situation is not like that. Society tends to be more understanding of women being unemployed, while men being unemployed is more unacceptable in society.
The situation becomes even more complicated if the unemployed person has a family to care for. The unemployed person feels mixed feelings towards his family and children in this process. As the unrest and conflict in the family increases, the person's anxiety level begins to increase.
Working makes the person feel physically and spiritually healthier, fitter and more functional. Working ensures that a person is economically free and does not need to depend on anyone else. In parallel with mental distress, physical diseases also occur in unemployed people. These diseases, which we call somatization, include stomach ulcers and high blood pressure that develop as a result of the troubles, tensions and excitement in the person's inner world. Diseases such as spindle pain, headache, muscle aches and joint pains.
THOSE WHO BUILD THEIR WHOLE LIFE ON WORK EXPERIENCE A MORE SEVERE DEPRESSION
The only way some people can express themselves is through work. These people's minds are constantly busy with work. The time he spends with his wife, family and children is almost non-existent, and his social circle is very small. When these people lose their jobs, they lose the most important source of pleasure in their lives. Therefore, people whose whole life is work fall into severe depression, the feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness is the main symptom of this depression.
Increase your sources of pleasure; The wider the range of sources of pleasure a person derives from life, the less affected by unemployment will be. The better a person's relationships with his circle of friends, hobbies and family are, the more his sense of self-confidence increases.
The basic need of human beings is to be appreciated and admired. We should not leave our appreciation behavior only to work. Those whose area of appreciation is limited only to their work experience unemployment depression much more severely when they are fired or resign. Our investments in life should not depend on just one person, neither a spouse, nor a job, nor a partner. Working and earning money is very important, but it should not be forgotten that there is a life going on outside. If we maintain balance in life and give enough importance and time to our outside life, we will not determine our self-worth according to the results of our work.
Read: 0
