This article is Part 3 of my ongoing series on men and grief, exploring the hidden losses men carry and how they shape identity, meaning, and healing.
“In the shadow of job loss and grief, we discover that work is not just what we do—it is who we are allowed to be in the world.”
I remember walking away from the career that had defined me up to that point. I had believed since I was fifteen that I would be a minister of religion, but here I was, in my early thirties, burnt out from navigating too many church fights. Church fights are much like political infighting—just with God involved. Exhausted and drained, I was walking away from my calling with four children under six, no job, and no home.
I found work as a Nursing Aide in aged care and started again. Eventually, I became a CEO, leading non-profit organisations. Despite the titles, despite leaving the church and surviving the religious trauma of fundamentalism, I carried the weight of failure for years. I hadn’t just left a role; I had lost the version of myself that role had carried.
When a man loses his job, something far more significant than the job itself disappears. A pay packet is gone, sure, but so is the sense of identity and purpose built over years, sometimes decades. Clearing out a desk and walking out of a building for the last time often feels less like a simple act and more like a funeral—quiet, unnoticed, but deeply impactful.
We rarely see job loss as a kind of grief. Yet, for many men, it truly is: the death of a sense of self. It’s not just losing work, but the collapse of the role that once defined them—the provider, the capable one, the man whose worth was based on productivity and performance.
In a culture that values achievement, career loss is one of the most overlooked types of grief men face. Whether through redundancy, forced retirement, or a career change, millions of men experience not only financial upheaval but also a profound existential crisis each year. And unlike other forms of grief, this one often remains largely unseen.
The Hidden Grief of Job Loss
Why Career Loss Feels Like an Unseen Funeral
The pain of losing a job cuts deeper than worries about mortgage payments or losing health coverage. It raises haunting questions.
The Silent Questions Men Carry After Work Disappears
- Who am I without my work?
- What is my worth if I am not producing or providing?
This loss of identity mirrors what James Marcia (1966) referred to as identity foreclosure—when selfhood becomes so narrowly focused on one role that its loss creates a void.
Research highlights the risks. Unemployment is linked to higher rates of depression, anxiety, and even suicide among men compared to women (Artazcoz, Benach, Borrell, & Cortès, 2004). It’s not just about money. It’s about the long-standing connection between masculinity and achievement. When those cultural anchors are pulled away, men often spiral into a freefall.
What makes career loss especially painful isn’t just the loss of income but also the lack of recognition. When someone passes away, we know the routine: funerals, condolences, casseroles, and permission to grieve. But when a man loses the work that shaped his life, there are no rituals. No sympathy cards. No wake for the years invested.
Instead, the cultural script urges him on: “What’s next? Update your résumé. Get back out there.” Friends might share job leads, family could encourage resilience, but few stop to ask “What has been lost?” The silence reduces job loss to a logistical issue rather than an existential wound.
This cultural blind spot isolates men. Grief is buried. Sorrow is mistaken for weakness. Without language, ritual, or permission, mourning becomes underground—unseen, unspoken, unresolved.
Identity, Masculinity, and the Cost of Losing Work
How Masculinity Ties Self-Worth to Success
Traditional masculinity focuses on what Joseph Pleck (1995) referred to as instrumental roles: men are expected to act, succeed, and provide for their families. Psychologist Ronald Levant (1992) described the pressure this creates as male role strain—where worth is linked to external achievement rather than inner value.
The workplace becomes the testing ground. Success means manhood. Failure means collapse.
The Trap of Inherited Career Scripts
Michael Kimmel (2012) demonstrates how this achievement-focused script makes men particularly vulnerable to job loss. After decades of defining themselves through performance, many are left with no support system when work disappears. They lack the language, the support, or the cultural permission to grieve. To admit grief feels like failing twice—at work and at being a man.
Some discover, painfully, that the careers they pursued were never truly their choice. They were inherited scripts—expectations from fathers, families, or culture. In such cases, grief extends not only to what has been lost, but also to what was never genuinely theirs to begin with.
Psychological and Emotional Fault Lines of Career Loss
Betrayal and the Broken Psychological Contract
Career loss doesn’t follow neat stages. It unravels in layers, exposing fault lines in how men perceive loyalty, security, and their sense of meaning. Two dynamics, in particular, reveal the wound.
Robinson and Rousseau (1994) explain how organisations establish a psychological contract with employees—an unspoken agreement of loyalty, security, and trust. When men are made redundant after many years of service, that contract feels broken. It is not just about losing a job but about relational rupture. Men talk less of losing a position and more of being abandoned by the institutions they dedicated their best years to.
Was It Worth It? Reckoning With Sacrificed Values
The reckoning with values. Beyond betrayal comes the corrosive question: Was it worth it? Kasser’s (2002) research on materialistic value confusion reveals how self-worth built on possessions or achievements collapses when those possessions or achievements are lost. Career loss exposes the fragility of identities built solely on external success and time sacrificed. Relationships neglected. Health compromised. All for a ladder that can be pulled away without warning. Here, grief is not just for the job, but for the parts of life mortgaged to sustain it.
Taken together, these dynamics explain why career loss feels less like a setback and more like an existential fracture.
Post-COVID Research: How Job Loss Impacts Men’s Mental Health and Identity
Recent qualitative research in Australia during the post-COVID period reveals just how deep these fractures can run for men. The study found that unemployment tends to have a more substantial negative mental health impact on men, particularly because of the internalised pressure to be financially independent and productive. One older participant described job-seeking as simply “the right thing to do,” reflecting how ingrained the expectation is to be a provider. For many, the loss of work was accompanied by shame and embarrassment, especially at life stages where they felt they “should” be established, independent, and productive.
The study also highlighted how unemployment attacks dignity and self-sufficiency. Seeking financial aid—from family, loans, or welfare—was described not as a relief but as a source of humiliation. One man in his thirties admitted that “needing to get a loan and not being able to stand up on my own feet” left him feeling diminished and ashamed. Experiences with welfare systems compounded this wound: mandated meetings were often perceived as demeaning, leaving men feeling blamed, guilty, and “not good enough.” For some, the stress was so intense that they abandoned payments despite financial need.
Yet alongside these wounds, the study showed glimpses of transformation. Some men found themselves asking broad existential questions about work and meaning. One participant reflected on his own past judgments of unemployed people, confessing, “I never realised it would be me one day.” In that humility, a shift occurred—a reframing of values and a new empathy for others. This suggests that, while deeply painful, unemployment can also act as a crucible for growth, forcing men to re-evaluate what truly matters.
The Ripple Effect on Family, Health, and Relationships
When Unemployment Reshapes the Home
Career loss grief doesn’t stay private — it spreads through homes and bodies.
Partners may feel bewildered: why does unemployment devastate him more than other crises? Children may witness irritability or withdrawal without understanding its cause. Distance widens precisely when support is most needed.
The Physical and Mental Health Toll of Career Loss
The health toll is stark. Job loss significantly raises the risks of cardiovascular disease, stroke, and stress-related illnesses (Brand, 2015). Chronic stress, sleep disruption, shifts in appetite, and lapses in concentration exacerbate the spiral. Outwardly, men might seem busy looking for work. Inwardly, they doubt their worth, inhabiting what many call an imposter life.
Healing and Rebuilding After Job Loss
Permission to Grieve Without Shame
Healing from career loss involves more than simply finding a new role. It requires reimagining who you are. Dan McAdams (2001) describes this as narrative reconstruction—creating new life stories that turn loss into personal growth.
It starts with permitting yourself to grieve. Sadness isn’t weakness; it’s wisdom—the mind’s way of processing change. Naming this breaks the masculine mould that links emotion with failure.
The deeper work is separating self from role:
- Who am I if I am not producing?
- What gives my life meaning beyond work?
- How do I want to be remembered?
Such questions unsettle but also strengthen. They encourage men to critique cultural myths and select which values serve them now.
The Gift Hidden in Career Loss
From Collapse to Transformation
Resilience stems from diversification—not just financially, but also in terms of identity. Roles outside of your career can provide a sense of purpose.
- Friendships: Investing in reciprocal, non-utilitarian relationships.
- Creative pursuits: Music, art, woodworking—acts of being rather than producing.
- Community service: Purpose untethered from paychecks.
- Family roles: Presence and emotional availability.
The aim is not to replace work with more achievement, but to expand the sense of belonging. A diverse self, like a diverse portfolio, withstands loss with greater resilience.
Reclaiming Meaning, Relationships, and Authentic Self
Paradoxically, losing one’s career can spark a profound transformation. Without external validation, men face the core questions:
- Was I happy, or merely successful?
- What dreams did I defer?
- What relationships have I neglected?
Many find that loss frees them to reconnect with neglected selves. Creativity awakens anew. Friendships grow stronger. Long-buried passions come to the surface again.
This is not to romanticise suffering, but as Francis Weller (2015) writes, grief is also an initiation—it strips away illusions and reveals what is essential. Men who lean into this grief often emerge more emotionally intelligent, empathetic, and present.
Practical Pathways for Men Facing Job Loss and Grief
Grief asks for companions and practices, not quick fixes:
- Counselling: With therapists attuned to masculine identity and grief.
- Men’s groups: Spaces where vulnerability is strength.
- Mindfulness and meditation: Sitting with emotion rather than fleeing it.
- Exercise: A healthy outlet for stress and frustration.
- Creative expression: Writing, art, music—giving grief a language.
- Financial planning: Essential, but alongside—not instead of—inner work.
Building a Resilient Identity Beyond Work
Reflection Prompt: Write down three ways you defined yourself at work. Now cross out the job titles and roles. What remains?
Invitation to Wholeness and Authentic Living
Career loss grief ultimately requires a bold realisation: your worth isn’t your work. This is not cliché—it is defiance against a culture that equates masculinity with productivity.
The question shifts from “How quickly can I get back to where I was?” to “Where is my energy asking to flow now?”
This is the invitation hidden within loss: to build a self not tethered to performance but grounded in authenticity, connection, and meaning.
I know this because I lived it. I walked away from a career I once believed was my destiny, and for years, I carried the weight of failure. Only later did I realise the loss forced me to confront what truly mattered — to reclaim a self beyond titles, beyond roles, beyond performance.
The office might be cleared. The business cards are obsolete. But the man stays. And in that staying lies possibility—an opening not just to heal, but to live more authentically than before.
References
Frankl, V. E. (1963). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press.
Kasser, T. (2002). The high price of materialism. MIT Press.
Kimmel, M. (2012). Manhood in America: A cultural history (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Levant, R. F. (1992). Toward the reconstruction of masculinity. Journal of Family Psychology, 5(3–4), 379–402. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.5.3-4.379
Marcia, J. E. (1966). Development and validation of ego-identity status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3(5), 551–558. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0023281
Pleck, J. H. (1995). The gender role strain paradigm: An update. In R. F. Levant & W. S. Pollack (Eds.), A new psychology of men (pp. 11–32). Basic Books.
Robinson, S. L., & Rousseau, D. M. (1994). Violating the psychological contract: Not the exception but the norm. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 15(3), 245–259. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.4030150306
Weller, F. (2015). The wild edge of sorrow: Rituals of renewal and the sacred work of grief. North Atlantic Books.
2 Responses