Unemployment is a factor that involves many negative situations, both economic and psychological, and negatively affects people. The stress situation that arises due to unemployment not only affects the individual but also negatively affects the people around him. A married man's unemployment not only causes physiological/psychological distress, but also increases arguments with his wife and even affects his children.
Working for a human being, who is a social being; It is not only intended to provide economic income, but also to make one's life meaningful, to create an orderly life and a positive self-perception. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs; In order for a person to realize himself, he must have met his needs at the lower levels. A person cannot achieve self-realization unless physiological needs, security needs, love/belonging, and respect needs are met.
Being unemployed; In addition to the person being in a financial difficult situation, it can cause separation from colleagues with whom he spends most of the day, moving away from the feeling of being useful, breaking away from the feeling of belonging to his job, and falling into a huge psychological void.
The biggest cause of anxiety for the person is emptiness and uncertainty. Uncertainties such as not knowing when they will find a new job or whether the job they will find will be the job they want can cause people to increase their anxiety. Prolonging the job search and not being able to find a job within the time they set are factors that reduce motivation.
Working at a job allows the person to produce, and producing allows the person to feel valuable and successful. The greater the meaning a person attaches to work and the more educated and higher status the person is, the more the loss of a job causes physiological, as well as psychological, problems, along with the cessation of productivity; It allows the person to experience a decrease in self-worth, feeling useless, stress, hopelessness, introversion, anxiety and depressive symptoms.
How a person perceives himself/herself regarding unemployment is very important. Anger at oneself for not being able to find a job, feeling of shame towards others about being unemployed, anger at not being able to find a job It can damage the self-esteem and in cases where the unemployment period is prolonged; This situation leads to learned helplessness in people, creating the thought that "no matter what I do, I will not be able to find a job anymore", and people experience an identity crisis, loss of self-confidence and sense of value. As this situation continues, the person stops looking for a job and has a firm belief that he will not be able to find a job anymore.
The reactions of people to unemployment are shaped in childhood and affect today's behavior. If a person sees success as the only way to express himself in his childhood, he can express himself with a successful working life in his adult life and feels a sense of failure in case of being unemployed. If being successful is a way of being valued and respected for a person, being unemployed will trigger the feeling of failure, which will trigger the feeling of self-worth.
In this process; Constantly believing that negative things will happen and fears/anxiety about not being able to find a job can put people in a negative mood and negatively affect their job search. It is very important to accept that work is not the only success in life that makes you who you are, and being unemployed does not measure a person's worth. It is very important for the person to question what unemployment means, to share his feelings with his relatives instead of being alone and withdrawn in this process, and to find what he needs from his past work experiences by seeing this process as an opportunity to get to know himself.
Read: 0
