Mariana Gutiérrez: "Unemployment is a psychological grief in itself".

Psychologist Mariana Gutiérrez talks to us about the emotional discomfort associated with unemployment.

Losing a loved one is one of the most emotionally painful experiences, and one of the most common reasons for consultation among those who go to psychotherapy. However, the basis of this suffering, known as psychological grief, is present in many other situations of loss. For example, the loss of a job or of a competitive professional profile.

To learn more about this phenomenon, we have interviewed psychologist Mariana Gutiérrez Floreswho in her practice has helped many people affected by this form of emotional distress.

Interview to Mariana Gutiérrez: The mourning from unemployment

Mariana Gutiérrez Flores is a psychologist with a practice in Monterrey and extensive experience in the psychotherapeutic approach to grief, an emotional disturbance that causes us to suffer when we lose someone or something with which we had an emotional bond. In this interview she talks about the phenomenon of unemployment as a form of grief..

Is there a tendency to underestimate the psychological impact of being unemployed for a long time?

Definitely yes, it is taken as something normal, when in reality it is experienced and felt as the equivalent of a death bereavement. Both the affected person and the family cope and turn the page, but the reality is that the experience of being out of the labor market implies a series of physical and emotional situations that represent a process that is not easy to overcome.

How is unemployment related to what in psychology is known as bereavement?

Although it is true that the first contributions of Thanatology, a science that studies and focuses on giving meaning to the process of death, were focused on the terminally ill and their closest social nucleus, later, with the passage of time, death and any other significant loss for the human being was integrated to the definition of grief; it is here where unemployment is added.

To answer your question, unemployment is a psychological grief in itself, and as such must be managed.

What aspects of job loss are most likely to give rise to a psychological grief process?

From the point of view that job loss is experienced as an unwanted change, in the first instance it acts as a trigger for a series of emotional responses, such as anxiety, tension, anguish, worry.

Not having, from one day to the next, the economic and emotional support that work gives us, being the vehicle through which we integrate ourselves into a social group, contribute knowledge and are remunerated by means of a salary, has a drastic change in what we lived as a balance, as something that gave purpose to our lives and a means to achieve security, recognition and material goods.

What similarities does this form of grief have with bereavement?

The bases are exactly the same, since both speak of an unwanted change and loss.

Kübler Ross, doctor and psychiatrist, is the one who in the 90's proposed a series of investigations with terminally ill patients and proposed the 5 Phases of Grief, Denial, Anger, Pact, Depression, Acceptance. These same phases are those that are experienced both for death and for significant losses, which can be unemployment, old age (loss of youth, loss of independence), divorce, amputations, among others.

How does this type of grief relate to self-esteem problems?

Definitely the tools that the patient has at a personal level will be determinant to face the loss in a more effective way; however, and although there is no defined order or time for each stage, it is a fact that in the face of a loss we all go through each of the phases; the difference will be reflected by the way of upbringing, culture, social level, education, since each of these factors endows us with skills to face the loss with different levels of maturity and efficiency.

Self-esteem, in such cases, comes to function as a regulator that provides security, giving us the basis to move forward in what is experienced as a bereavement. At the end of the day, having high self-esteem works as an omen of living a healthy mourning with an end date.

As a psychologist, what kind of therapeutic strategies and techniques do you find most useful to help people going through such an experience?

The best intervention in a case of unemployment is thanatological accompaniment; from this discipline it will be possible to provide the patient with tools and support to satisfactorily process each of the stages.

In my experience, every bereavement must be lived from beginning to end. Giving time to heal is an important part, since denial and wanting to go on "as if nothing happened", far from helping, inhibit situations and emotions that in the near future will come to light by other means, transforming what could have been a healing process into the experience of a pathological grief, in which several factors are intertwined, including excessive duration (the normal time is 6 to 12 months), disproportionate symptoms experienced at another time, overflow of emotions, psychosomatic illnesses (physical illnesses without clinical explanation), maladaptive behaviors (poor anger management, depression, etc.). ..).

The above refers us to a need for immediate help; the symptoms described are irrefutable proof that the person cannot sustain recovery on his or her own and requires specialized help.