Laid Off? Here Are 5 Tips to Put Your Mental Health First

Layoffs can be some of the most stressful, destabilizing times in a person’s life. Beyond the immediate financial concerns, research shows that job loss can trigger anxiety, depression, and a profound sense of identity loss. While securing your next opportunity is important, neglecting your mental health during this transition can lead to burnout before you even start your next role. Here are five essential strategies for protecting your wellbeing while navigating a layoff.

1. Take a break for at least a week if you’re able to

If you have some time before your position ends, or you have severance pay, take time to simply rest. While it’s important to stay productive and set yourself up for success, you also need to conserve energy.

Knowing that the future is uncertain is scary, and throwing yourself into a search immediately can feel productive—especially if taking action helps manage your anxiety. However, the opposite could also be true: you could launch into a frenzied job search, secure another position immediately, and then arrive at your new job completely exhausted because you didn’t take time to reset.

If you can manage it, take time to mentally decompress before launching into your full search. Research from the National Institutes of Health shows that breaks from focused activity allow your brain to replay and consolidate what you’ve learned, strengthening new neural connections. The same principle applies to job searching—stepping back can actually make you more effective when you do engage.

Give your brain a rest. It’ll help you process your feelings and take more strategic steps when you hit the ground running…in a week or so.

2. Take inventory of where you’re at and recalibrate for the future

While layoffs are painful, they do offer a built-in opportunity to take stock of your career trajectory and consider whether you want to make any changes. Sometimes when you’ve been in a job long enough, you run on autopilot and forget about the world outside your immediate sphere.

Adopting a growth mindset—psychologist Carol Dweck’s concept that your abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort, learning, and persistence—helps you see possibilities more broadly, think creatively, and notice opportunities you may have overlooked before. A layoff forces you to look at things differently; embracing that shift with a growth mindset eases the process of adjusting to change.

Try this exercise: Carry a notebook for a week and jot down things you like and dislike throughout your day. They don’t have to be work-related—”I love afternoon coffee,” “I hate fluorescent lighting,” “I enjoy solving puzzles,” “I dislike repetitive tasks.” At the end of the week, review your list. Do you see any patterns? What themes emerge?

Even if you don’t see exactly what you want to do next, you can usually eliminate options that clearly won’t work. For example, in my work in higher education, I have experience with event planning. After doing this exercise, I learned that I love reading, cool weather, and deep thinking, but dislike hot weather, loud environments, and sports. While that didn’t immediately point to my next role, I could definitely eliminate large-scale sporting event planning from consideration. The things I did enjoy pointed me toward quieter, more contemplative work environments.

This is the perfect time to pause and ask: Do I actually like what I’m doing, or are there adjustments I’d like to make? Take that time to think things through and recalibrate as needed.

3. Redesign your daily rhythm

Beyond recalibrating your work, this is an ideal time to recalibrate how you use your time in general. Layoffs are disorienting because they disrupt your day-to-day rhythms and schedules. The silver lining? You can now design a schedule that works for you, rather than one dictated by business needs.

Much time management advice suggests waking early and front-loading tasks, with the theory that you’ll have more energy before the unpredictable parts of the day begin. If that works for you, fantastic—keep doing it. However, not everyone is a morning person, and this advice can feel impossible for night owls (and is sometimes even framed as laziness, which it isn’t).

I used to force myself to exercise early in the morning but found I was often too exhausted to get a good workout, sometimes skipping the gym entirely. I’d also be cranky later in the day. I may have been more physically fit, but I definitely wasn’t mentally or emotionally well on that schedule as a natural night owl.

Track your energy patterns: Notice when you have the most and least energy throughout the day, then adapt your tasks to match those natural rhythms when possible. Working with, rather than against, your circadian rhythms doesn’t just boost productivity—it can significantly improve your mood. Interpersonal and social rhythm therapy (IPSRT)—a therapeutic approach developed by psychologist Ellen Frank for bipolar disorder—emphasizes how aligning your daily routines and social activities with your natural biological rhythms can have measurable effects on both sleep quality and emotional wellbeing. While IPSRT was designed for clinical populations, its core principle applies broadly: maintaining consistent patterns in sleep, meals, and activities helps stabilize mood.

Now that you’re not locked into a specific work schedule, experiment with what hours feel best for you. Take this information into your job search, too. If you discovered you thrive with a traditional 9-to-5 after years of early morning shifts, make that a criterion in your search.

4. Rediscover joy through novelty

I keep a running list on my phone of places and things I want to do when I have free time. Some are ambitious—like travel destinations—but many are simple, like visiting a museum during free weekday hours or trying a new hiking trail. While a few items are checked off, many remain undone due to cost, time constraints, or simply not feeling up to it on any given day.

This period, where you control your own schedule, is ideal for tackling some of those postponed plans. Research shows that novelty directly activates the brain’s dopamine system, which not only creates feelings of reward and motivation but also enhances creativity and facilitates new neural connections. When you break from routine and expose yourself to new experiences, you’re literally helping your brain approach challenges from fresh angles. Plus, the dopamine release from checking something off your list provides a mood boost that can carry you forward.

One of my favorite “weekday freedom” activities is going to the movies during matinee hours. It’s less crowded, often cheaper, and I feel like I’m “getting away with something” by going when most people are at work. I know I won’t always have this flexibility, so I savor it while I can.

This same principle applies to free, simple pleasures. Been meaning to organize your closet? Now’s the time. Is there a park nearby you’ve never visited? Check it out. Even working from a different library or coffee shop can provide a refreshing change of pace that infuses a bit of joy into your day.

5. Allow yourself to feel everything

Any major life change is an emotional rollercoaster. A layoff is particularly intense because it’s tied to both financial security and personal identity. It is a loss, and feelings of grief are natural and expected.

Check in with yourself regularly: How are you feeling right now? Sad? Angry? Relieved? Maybe even happy? All feelings are valid here. Don’t try to logic them away or judge yourself for having them. Simply acknowledge them and recognize that they are feelings—nothing more, nothing less.

Practice mindfulness: This means staying present, rather than ruminating on the past or worrying about the future. Research consistently shows that mindfulness practices improve psychological health, with benefits that can begin with even brief daily practice. While meditation is one form of mindfulness, it’s not the only way. For me, journaling and crocheting help me stay in the moment. For you, it might be walking, cooking, drawing, or gardening. Any activity that anchors you in the present can be mindful.

Think of emotions like ocean waves—they ebb and flow. Just like waves, the more you resist them, the harder things become. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a research-supported approach, teaches that accepting difficult emotions rather than avoiding them leads to greater psychological flexibility and wellbeing. If you’re trying to force something that isn’t working right now, pause. Give yourself permission to step back, recalibrate, and either try again later or try something different.

Be kind to yourself. Just like tea needs time to brew, recovering from loss takes time. Healing isn’t linear, and there’s no “right” timeline for feeling better.

Layoffs can be tremendously stressful and destabilizing. But know that your worth and value as a person is not tied to a job. You are a whole person, first and foremost. You’ve survived all of your most challenging days thus far, and you can and will navigate this, too. Remember: resilience isn’t about bouncing back instantly—it’s about moving forward at your own pace.

A version of this post originally appeared on Bob Gold and Associates’ blog: https://bobgoldpr.com/laid-off-here-are-5-tips-to-put-your-mental-health-first/