Post-traumatic unemployment disorder
April 20, 2010Jon Brooks Comments OffFrom the blog Tales From the Recently Laid Off:
Confessions of a former unemployed
Since I’ve been employed now via contract work I’ve been playing in pseudo-employed world. Having a job and feeling self-sufficient has been euphoric, but honestly there’s a post-traumatic unemployment disorder (PTUD) that’s become a part of me. I’ve talked to friends who’ve felt similarly after being laid off. It’s this late-night-in-your-head-never-leaving-nagging-voice that waits for the floor to disappear. When is it going to happen again. When I’m going to be left with nothing. It has nothing to do with the present and all with the past and while I struggle to regain fiscal confidence, I also struggle to regain personal confidence as well.
Today is about my lessons in responsibility in the fiscal sense. When I first became unemployed I took to the phones and called all my creditors. I was on top it. I had to be. The second time I was laid off I was less on top of things. I was moving to a new apartment, looking for new jobs and lost track of a lot of things. Fast forward to the present and having to make a payment so I don’t have a block on my credit report. It’s not a fun feeling. It’s my fault in all senses of the world. It’s my fault for being in debt to begin with. I lived beyond my means and I learned that. Did I need to learn it again and again? No, but that’s life. Should I have paid better attention to the junk mail I received? Yes. Maybe that’s wasn’t junk mail but a credit bill. Lesson learned? Yep. I was able to set-up payments for the next five years. In five years I’ll be thirty-three. That’s a)scary b)intimidating c)hopefully will have less debt and d)learned my lesson from my twenties — I’m hoping for all over the above and for it to be paid in less than five years, but I’m not holding my breath.
