I was just laid off. What should I do next? Should I keep therapy?
Okay, can we take a minute to understand what just happened? This must be a lot.
Being laid off is hard. It can make you wonder about who you are and question your future. It can create self-doubt and damage your confidence. It can be isolating, create strain in your relationships or family life, or bring up a mix of anger/shame/grief. Before you do anything, give yourself some time to take in the news. This is a lot.
Statistics Canada shows that in 2025, there were roughly 1.2 million layoffs [1] (that’s about half of Toronto, which has a population of 2.8 million people, and more people than the entire city of Ottawa). This is really not about you. It’s how the economy and job market are changing.
Your first thoughts after a layoff might be: “What am I going to do now?”, “How am I going to pay my bills?”, “Was I not good enough?”, or “How am I going to tell people?”
The job that felt secure six months ago is now suddenly uncertain. And money can also start to feel uncertain, making you go into survival mode with the first instinct often being to cut expenses in all areas that seem “expendable”.
Subscriptions. Restaurants. Travel. The gym. Then therapy.
It makes sense. Therapy can feel like a discretionary expense when you’re trying to protect your mortgage, rent, savings, or family.
But there is a reason therapy may be worth reconsidering as a necessary expense rather than a first cut.
When your circumstances change, so does your inner world – your relationships, your confidence, and the way you make decisions.
A layoff isn’t simply a change in employment.
For many high-performing people, work is tied to identity, structure, purpose, status, financial security, and a sense of competence.
So, when the job disappears, the questions become much bigger than “what am I going to do next?”
It evolves into:
What does this say about me?
Did I make the wrong choices?
Am I falling behind?
What if I can’t find something as good?
What if everyone else is moving forward and I’m not?
Even if you know intellectually that layoffs are often about budgets, restructuring, or market conditions (and not individual worth), it can still feel deeply personal.
And uncertainty has a way of amplifying everything.
You may become more anxious. More irritable. More withdrawn. You might have trouble sleeping or find yourself constantly checking LinkedIn and job boards. You may start questioning decisions you previously felt confident about.
This is exactly when having somewhere to process what’s happening matters.
Good therapy isn’t about putting a positive spin on a difficult situation. It isn’t about pretending everything is fine or trying to convince yourself that everything happens for a reason or to practice gratitude when you’re worried about how you’ll pay your next bills.
Sometimes things are genuinely hard that no one else can solve for you.
Therapy does give you a place to acknowledge these challenges without allowing the situation to consume you entirely or further degrade your sense of self.
Your therapist can help you with separating a difficult season from being defined by it.
When we’re stressed, our thinking can become narrower. We can become focused on immediate threats and lose sight of the bigger picture. We may catastrophize, make impulsive decisions, isolate ourselves, or accept the first option simply because we desperately want the uncertainty to end.
Having a space where you can slow down, challenge your assumptions, and understand what is actually driving your choices can be incredibly valuable.
Sometimes the most important question isn’t “what should I do?”; it’s “am I making this decision from a place of clarity or out of fear?”
Your therapist can also help you stay connected to yourself.
One of the quieter consequences of financial stress is that life can become entirely about survival: Work. Money. Applications. Interviews. Bills. Responsibilities.
You stop asking what you want and start asking what you can afford.
That may be necessary for a certain period of time, but if you stay there long enough, you can lose yourself and the understanding of what matters when you’re navigating this career transition.
Therapy can help you remember that you are more than your job title, salary, productivity, or employment status.
You are still a partner. A parent. A friend. A person with ambitions, values, relationships, interests, and a future that extends beyond this chapter.
But let’s be realistic about money.
If you’re facing a genuine financial crisis, your therapist should be part of the conversation – not on the outside of it.
You may be able to reduce the frequency of sessions temporarily (move from weekly to biweekly appointments), discuss a different format, or create a plan that makes therapy sustainable while your circumstances change (such as discussing a sliding scale option).
The goal isn’t to maintain therapy at all costs.
The goal is to avoid cutting one of the supports that may help you navigate the costs (financial and emotional) of the significant disruption you’re already going through.
You don’t necessarily need to lose your sense of direction, confidence, relationships, and emotional stability along with your paycheque.
Sometimes, the smartest financial decision isn’t simply asking, “what can I cut?”
It’s asking: “what helps me stay well enough to make good decisions while everything else is changing?”
Your therapist may be one of those things.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I keep going to therapy after being laid off?
Yes, and that’s worth saying plainly first, because the instinct to cut it goes the other way. A layoff triggers survival math, and therapy can start to look optional the moment rent and groceries feel uncertain. But structured psychological support during unemployment measurably reduces depression and anxiety and improves what happens next [2], and a well-known trial that followed laid-off workers for two years found the ones who kept working with that kind of support weren’t just less depressed, they landed better jobs afterward [3]. We’re not asking you to protect therapy at all costs. We’re asking you to treat it as part of how you get through this, not as the first expense you throw overboard before the ones that actually got you here.
Is it normal to feel depressed or anxious after a layoff?
It’s common, and that word matters more than “normal,” which can sound like something you’re supposed to just accept. People who lose their jobs show up in the research with meaningfully higher rates of depression than people who stay employed, and the shift happens fast once the job is actually gone [4][5]. You might notice yourself more irritable, more withdrawn, checking job boards at midnight, or doubting decisions you used to feel sure about. None of that is a flaw in you specifically. It’s what a nervous system does when structure, income, and certainty disappear at the same time. The feelings are a response to what’s actually happening around you, not a verdict on your character, and that’s usually where we’d start talking.
How do I know if a layoff is about me or about the economy?
Almost never about you specifically, even when it feels personal. The scale alone tells you something: hundreds of thousands of people get laid off across Canada in a given year, driven by budgets, restructuring, and shifting markets, not individual performance. What you can’t argue your way out of is the feeling, because acute stress narrows attention toward the nearest threat and pushes the bigger picture out of view, which is exactly why layoffs feel like a referendum on you even when the facts say otherwise [6]. Knowing the statistic doesn’t automatically quiet the voice asking what you did wrong. That voice usually needs a person to talk back to it, not just a number to read.
What should I avoid doing in the first few days after a layoff?
Avoid locking in any decision that doesn’t actually need to be made this week. The days right after a layoff are the worst possible time to commit to a plan, because you’re not thinking from a clear place yet, you’re thinking from shock. People in that state tend to catastrophize, isolate instead of asking for help, or grab the first option out of desperation just to make the uncertainty stop. So hold off on the dramatic pivot, the panic application to anything with a paycheck attached, and the decision to go quiet with everyone who cares about you. Let the news be as big as it actually is for a few days before you ask it to turn into a plan.
What do I do with my days now that I don’t have a job to structure them?
This is one of the quieter, harder parts of a layoff. Work gives you a schedule, a reason to get up, people to talk to, and a sense of where you stand, and losing all of that at once does more damage than losing the paycheque alone [7]. Some people describe the loss itself in terms closer to grief than inconvenience, and that’s not an overstatement, involuntary job loss can trigger a real bereavement response, not a metaphorical one [8]. So it’s worth rebuilding some of that scaffolding on purpose. A wake-up time. A block set aside for applications so the search doesn’t swallow the whole day. Something that has nothing to do with the job hunt at all. You’re not filling time to distract yourself. You’re keeping a life running underneath the search.
Do I need to “stay positive” while I’m unemployed?
No. Good therapy during a layoff isn’t about putting a positive spin on something hard, and it’s not about convincing yourself everything happens for a reason while you’re worried about your next bill. Some things are genuinely difficult, and nobody else can solve them for you by reframing them. What actually helps is having somewhere to say what’s hard without letting it take over your whole sense of who you are, which is different from forced optimism and different from pretending you’re fine. You’re allowed to be angry about this and scared about money and still capable of figuring out your next move. Those things sit in the same room together more often than people expect. We won’t ask you to feel grateful for a layoff. We’ll help you get through it with your eyes open.
Can I afford therapy if I just lost my income?
That’s the real question underneath “should I keep therapy,” and it deserves a real answer instead of a slogan. If you’re in genuine financial strain, your therapist should be part of that conversation, not something you quietly stop paying for and never mention. Most practices, ours included, can adjust frequency, move you from weekly to biweekly, or work out a sliding scale while your situation changes. The goal was never therapy at any cost. It’s keeping one of the supports that helps you get through the actual costs, financial and emotional, of a disruption this size. Financial strain on its own is tied to a sharply higher risk of depression and psychological distress [9][10], which is exactly the moment you want support in the room, not the moment to remove it.
How does financial stress affect the way I make decisions?
More than most people expect. When money gets tight, attention narrows around the immediate threat, and the bigger picture gets harder to see, which is part of why financial pressure pushes people toward riskier, more impulsive choices under uncertainty [6]. Experimental research on financial strain found something similar from a different angle: acute money worries use up mental bandwidth the same way a demanding second task would, leaving less capacity for the complicated decisions a job search actually requires [11]. None of that is a character flaw. It’s what financial stress does to attention and judgment in anyone it touches. It’s also exactly why the smarter question right now may not be “what can I cut,” but “what keeps me clear enough to decide well while this is unsettled.”
What do I say when people ask what happened?
You decide how much detail anyone gets, including people who mean well. “I was let go as part of a restructuring, and I’m figuring out next steps” is true for almost every layoff and doesn’t require you to defend yourself to anyone. You don’t owe extended family or old coworkers your financial situation or your plan on demand. The harder questions are the ones you ask yourself afterward: what does this say about me, did I make the wrong choices, is everyone else moving forward while I’m standing still. Those internal questions tend to be louder and far less fair than anything anyone actually says to you out loud. A layoff raises both kinds of questions, the social script and the private spiral, and they need different answers.
What if therapy doesn’t feel like enough right now?
Say that in the room. If sessions feel too far apart, too short, or aimed at the wrong thing while you’re in crisis mode, that’s useful information for your therapist, not a reason to quietly check out. Therapy during a layoff sometimes needs to change shape for a while, more practical problem-solving, a different cadence, a sharper focus on the decisions actually in front of you instead of open-ended reflection. What it shouldn’t become is one more thing you’re white-knuckling through alone because you don’t want to be a burden on top of everything else. The point was never attendance as a ritual. It’s having someone actually tracking you through a stretch this disorienting. If it’s not landing, that’s a conversation to have, not a reason to stop.
References
[1] Statistics Canada. Table 14-10-0126-01, Labour force survey estimates (LFS), separations. 2025. URL: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1410012601
[2] Arena AF, Mobbs S, Sanatkar S. Mental health and unemployment: A systematic review and meta-analysis of interventions to improve depression and anxiety outcomes. Journal of Affective Disorders. 2023. PMID 37201898.
[3] Vinokur AD, Schul Y, Vuori J. Two years after a job loss: long-term impact of the JOBS program on reemployment and mental health. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. 2000. PMID 10658883.
[4] Amiri S. Unemployment associated with major depression disorder and depressive symptoms: a systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics. 2022. PMID 34259616.
[5] Sterud T, Lunde LK, Berg R. Mental health effects of unemployment and re-employment: a systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Occupational and Environmental Medicine. 2025. PMID 40930969.
[6] Starcke K, Brand M. Effects of stress on decisions under uncertainty: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin. 2016. PMID 27213236.
[7] Paul KI, Scholl H, Moser K. Employment status, psychological needs, and mental health: Meta-analytic findings concerning the latent deprivation model. Frontiers in Psychology. 2023. PMID 36935981.
[8] van Eersel JHW, Taris TW, Boelen PA. Symptoms of complicated grief and depression following job loss: Can engagement in non-work activities bring relief? Stress and Health. 2023. PMID 36354290.
[9] Richardson T, Elliott P, Roberts R. The relationship between personal unsecured debt and mental and physical health: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review. 2013. PMID 24121465.
[10] Mady LJ, Ringlein GV, Satpathy-Horton R. Pre-existing financial circumstance, job loss, and probable depression among U.S. adults: a prospective population-based cohort study. The Lancet Regional Health – Americas. 2026. PMID 42592403.
[11] Mani A, Mullainathan S, Shafir E. Poverty impedes cognitive function. Science. 2013. PMID 23990553.
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