It is one thing to read about the country’s unemployment rate, and it is quite another to experience it firsthand. Whether you have recently gotten laid off from your job or have been searching for new employment for months, you have probably gone through a wide array of emotions at different times: anger, guilt, frustration, hope, embarrassment, inspiration.
Journal writing therapy is an excellent way to sort through and process your conflicting feelings, and research shows that it can also help you get back into the job market. Dr. James Pennebaker , the social psychologist whose studies on journaling and its health benefits have been influential for the last few decades, evaluated the effects of journaling after job loss in his book Opening Up.
In a group of unemployed engineers laid off by a computer company, half were asked to write in a personal journal about their deepest thoughts and feelings about losing their jobs for 30 minutes a day, five days in a row. The other half of the group wrote about time management strategies, avoiding the topic of layoffs, for the same amount of time. A third comparison group didn’t write at all.
The results were striking. Though the men had all gone to the same number of job interviews:
"Within three months, 27 percent of the experimental participants landed jobs compared with less than 5 percent of the men in the time management and no writing comparison groups. By months after writing, 53 percent of those who wrote about their thoughts and feelings had jobs, compared with only 18 percent of the men in the other conditions."
Pennebaker theorized that the men who practiced journal writing therapy were able to work through the anger and bitterness they felt toward the company that had laid them off, while the men who hadn’t processed their emotions in writing may have inadvertently let these feelings show during job interviews.
If you have gone through an emotional job upheaval recently, try Pennebaker’s method in your own personal journal. Take 30 minutes a day for five consecutive days, and write about what most hurt, upset or angered you about losing your job. How did it make you feel then, and how does it make you feel now? How has your job loss affected your life?
When you are truly passionate about your career, there are no limits to what you can achieve. Our Turn Your Passion Into Your Career in 7 Days self-paced journaling course takes you on a valuable journey to get to the heart of what drives you—and help you turn your passion into a career.
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