You may not be making sufficient progress toward your career goals because of a career setback you haven’t overcome yet. As I shared last week, severe career stepbacks can be felt as trauma that can have lasting effects on a person’s psyche. Career setbacks can come in the form of a job loss, toxic manager, or professional failure. When the trauma is significant enough, it can lead to grief, which brings a whole assortment of other challenges. At the same time, if you resolve your grief, you can work toward crafting your new positive identity, one that aligns with your career aspirations.
Unresolved Grief
The negative impact of unresolved grief cannot be understated. Here are some of the risks of unresolved grief:
- Unhappiness
- Coldness
- Lack of self-respect
- Cynicism
- Suspicion and anger
- Difficulty bonding with others
- Living under a cloud.
As mentioned earlier, if you’re not careful, you can run the risk of associating too closely with the negative traits of unresolved grief. And this can lead your shadow identity to take over.
Your Shadow Identity
Your shadow identity is the identity that you try to hide and avoid. It represents who you are at your worst. It’s OK for your shadow identity to exist, but it’s not OK for it to take over and become your dominant identity. Unfortunately, when you continuously supply it with pessimistic emotions and thoughts regarding yourself, your shadow identity tends to dominate. To keep it at bay we need to resolve our grief. But to do that, we need to start by understanding how grief works.
The Five Stages of Grief
The five stages of grief include denial, bargaining, depression, anger, and acceptance. Understanding these stages can help you process your emotions and move forward.
You may not experience all five phases, and your emotions may be in flux between two or more states. It’s important to note that not all emotional responses will fit neatly into one stage or another. Identifying the stage that best describes your feelings can help you understand what you’re going through and move forward with your life.
Denial
You may not believe what is happening, or you may be in shock. You may feel numb or even believe that this is not true or not happening to you. You might even think that if you ignore it, it will go away and things will return to normal.
Bargaining
You think things could have been different if only you had done something differently or said something different. You might also try to bargain with God, asking for one more chance to change what happened.
Depression
You might feel sad and hopeless about life. You don’t know how you will go about living your life like before. You might not have the energy to do anything, including taking care of yourself or others. You might be afraid of being alone, even in a crowded room.
Anger
Anger is a normal and natural reaction to trauma. Anger can be directed inward at yourself, or outward at others. You might get angry at yourself for not being able to prevent this from happening. Or maybe you get angry at God for their role in this.
Acceptance
Acceptance doesn’t mean that your loss no longer affects you emotionally; it means that you’ve come to terms with the loss and can move on with your life. Acceptance is a process, not an event. It’s a gradual coming to terms with your loss and the changes in your life. You can’t accept the loss overnight or by fighting against it. In fact, fighting against the reality of your situation can only prolong the grieving process.
Resolve Your Grief: A Three-Stage Process
Many of us are too familiar with the different stages of grief, but too few of us have enough experience resolving grief so we can move forward. Even those with experience resolving grief may not fully embrace the regularity with which they should be going back to the grief resolution process. You already know that grief is a spectrum. As you move through the grief spectrum, you must respond accordingly to resolve your grief as it ebbs and flows.
Resolving grief is a process, not an event. It consists of three stages: awareness, acceptance, and letting go and renewing. Becoming consciously aware of the problem, accepting the pain of the loss, letting go of the past, and finding new meaning from the experience are key steps in this process.
Awareness
The person suffering from grief must become consciously aware that something has happened that is causing them pain and suffering. They may also feel that their lives are no longer as meaningful or useful as they once were.
Acceptance
During this stage, you will begin to accept what has happened and realize that it cannot be changed or undone. You may still feel sad about your loss, but you will begin to realize that there is nothing you can do to bring back those who have died or correct any wrongs that have been done to you by others.
Letting Go and Renewing Yourself
Let go and renew yourself after you accept the loss as a normal part of life. You will be able to move forward with your life in a positive way despite having suffered through a tragic event. At this point, you can begin to rebuild your life around the new reality of your situation.
Awareness: Tell the Story
Telling the story of your traumatic or grief-filled experience can be a powerful tool in the healing process. The story you tell about yourself, your life and your experiences is an important part of who you are as a person. It helps shape who you are and how others perceive you. It can also provide some insight into why you think, feel and behave the way that you do.
The following reflection questions can help guide you through this process:
- Can you tell me about a specific traumatic or grief-filled experience that has had an impact on how you view yourself and others?
- What were your initial thoughts and feelings when this happened?
- How did you cope with these emotions at the time?
- What impact has this experience had on your life since then?
Acceptance: Accept the Pain
In order to move forward, it’s important to accept the pain you’re feeling. This includes both the visible and invisible pain that you’re experiencing. Ask yourself what pain you’re consciously aware of, and what you’re even afraid of saying out loud.
Accepting your pain doesn’t mean that you have to like it or want it. It just means that you acknowledge that it is there and recognize that it has a purpose in your life. You may not understand why this happened yet, but that’s okay because there are many reasons why things happen.
When we deny our feelings of pain, we become stuck in our own suffering and unable to move forward in life. It’s important to realize that while we might not understand why something has happened, there is a reason behind it all (even if we don’t know what it is).
Letting Go and Renewing Yourself: Practice Forgiveness and Gratitude
Letting go is a process, and it doesn’t happen overnight. The process of letting go can be difficult to do, but it’s worth it for your mental health and overall happiness. Here are some tips for letting go:
Forgive yourself and others to help resolve your grief
Holding onto anger or resentment towards someone or something can have a negative impact on your health. It’s important to forgive yourself, as well as others, so that you can move forward with your life without feeling guilty or remorseful all the time. Forgiveness might mean forgiving someone who hurt you in the past or forgiving yourself for something that happened in the past.
Practice gratitude
Practicing gratitude can help make you happier on a daily basis! Gratitude exercises can include keeping a gratitude journal where you write down three things each day that made you happy or thankful for — even if they’re small things like waking up without an alarm clock or having great weather on a Monday morning! It also means recognizing the positive aspects about other people instead of focusing only on their flaws.
Resolve Your Grief to Move Forward
Career setbacks can be dramatic events that weigh over us long after the setbacks have passed. They’re negative impact sticks around through the grief we feel. This grief, when unresolved, can keep you from your goals and limit your potential. It’s up to you to resolve your grief whenever it comes up. Practice forgiveness and gratitude to help you move forward to the next stage of your life. The journey of letting go and moving forward may be difficult, but it’s a journey worth taking.
