My Therapist Says
My Therapist Says No One Cares
After getting laid off once again, this was the only advice that penetrated my depression
This story is part of My Therapist Says, a column about advice from therapy that stuck.
When I was laid off for the third time, I allowed the setback to swallow me into a pit of pervasive depression and anxiety. I was having an early thirties existential crisis: Where did I go wrong? How will I fix it? Am I too old to fix it?
And mostly: What will they all think?
Don’t ask me who “they” are. I have no idea. Sometimes I would obsessively scroll through my Instagram followers, pondering how each person would interpret my bad news. Thanks to the platform’s selective algorithms, most of those people had no idea what I was doing anyway. But no one could convince me otherwise. Not my friends. Not my partner. Not the decades of parental figure and PSA advice: Don’t care about what other people think of you! I had nightly visions of ill-willed former colleagues cackling over cocktails as they saw my life fall apart via social media. Distant friends and casual followers watching in real time as my veneer of togetherness melted away. Twice-removed family gossiping over Thanksgiving dinner, saying, “Oh did you see? Rachel…
