Laura Rowley Money & Happiness

Of all the sufferings that come with getting laid off -- and they are plentiful -- perhaps the most insidious is silence.

In the book 'The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life', Rutgers sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel writes about the social aspects of ignoring what is going on, or what he calls "the nuanced tension between what is personally experienced and what is publicly acknowledged."

I recall a get-together at a bar after my company laid off 500 of us back in 2001. Looking for solace among the pink-slipped, I was surprised to see those who had dodged the ax in attendance as well. The awkwardness was palpable; the bar reeked of our shame and sense of failure, along with their guilt and sense of relief. I left early.

A Deliberate Effort

"Silence requires not simply failing to notice something, it's a deliberate effort to refrain from noticing it," Zerubavel says, noting that the Hebrew words for 'silence' and 'paralysis' come from the same root.

In some cases, this recessionary "don't ask, don't tell" policy is partly related to denial. In the 2000 film 'Waiting for the Messiah', a son asks his newly unemployed father what they should do about their family's financial problems. He replies, "Not tell Mother. That's all we can do."

But at the social level, "a lot of it is about fear and embarrassment," says Zerubavel. "Silence is helpful in terms of not rocking the boat -- the moment you break the silence, it creates a lot of tension, and you never know how you're going to come out of that. That's why a lot of people choose to remain silent -- it's about trying to be tactful."

The Importance of Support

But research has found silence in the face of unemployment can be harmful to physical and mental health. A study of laid-off men found that those who coped best with the situation were the ones who enlisted support from family and friends.

Walla Walla, Washington, consultant and author David Schmaltz is experiencing silence -- and all of the other issues embodied in the loss of paid employment. For 16 years, Schmaltz and his wife ran a firm that helped high-tech companies manage project work more successfully. Schmaltz earned six figures for many years, lived in a 4,000-sq.-ft. Victorian home, took vacations to Europe, and raised his children, now 30 and 26. Then his work simply evaporated.

"Our clients were not the top executives but the middle managers charged with making these [projects] work, and after the dot-com bust, the middle managers' discretionary budgets were cut to zero," he says. "People stopped buying training and consulting work -- it was not just me but my colleagues around the world, too."

Losing Work and Identity

Schmaltz declared bankruptcy last fall. He chronicles his experience in 'The White Collar Recession', a series of articles for a local Washington paper. He poignantly captures the surreal feeling of both work and identity slipping away.

"Self respect is the first casualty of bankruptcy," Schmaltz writes of his meeting with an attorney. "Me, I couldn't talk about it. Whistling around the carpet-concealing carcass, I held my breath, my thoughts, and my voice; then I carried on. What else was I supposed to do? The bankruptcy attorney was perfunctory, matter of fact, only interested in the barest information. A God-send for anyone too ashamed of himself to speak.

"The bankruptcy trustee, reviewing our accounting of personal property, asked simply, 'What happened?' 'Business cycle, I guess,' I replied, deeply ashamed that someone might publicly survey my meager treasures. Books, worth little but landfill to anyone but me. A twenty-year-old car. Odds and ends of ancient furniture, each with its own resonant story. A home we might sell in a down market for as much as we owe. No evidence of profligate spending. Whether the business failed because of bad marketing or a bad market doesn't matter now. It's gone. And with it went more than the promise of livelihood, but my whole carefully crafted identity, leaving me simply speechless."

The Stigma of Unemployment

Says Zerubavel, "Being unemployed is so stigmatized in this society -- not just American society but in capitalist societies in general. A lot of your honor, ego, sense of self -- all these things are embodied by finances. It doesn't have to be that way. It could be that money is just a means to get things; but here it's more than that."

Schmaltz agrees. "Unemployment becomes the elephant in the room," he says. "You are concealing something everyone knows; it sets up a contest in which unspoken things become insidiously unspeakable, and that becomes self-reinforcing."

After filing for bankruptcy, Schmaltz shifted his focus from finances to family; he was able to care for his dying father. He also moved his mother into assisted living, cleaned out the family home, and made long-needed repairs to ready it for sale. A master gardener, Schmaltz did yard work for friends and pro-bono consulting. He also wrote the series for the paper and a blog.

Putting Yourself in Charge

Activity -- even unpaid -- has helped, he says. 

"I can say from personal experience that, once you get into denial, then you get really stuck," he says. "It doesn't matter what motion I induce -- just that I get unstuck somehow. It's like moving a refrigerator. The first nudge is next to impossible, but once you get it moving, it slides easily. The thing is to do anything you can do to put yourself in charge again."

Recently, Schmaltz's wife landed a job; they will be moving to Washington, D.C., where he hopes to find a new start. Government, at least, is hiring.

Meanwhile, he's glad he took the risk of going public with his story. The response was encouragement and appreciation from readers -- and, he says, "several whispered conversations from people trying out the idea that their voice might make a difference, too."