In this episode, Yowei Shaw delves into how to bounce back after a layoff and navigate the related difficult emotions. With a wealth of personal experiences, she offers insights and advice for individuals struggling to cope with the aftermath of job loss. Her candid storytelling and unique rituals for emotional healing provide a source of inspiration and hope for those facing similar challenges.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Learn how to navigate and heal from the emotional impact of layoffs
- Discover the powerful benefits of cognitive diffusion techniques for managing emotional distress
- Explore the transformative potential of creating personalized rituals for emotional healing and resilience
- Uncover the stigma and challenges associated with reemployment after a layoff
- Understand the impact of the meritocracy myth on the employment landscape and individual well-being
Yowei Shaw is an award-winning podcast host, producer, and self-proclaimed emotional-investigative journalist. She’s the host of Proxy, a show about niche emotional questions, answered through conversations with strangers who have shared experience. In her previous life, she spent many years making NPR’s Invisibilia podcast, first as producer, then as co-host and editorial lead. Her work has also been featured in places like This American Life and Pop Up Magazine. In her spare time, she makes fan art of her friends and dabbles in bodywork, mostly to get to say “Yowei Shpa.”
Connect with Yowei Shaw: Website | Instagram | Patreon
If you enjoyed this conversation with Yowei Shaw, check out these other episodes:
How to Strengthen Your Resilience with Linda Graham
How to Create Emotional Agility with Susan David
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Episode Transcript:
00:00:00 – Yowei Shaw
When people in my life are going through a hard thing, I just listen. I don’t try to say, oh, you must be feeling x, or oh, it’ll be fine, I try to listen. First.
00:00:18 – Chris Forbes
Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts. We have quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts dont strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy or fear. We see what we dont have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But its not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolfen, thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Yowei Shaw, an award winning podcast host, producer, and self proclaimed emotional investigative journalist. She’s the host of proxy, a show about niche emotional questions answered through conversations with strangers who have shared experience in her previous life. She spent many years making NPR’s Invisibilia podcast, first as a producer, then as a co host and editorial lead. Her work has also been featured in places like this, American Life and pop up magazine.
00:01:47 – Eric Zimmer
Hi Yoe. Welcome to the show.
00:01:49 – Yowei Shaw
Thank you for having me. What an honor.
00:01:52 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, well, it’s an honor for me to talk to you. You were involved in one of the great podcasts of our age, Invisibilia. So I’ve known your work for a while, as do many people who listen to NPR and follow NPR podcasts. And we’ll get into your time in Invisibilia. And then what kind of came after that? Getting laid off. But before we get into all that, let’s start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
00:02:49 – Yowei Shaw
I love this parable. I love thinking about it because I feel like it’s actually, what drives my work, what powers it like? I’m really drawn to that emotional noise between the good wolf and the bad wolf. You know, we all have the good wolf and bad wolf constantly chattering. There’s always that struggle about countless different issues every day. And I am really drawn to examining those battles that we feel like we can’t settle on our own, that we have trouble settling. And I like trying to make sense of it. And so this is sort of like why I am now calling myself a little bit tongue in cheek, an emotional investigative journalist, because I want to investigate those battles and then try to report on it. That’s sort of how I deal with my feelings in general. I’ve been a reporter now for 15 years, which is most of my adult life, and that’s sort of how I deal with those battles between the good wolf and the bad wolf when I can’t figure it out through therapy or by meditation or talking about it with friends. And so I found that when you report on your feelings, when you talk to experts who can help contextualize that battle, what systems and ideas and histories have led to you having this particular battle of voices, how can maybe you think about it differently in a way that’s more helpful to you, and then getting to talk to strangers who have shared experience, who can tell you how they’ve dealt with it, that battle themselves, I found that really helpful. And so, yeah, I feel like that’s sort of like what I like to do in general for myself and for other people.
00:04:41 – Eric Zimmer
I love that title. An emotional investigative journalist. That’s great. And one of the things that many psychologists in different schools of psychology will talk about is this idea of getting distance from our thoughts and emotions. Right. Being able to sort of separate from them. And that’s exactly what you’re describing and why it’s helpful for you. It’s by reporting on it and asking about it and looking at it from different angles. It’s a way of disentangling. It’s a way of creating that distance in the healthy sense of the word, not distance in the unhealthy sense of the word, but in the sense of disentangling. Or the founders of acceptance and commitment therapy would call it diffusion, not being fused with those thoughts and emotions. They call it cognitive diffusion. So I think that’s kind of what you’re describing there, and it’s a well known way of working with thoughts and emotions skillfully.
00:05:37 – Yowei Shaw
Wow. I have a lot of questions for you. I did not know about this. I’m gonna ask you for some book recs after this.
00:05:45 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah.
00:05:45 – Yowei Shaw
Yeah. I feel like now that you’re saying this is an actual technique that has been studied for how to deal with your emotions and move through them, I think that, yeah, reporting on my feelings is one way I’ve been able to do that through work for myself and for other people. Also found that creating a ritual through a kind of absurd art project has also been really working for me lately. And what do I mean by that? Okay, so recently, I got laid off and felt really bad, and I felt a lot of shame. And one of the things that happened afterwards was, like, I knew that I needed to be around my people, like, the people who loved me, and yet I wanted to get away from them. I didn’t want anyone to look at me like, I felt so, so much shame that I didn’t want anyone. Like, other people’s gaze felt like. It was like daggers, you know, it was, like, hurting me. And so after I got laid off, I was like, okay, I know I’m having this issue, and you could, like, frame it in terms of the parable. Like, the good wolf is like, you know, you need to be around your people who love you. These people love you. They’re not thinking about you differently. They want to support you. Then the bad wolf is like, no, everybody hates you. Nobody wants to be associated with you anymore. You’re such a burden. Like, get over it already. And so what I did was, I tricked out my basement to be a massage parlor. I like massage. I like dabble. I love getting massages. And I dabble in a bit of bodywork for other people as a form of care. And so I created Yowei spa, which was like, I got a massage table. The theme was pink. I got some fake plants. I got a hot towel steamer. I just tricked it out. And then I sent around a sign up sheet to my friends and was like, yo. Eh, spas open for business. And basically, I ended up massaging a friend a week for the entire summer after I got laid off. And, like, I think that was my way, like, just creating a fun, weird ritual to try to deal with the bad wolf voice in me.
00:07:59 – Eric Zimmer
I love that. And the hot towel steamer that’s going for it. Now, here’s a dream I’ve long had, and maybe you, as a fellow lover of massage and a reporter, maybe I’ve met the person who can help me bring this to life, which is that I feel like there should be massage review services. Like, you go to get a massage, and you don’t really know where to go. There’s so many different choices. And so I thought, like, would that not be the dream job? Like, to be a massage reviewer? Like, that would be brilliant.
00:08:31 – Yowei Shaw
Yes. For every local paper. Now you have the restaurant critic. You need a bodywork critic. You need alternative health, body work, whatever critic. For acupuncture, for massage, for. There’s so many different services these days. I love that. Now I’m going to try to manifest that as my new job for both of us.
00:08:53 – Eric Zimmer
You’re in New York, right?
00:08:55 – Yowei Shaw
I’m in Philadelphia.
00:08:56 – Eric Zimmer
Oh, Philadelphia. Okay. All right. I thought you were in New York. I have my cities mixed. Well, Philadelphia is a big enough city. You could probably pull that off. I’m not sure. In Columbus, Ohio, there are plenty of.
00:09:05 – Yowei Shaw
Places to review who need our services.
00:09:08 – Eric Zimmer
I think in Columbus there is. Yeah. I would read a massage reviewer for sure before I went. Anyway, that, and this is strange. My other dream career that I think about maybe someday when I retire is similar. I want to be a dog masseuse.
00:09:25 – Yowei Shaw
Wait a minute. Do you have a dog?
00:09:27 – Eric Zimmer
I do, yes.
00:09:28 – Yowei Shaw
And do you already dabble in dog massage?
00:09:30 – Eric Zimmer
Oh, yes. Yes, yes.
00:09:32 – Yowei Shaw
Wow.
00:09:32 – Eric Zimmer
I might like to massage her more than she likes to be massaged. I’m not entirely sure. Sometimes she really seems to like it.
00:09:38 – Yowei Shaw
She likes to spread out your services.
00:09:39 – Eric Zimmer
And every once in a while she’s like, get off of me. Yeah, exactly. Leave me alone. So, yes, I love that. It just seems like that would be a lovely career.
00:09:48 – Yowei Shaw
Yeah. Now, I have another thing I’m going to ask you about after this is I want to learn how to do cat massage for my two cats.
00:09:54 – Eric Zimmer
Okay. Well, I’m going to assume it’s similar. I’m not qualified for this job, but there is such a thing, and they do offer training in it anyway. Okay, that’s not what we’re here to talk about, but apparently we both could talk about massage for a long time. But what we’re going to talk about is led to you creating the yo e spah. Did I say it right?
00:10:14 – Yowei Shaw
Yowie spah? Yes.
00:10:15 – Eric Zimmer
What led to you creating that, which was you getting laid off. So you worked your way up to being a co host of a popular show called Invisibilia, which was a great show. You’d been a reporter for it. You became a co host, and then you were laid off. Talk to me about that experience, maybe how it happened and how you felt.
00:10:37 – Yowei Shaw
Yeah. Okay. So at NPR, we had an unusual layoff, which is because NPR told us, gave us a huge heads up that they were going through budget trouble and they needed to lay 10% of us off, and we’d find out who in a month. And so I had a whole month with the rest of my colleagues to sort of have panic attacks, sweat it out, have sleepless nights, do a lot of teeth grinding. And then the day came where we’d find out who got the email, you know, to let us know that you needed to have a meeting with HR. And I ended up getting the email. And, yeah, I have to say that in the beginning, I was numb. I think. I think that, like, that whole month leading up to the actual layoff kind of functioned like a form of exposure therapy. Like, I was just getting used to the idea that I might lose my job for an entire month. And so in some ways, I was not surprised. Cause I knew it could happen. But on the other hand, it still felt like a shock. Like, I still was so completely thrown. And it was very confusing to me because getting laid off in journalism these days, I mean, that’s practically a rite of passage at this point. I knew that was the deal going into this profession. NPR had literally told me and my colleagues that I might get laid off, and yet I was still so shaken to my core, I felt like my operating system was glitching. And, yeah, basically for the next several months after that, I went through this rollercoaster ride of feelings. There was a lot of shame. There was a lot of spiraling about what could I have done differently? Was it this mistake, or was it that mistake? There was a lot of paranoia about interacting with other people and potential employers. I went to, like, a journalism conference last summer for Asian American Journalists association, and I just remember just being so paranoid. Like, anytime anyone asked me, like, how are you? Like, I would be this close to just, like, bursting into tears or, like, you know, have you found another job? Yeah. Just really benign questions would throw me for a loop. And, yeah, I basically, like, I knew I had about as good of a layoff as it gets, truly. Like, we had a very good union contract at NPR, so I got severance. There was healthcare for, like, a few months after. I had savings. I’m married. I have a husband who can support me. I don’t have kids. You know what I mean? I had a lot going for me materially to help soften the landing here. And yet emotionally, I was just completely a mess. And that disconnect between my material reality and my emotional reality was really, like I said before, whenever I have an emotional problem like this, that I can’t figure out. I start to report on it. And so that’s what I did. And I ended up reporting this series trying to understand, like, why do layoffs mess us up so badly? And I just want to say, you know, this is just my experience. I have friends who got laid off from the same company and did not experience it this way. But I do think a significant portion of Americans do experience it this way, and that’s what I was interested in figuring out.
00:14:19 – Eric Zimmer
So you’ve alluded to some of the emotional difficulty that was there. You’ve alluded to shame. I assume there was fear in there, embarrassment, which sounds like shame. What were the primary sort of emotions that you were going through? Are there others that ive missed?
00:14:39 – Yowei Shaw
Fear, shame, embarrassment? Theres other ones, too. Lets take them one by one. So, yeah, so we already covered shame, which was really confusing to me. Why I would feel like the company told me it’s not my fault. That’s the definition of a layoff. It’s a no fault termination. You’re getting laid off because of something that has to do with the company, not because of you. And they generally always tell you, it’s not you. It’s not about your performance. This is just a business decision. And yet, why was I taking it so personally? Why did I feel like this was an indictment about me? Why did it feel like NPR was rejecting everything about me? Why did I feel deficient? So that was a big one. And then, yeah, fear. Thank you for mentioning that one. Yes. Even though I am relatively privileged, I was still really scared. I’m the primary breadwinner for my family. I was, like, afraid about kind of running through all the scenarios that might happen. Well, if I don’t get a job for these many months. Okay, well, then what will happen if we lose the house? And where will we move? And da da da da, how will we feed the cats? Just kind of spiraling in those material ways. And then there was also fear around getting another job. And this was also, I mean, the podcast industry is not doing great at the moment, especially the narrative podcast industry of the bottom has fallen out of it. So there is some point to that fear, some justification around maybe I won’t be able to find another job, but also, I have 15 years of experience. I am a pretty seasoned podcast person. It didn’t totally make sense how afraid I was compared to my circumstances. And then I was like, oh, have I peaked? Like, is this it? Is this, like, the pinnacle of what I’ll be able to do? In podcast journalism, and I’m trying to think, what are all the other emotions? I think also, the thing that really stuck with me was, like, why do I feel like people are looking at me differently? Is this just in my head, or are they looking at me differently? It felt like a kind of microaggression, you know, when people would say things to me like, have you found another job yet? Are you gonna be changing switching industries? Are you just, like, little things that became so much bigger when your entire body is a scuffed knee, you know? And so I really wanted to understand, just, like, why is this just me being a drama queen, or is there something to, like what I’m feeling? Are there systems and dynamics contributing to the way I feel?
00:17:47 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. And so what did you find out as you began to investigate this? What did you find out about what happens to people during layoffs and why it impacts, again, not everyone, but some of the people, so strongly?
00:18:04 – Yowei Shaw
Yes. Okay. So the first thing I learned, I mean, the history on layoffs is pretty wild. It’s very interesting. Like, before the 1970s, companies pretty much avoided white collar layoffs. This is a pretty recent phenomenon. If a company were to experience layoffs, that would be an indictment of the company. The company needs to feel shame now. It’s flipped. So now we accept layoffs as just like, that’s just what business has to do these days. But it wasn’t always like that. And so that was the first kind of data point of like, oh, okay, so it wasn’t always like this. There are these structural things that are happening that are leading to this situation in the first place. And then I talked to this sociologist, Oprah Shaw, who has done a lot of really interesting work on stigma and laid off workers and unemployed workers. I went to therapy during this whole period, and honestly, talking to him was more enlightening and revelatory than any therapy session I had at this time, because he could just. Everything I was telling him about what I was feeling, he would be like, yep. There’s a reason for that. Yep. All these people that I talk to feel exactly like that. Yep. And some of the things he told me were that the stigma that I’m feeling, this kind of paranoia around. Are people looking at me differently? Are people looking at me differently? Like, that’s not just in my head. Like, people probably are looking at me differently. And that was, like, a huge relief to sort of just be like, I can call it like it is these feelings that I’m feeling, this intuition, like I’m not wrong. And yeah. There’s just a lot of stigma around not just laid off workers, but unemployment in general. When you grow up in school, your teachers are asking you, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? You don’t really. I don’t even know if the word unemployment is mentioned. I don’t think it was mentioned to me during my schooling years. We don’t have much familiarity with it.
00:20:10 – Chris Forbes
Right.
00:20:11 – Yowei Shaw
Even though it’s a fact of this economy. And he said that the stigma really comes down to this myth of meritocracy that we have in this country. Basically the idea that your actions and hard work equal your position in life, in society. And even though the myth of meritocracy exists in a lot of countries, there have been research studies that find that in the US, we believe it the most and the hardest and the deepest. What that means is if you get laid off, well, then it’s your fault. You know? Like, that’s the emotional story that I think I was telling myself, even though intellectually I know that’s not how it works. And so he helped me kind of solve this puzzle that I was feeling where I was like, I know it’s not my fault. I know I shouldn’t feel like this, and yet I feel like it’s my fault. I feel like this is about me. And he talked about interviewing a union organizer whose job it is to explain to workers how our economy works. And even a union organizer would feel like it’s her fault, even though intellectually she knows it’s not. Talking to him about that, talking to him about hiring discrimination that unemployed workers and laid off workers face that it’s twice as hard to get a job interview than someone who has the same credentials. That was also disheartening, but also helpful in that it’s like that whole system versus the individual thing of, is it me? Is it just me, or am I part of a pattern? And I feel like there’s a moment where it just clicked for me. Like, oh, I’m part of a pattern. These feelings I’m feeling. I’m not an alien. There are reasons why I feel this way, and that helped me make sense of it.
00:22:36 – Eric Zimmer
There’s so many things in there I would like to go back and touch on. But the question that just came to mind is, you’re a journalist working in a podcast industry, doing something that clearly really matters to you. Do you think it’s harder in that circumstance than when you’re laid off from a job that maybe you are less personally invested in yeah, I think.
00:23:04 – Yowei Shaw
Absolutely. Absolutely. And yet part of me also, I have my hackles up when I get asked this question, because I think there’s this whole movement right now around, like, work shouldn’t be your identity. And, like, we know better than to, like, you know, care so much about our jobs and life is about so much more than work. And I guess as somebody who’s very, very into her work and, like, it is a huge part of my identity. But I also. I’m like, how can it not matter your job? You know, I feel like in that movement, there’s a little bit of, like, you spend so many hours of your life doing this thing, you have social networks around this occupation. To not have it, part of your identity seems unrealistic. I think that’s one response I have to that question. And then, of course, absolutely, yes. If I didn’t care so much, it would hurt a lot less. Absolutely.
00:24:14 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. I certainly didn’t mean it in any sense that the ideal thing would be to care less. Actually, I think, all in all, to have a job that you care about deeply and provide provides you meaning is the better situation than to have one where you simply go through the motions. Right. I mean, that’s just my personal opinion, but I do think in general. Right. The more you care about something when you lose it, the harder it is to lose it. It’s sort of one of life’s equations, that it’s just true. When I think about things that I’ve lost that really, really hurt, usually the consolation, I find is, oh, but I really, really cared, so that’s good, right? Like, I had something I loved enough to lose it. And I think to your point, though, there are aspects of what we’re talking about that probably happen at all different levels, because, yes, we are invested in our work. Most people take some degree of meaning from it, and our relationships are there. I find it so interesting, this idea of the myth of meritocracy. And as I was listening to your podcast called proxy, and I think it’s a three episode arc that’s about this process. And as I was listening to that, and you started talking about the myth of meritocracy, as somebody who probably has bought into the myth of meritocracy to some degree over my lifetime, I don’t buy into it into the same degree that I used to. I had a little bit of like. But it kind of is true. Sort of. And I think what’s interesting about it is that it’s one of those things that’s true. And not true at the same time. And what I mean is that it is true that how much effort you put in and how hard you work and all that is an element in what goes into being successful or not successful. But it’s far from the only element, as we can see. Right. We know people who are very talented, who the world just does not treat fair for a thousand different reasons. So it’s one of those things that, like, on the one hand, I’m like, well, but you can’t totally throw it out. And yet, on the other hand, it’s nothing true. I mean, I suffered a layoff. I told you about it a little bit. It was a long time ago, but, I mean, I was working as hard as you could possibly work at the time. Right. It was just that early online company got bought by another company and the layoff occurred. And so I can see in all different cases that the myth of meritocracy is just that. The other thing I thought was interesting is we’re talking about the stigma. And I found this idea that people who are unemployed have a far harder time getting job than someone employed. Right. There’s an old saying which is the best time to look for a job is while you have a job. Right. And it’s just based on that very. At least in my mind, I always heard that phrase to mean exactly that. Right. That for whatever reason, you look like a better candidate when you have a job versus when you don’t have one. But it was amazing to hear I, as you did this investigative reporting, how open recruiters really were about this fact, about just pretty much straight out saying, like, yes, we get a lot of applicants. It’s hard to sort them out. So one way that we do so is if you have a job, we rank you higher than if you don’t.
00:27:35 – Yowei Shaw
Yeah, it was wild to hear what recruiters would say. And basically it’s discrimination when you think about it, when it’s like a characteristic about you that you cannot help, you know, that you cannot change, necessarily. It’s a form of bias and discrimination that is just openly accepted in our employment system. And, yeah, that’s wild that we’re just like, yep, that’s just the way it is.
00:28:03 – Eric Zimmer
Well, it’s based on that same sort of half true thing about the myth of meritocracy, right. Because you’re assuming that if somebody doesn’t have work, it’s because something they have done. And while in certain cases. Right, like, some people who would come to you to look for work and they don’t have a job is because they’re not very good. You know what I mean? Like, there are those people, but it’s certainly not everybody with layoffs. And I think these part true things, it’s easier to throw something out that’s completely always false.
00:28:33 – Yowei Shaw
Yeah. And, you know, these recruiters also talked about how, you know, even the ones who didn’t really buy into that way of thinking, they’re like, they don’t see a resume and see, oh, you’ve been laid off. That means you are a worse performer. There were recruiters who talked to the sociologists who were like, maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not true. It’s getting at what you’re saying. This half truth, this partly true assumption for these recruiters because they just have a huge pile of resumes to get through. And also they don’t want to get in trouble with the manager that they’re hiring for. Like, what if it is true and they end up letting somebody in that isn’t going to do a good job? And so they just are conservative and sort of err on the side of, well, let’s talk to the people who already have a job. Let’s just err on the side of, you know, we just want to be safe.
00:29:27 – Eric Zimmer
It reminds me of another saying. I was in the software business for a long time before I became a podcaster. And so there was an old saying that, like, nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM. And what they mean Washington. It’s the safe choice, right? It’s just the safe choice. Like, it may not be the best choice, it may not be the right choice, but it’s the choice that everybody would at the end of the day go, well, that sort of makes sense. So I can’t penalize, you know what I mean? It’s that same sort of thing. Now as somebody who, you know, sort of made my way through the startup business without a college degree and all that. Like, I sort of was like, well, you know, I didn’t like that phrase, you know, you want to hire somebody like me, the punk rock weirdo that showed up at your door today is your best choice. So all these things are true. So the other thing that I thought was really interesting is that one of the things that I think is obvious and you heard is that if you show up for an interview, so you’ve been laid off and now you’re back out and you’re looking for a job, if you have a sense of a desperation or be of negativity about what happened or negativity or feelings of doubt about your own ability. That’s not good for getting a job. You don’t want to show up with that. So it would seem that ignoring what we’ve just been talking about, not knowing that to be true, might be better. Because if I know that you’re going to discriminate against me, then I’m going to be more doubtful. I’m going to be more afraid. But it seems like that the research that this gentleman that you were mentioning did shows that that’s actually not true, that there is a way of both recognizing the stigma, recognizing the difficulty, allowing the negative emotions to be there, and then also not projecting them as you go into trying to find other work. How does that happen?
00:31:21 – Yowei Shaw
This is something that I was experiencing myself as I was reporting the story on layoffs. I was reading all these depressing statistics about how layoffs are linked with higher risk of divorce, higher risk of decreased earnings, you know, higher risk of hospitalization, just like all these bad things that layoffs are linked to. And I was starting to get in my head, like, oh, no. Like, am I going to end up as one of these statistics? Like, I got to get another job. Like, uh. And I asked ofracharon, the sociologist, this question of, like, it seems like it would be counterintuitive, like, it would not be helpful. It seems like it would not be helpful to learn about all these depressing statistics.
00:32:01 – Eric Zimmer
Right?
00:32:01 – Yowei Shaw
And what he said was, he said that, yes, it hurts, but also it helps you see that it’s not your fault if you do have trouble. It’s that depersonalization thing that we were talking about earlier. So, Oprah, Shaw, the sociologist, he did this study where he got all these volunteer career coaches and all these people in Boston who were out of work looking for a job, long term unemployed. He had the coaches try a different approach called sociologically informed support, which to me, I love that term. It’s so nerdy, it’s so funny to me, it’s hard to say, sociologically informed support. So basically, what happened was, at the beginning of the day, Ophir would go up in front of everyone and be like, I’m sorry to tell you, folks, but here’s what it is. And would just go through all the odds that are stacked against them. And then he would say, I know this hurts. I know this sucks to hear this, but I want you to know this so that you don’t blame yourself for having a hard time getting another job. There’s a reason, a concrete reason why you are having a hard time, because if you blame yourself, if you internalize all those failed job interviews, all those rejections, all that silence from employers, then it’ll make it harder for you to get a job, because you will be even more negative. You will be even more insecure. You know, you’ll just leak more negativity, which will then make it harder to get a job, which will make you feel even worse about yourself. And then you just start to, like, get into this vicious cycle of negativity, you know, like, it’s harder for you to get a job that makes you feel worse about yourself. That makes it then harder to get a job when you go show up for an interview, and then you just end up in this really toxic hard loop. And so what the sociologist recommends is important to know what you’re dealing with. What are the odds that are stacked against you? How hard is it for you to get another job and then get up and sort of shake it off, and then you need to get to work looking for that job. You need to go ask colleagues for a recommendation. That’s the best way to sort of overcome that bias against unemployed workers or laid off workers is a recommendation from somebody inside the company. And you basically need to prepare yourself for a marathon, not a sprint. And you need to protect your mental health. You need to prioritize it. You need to understand that there are all these negative feedback loops that could be coming from maybe a spouse who’s maybe blaming you for not finding work or for getting laid off, maybe your friends who maybe don’t understand or have distanced themselves, who knows? There are a number of negative feedback loops that you could be dealing with. And so you sort of need to, like, map out all the negative feedback loops that you might be dealing with, and then find your safe people, find the people that you can vent about your negative feelings, and they won’t judge you. They won’t say, oh, well, that’s your bad attitude. That’s why you’re not getting another job, right? You know, people you can be safe with and then just keep trucking along until you get that chance, because the longer you are unemployed, the harder it is to get a job. And the best way to deal with all those negative consequences that come with unemployment and laid off is getting another job. It’s just like this mental jiu jitsu you have to do with yourself that I find very interesting and really goes against what the dominant approach is with career coaches and career centers, which is very, like, pull yourself up by the bootstraps. You can do it. You just need the right attitude. You just need the right resume. You just need the right outfit. You know what I mean?
00:36:22 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah.
00:36:22 – Yowei Shaw
And all that matters. All that stuff matters. This is not to say that you shouldn’t learn how to interview better or you shouldn’t polish your resume. All that stuff matters. But also, it is harder for you to get a job.
00:36:36 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. It’s a little bit like recognizing the effects of what trauma can do in your life. Because on one hand, it’s frightening to hear things. Like, for example, there’s something called the adverse Childhood Effects survey. If you get a high score on that, meaning you had a bunch of adverse things happen to you as a child, the list of consequences of things that can happen to you is long, right? I mean, it goes from addiction to heart disease to depression. I mean, it’s just not a happy story. So on one hand, it would be kind of good to not know that. And yet, of course, you’re having impacts from it that are actually happening. Like you said, it’s this jiu jitsu, a little bit of like, okay, I know that that’s all true. I know that that has all having an impact on me. And at the same time, I’m determined not to let that be the whole story. And I think that’s. We’re talking about something similar here. Yes. As a person who’s lost your job, their stigma against you getting rehiredde, it’s harder to get it right. There are these negative things that can occur. You’re dealing with negative feedback loops of people who don’t understand, people who think the fact you don’t have a job as your fault, you’ve got all that happening. To pretend it’s not happening makes you feel insane, right? To pretend it’s not is to sort of feel crazy. Same thing. If somebody has a bunch of adverse childhood effects, to pretend that that stuff’s not having an effect makes you feel crazy because you’re like, well, something isn’t right. You can’t let it be the whole story either. Otherwise it becomes self fulfilling prophecies at the same time. And I think people who are dealing with difficulties, systematic difficulties of any sorts, run up against this, which is, yes, the system is not fair, and yet you still have to find a way within that not to let that be the thing that defines you. And I don’t know exactly how people do that. I mean, I think we all wrestle with it, but it’s one of those sort of true, half truth things we talked about before where if you end up only accepting one side of that, your reality is not whole, I guess. Does that make sense?
00:38:44 – Yowei Shaw
Yeah, it really makes sense. It makes me think about. So one of the things that the sociologist found was most helpful in doing this mental jujitsu of trying to, like, hold the bad statistics in one place and also stay hopeful and, like, prepare yourself for the marathon ahead so that you don’t end up becoming a. A statistic. One of the things he found that was most helpful for participants was the solidarity, how important it was to talk about it with people who understand and won’t judge you, who won’t blame you for having a bad attitude. It’s the support group model. He said that in these career centers, usually when somebody raises their hand and says, I’m having a hard time, they’re told, shh, don’t talk about it. You don’t have the right attitude. You know, that’s not encouraged in these places most of the time. And so where does all that negativity go? You know, you internalize it or, you know, comes out in weird places. And so that’s one lesson that I think is, like, kind of common sense, but also really important to remember for all kinds of problems that you face is, like, the importance of. Of being able to share and vent in a safe space.
00:40:27 – Eric Zimmer
I interviewed a woman recently. She wrote a book about dark moods and their benefit. In it, she described an experience she had of reading a book. That’s gonna take me a second to set up, but I think it’s actually gonna be worth it. If not, Chris will cut it all out. But she’s describing a woman who is getting back into the job market after having been a parent. Right. And so kids are going off to school. She’s been out of the job market for 20 years. She’s older, and she’s expressing to her husband and son her concerns that her skills aren’t really up to date. And she knows that, you know, older women, it’s harder for them to get hired and all of this. Right. And her husband and son just are saying to her, no, no, you’re wonderful. You’re great. You’re going to be just fine. Right. And the psychologist who was writing the book was describing how they were. Right. And she had what the psychologist was calling a negative explanatory style. The woman writing this book had a big problem with this. Right. She was like, well, but of course there’s discrimination against women of a certain age, and you don’t have, like, of course she’s right. And I’m reading it, thinking, well, they’re both actually right in a way. Right. And this is exactly what we’re talking about. If she completely internalizes that attitude, then, yes, she’s going to have a hard time finding a job. And yet, if she doesn’t, if nobody recognizes those factors, she’s going to think that she’s all the problem. And the answer turned out to be relatively simple. Right. Which was that what she needed was her husband to just say, yeah, I understand, you know, that’s frightening. That’s hard, of course. Yes. I bet it’s going to be harder for you than it might be, say, for me, if I was to go look for a job like that’s all true. And then she’s heard. Because when we’re not heard on stuff like that, what my experience is is we end up arguing for our own limitations. We end up trying to convince everybody that we’re right, that it really is that bad and that hard. Whereas most people, if that difficulty is acknowledged, then we can move on to solution. But if nobody will acknowledge that difficulty, we end up arguing for it instead of then being able to move into this piece you talked about, which is like, okay, how do I prepare for the marathon, not the sprint?
00:42:49 – Yowei Shaw
That’s really interesting. Yeah. It reminds me of this experience that I would have again and again after my layoff, wherever, with friends and family, people who love me and want the best for me, when I would talk about my feelings of shame, despair, and maybe being a little melodramatic, whatever, people would sort of cheerlead me sometimes and sort of be like, no, no, no, you got this. You’ll be fine. Look at how much experience you have. Da da da da da. And it always bugged me. Like, it always made me so it was just like, no, no, no. Like, yeah, I know. And also, like, these are my feelings right now, and I’m allowed to feel these negative feelings, right? And, like, I know you want it to be okay. You want to put a band aid on it, but, like, we don’t know if that’s gonna happen. Like, if I will come out of this right. It’s almost like you want some acknowledgement of your reality, your emotional and material reality, so that you don’t feel insane.
00:43:52 – Eric Zimmer
Yes.
00:43:53 – Yowei Shaw
You don’t feel like people are trying to crowd out your feelings. This whole experience with my layoff has really taught me that when people in my life are going through a hard thing, I just listen. I don’t try to say, oh, you must be feeling x or, oh, it’ll be fine. I try to listen first to what they’re saying, you know, because I think we’re uncomfortable with, like, those kinds of hard feelings because we want the people in our life to be okay.
00:44:21 – Eric Zimmer
Of course.
00:44:21 – Yowei Shaw
Yeah. One other thing I’m thinking about to go back to this myth of meritocracy is there’s been some interesting research. It’s very preliminary. There’s some research that suggests that when people don’t expect to be laid off, they are more emotionally wrecked than people who are aware of the possibility. And I think this gets at the same kind of thing we’re talking about, where it’s like, just knowing, having a kind of realistic view on what could happen helps prepare you more for the possibility so you’re not totally destabilized if it happens. And I think, yes, the myth of meritocracy, it’s half true. It’s half not true. And also, it’s a comforting story to tell yourself, because then if you have control, if you work hard, if you’re telling yourself that if you work hard, you will be safe, if you do a good job, you will be safe, then you can have control in this volatile, scary economy where people can be laid off and fired because we have at will employment.
00:45:35 – Eric Zimmer
Right.
00:45:35 – Yowei Shaw
That was one of the biggest lessons for me from all of this reporting, was like, oh, okay. It could be not motivating to think, oh, if I do a good job, I still might be laid off. I was afraid that I might kind of go in that direction of like, oh, like, well, then what’s the point? And kind of throw my hands up in the air. And I found that that’s not where I am right now. Like, I don’t have a salary job right now. You know, I’m doing my own thing, shooting my shot with this new podcast. But I just. I think that reality, even if it hurts, it is generally always more helpful than the false story. That’s comforting.
00:46:16 – Eric Zimmer
I tend to agree. I think what’s interesting about that is, like, many things we’re talking about is this balance. Right? Because if we were to really grasp and spend a lot of time thinking about how truly out of control we are in this world, it would be paralyzing. We would never get out of bed. Right?
00:46:37 – Yowei Shaw
Yeah.
00:46:37 – Eric Zimmer
As poet Mark Nepo calls it, the terrible knowledge that anything can happen to anyone anytime is true. You can’t live in that constant recognition of that fact, or you’d be a basket case. And yet there’s some amount of recognition of that that’s really useful, right? To really realize, like, yeah, like, life is a frightening and scary place, and terrible things happen to really good people all the time, and good things happen to bad people, and average things happen to average people. Like, it just all happens. And so it’s interesting, I think getting laid off at the age that I did, I was 28. My wife was six months pregnant with my son. I mean, it was a terrifying experience. I think that there was something about that that just I, from that moment on, did not believe that my safety came from a company. And I remember, I mean, I worked in software startup companies. So I guess for a while you do that. You just kind of know, like, well, the odds are pretty good this thing is not going to make it. I went on to do consulting for these really big companies, Fortune 100, Fortune 500 companies. And my mom would be like, I wish they would hire you. And I’d be like, they actually offered to hire me. And I said no. And she’s like, you’re crazy. And I was like, mom, do you think that working for this company is, like, safe? Do you actually think that, like, the fact that they hired me as an employee is safety? It’s not anymore. I understand in your day and age, perhaps it was, but it’s not anymore. You know? And I felt like the fact that I was a consultant and knew that I was going to need to prove to somebody else anywhere from three months to six months to a year from now that I was worth hiring was more safety. Again, there’s no complete safety, but it was more safety because I just assumed that sooner or later, they’re going to be done with me and I’m going to have to go convince somebody else. And so I just always felt like the fact that I knew that made me stay a little bit more on top of certain things. It’s not that any of its safety, but I think there was a. I’m not counting on a company to take care of me because. Because I don’t think that’s a safe bet anymore in today’s world. I’m not demonizing companies. I’m just saying that, like, as we know, if they need to cut costs, they’re going to cut costs. And if you happen to be part of that, you’re going to be gone.
00:49:11 – Yowei Shaw
Yeah. I’m curious if your relationship with risk changed after that moment. Because my relationship with risk has changed as a result of my layoff. I would say that I am a pretty risk averse person, generally speaking. Maybe it’s like being the daughter of immigrants who are the children of refugees. It’s just like, I want to be safe. We need to have savings. Security is very important to my operating system after kind of, if the quote unquote worst thing professionally happened. I know it’s not the worst thing, but it’s one of the worst things. Just losing your job, it kind of liberated me from this kind of grasping need to control and be safe. This new thing that I’m doing, which is starting a podcast, I mean, it’s not a good time to start a podcast. I really might fail. I probably will fail, but I’m having fun doing it. I’m learning a lot, and it’s okay if I fail. Like, I think it has really rewired my relationship with failure, and just, like, my tolerance for it and my tolerance for risk, I’m grateful for that, actually.
00:50:27 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. It’s hard for me to know what recalibrated my relationship with risk. I was a homeless, heroic at 25, so I clearly wasn’t playing anything safe to begin with. But this job was my first attempt to try and be safe. And it was interesting because when I got laid off, I actually did gamble a little bit because I was given severance, and I applied for unemployment. And I recognized also that there was job retraining money available. And so I took some of the severance and some of that money, and I invested in a series of software related courses, thinking like, I might be able to actually come out of this even better off, which it turned out to be the case. And so I think I was taking a risk then and then working in software startup companies. Like I said, after that, I think I just. You do that long enough, your relationship to it is just very different.
00:51:26 – Yowei Shaw
It’s like the water you swim in.
00:51:27 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, it is. It is the water you swim in to a certain degree. And so I think I just, over the years, built more and more of a tolerance for it. Although it’s interesting, is, like, get older, I’m finding my risk tolerance becoming a little bit more like, well, hold on a second. Like, do you realize, like, the chance that, you know, this is, you know, I mean, running a podcast, right. Like, we’re in a pretty good position as a podcast, and yet it is hard out there. It is harder than it’s ever been out there. And there’s risk. You know, there’s. There’s risk I am aware of very regularly.
00:52:03 – Yowei Shaw
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. It’s like, it has really made me want to shoot my shot more in general. I feel like it has kind of unleashed this kind of aggressive, but not in a bad way, I hope. We’ll see. But just kind of this version of me that’s like, yeah, I’m gonna go for it, and it’s okay if I fail. I’ve already failed on my face in a very public way, so why not shoot my shot? Why not try? Yeah. I just feel less afraid.
00:52:35 – Eric Zimmer
No, yeah, I think that’s good. I think that’s good. I think that’s ideally the way to move to the best of our ability. We’re about out of time, but I would be remiss if I did not at least ask you about one of the things that you did as part of this project is you decided to create a layoff song. This sounds a little bit like the yowei shpah, but you decided to create a layoff song.
00:53:09 – Yowei Shaw
It’s exactly like the yo eh shba. I’ve discovered that I’m really into inventing weird rituals as a way of healing. So basically what happened was I was laid off, feeling bad, trying all kinds of things to try to feel better, reporting a series about it, doing this yo ei spa thing, massaging my friends, like, doing a lot to try to feel better. And I have to say, like, six months after the layoff, I was still feeling really, really bad. I really was not much further than I was at the very beginning, and that kind of bummed me out. And then I had this recital coming up. So one of my hobbies is I pole dance. I’m not good. It’s just for fun. My studio has this, like, very cute, kind of nerdy seasonal recital where you can do a solo or a group dance or whatever. And so I had a recital coming up, and I had signed up to do a solo thing, and you have to choreograph your own thing. And I’d never done it before. And I was like, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What song am I going to choose? And I was like, I know what I’ll do. I need to do an interpretive layoff dance because that sounds fun to me. Dress up in a Kleenex box and it’ll just be this ridiculous kind of joyous reclamation of this whole situation. And so then I started looking for layoff songs to dance to. Maybe not surprisingly, there are not that many layoff songs out there. It is not a well developed genre as of yet.
00:54:44 – Eric Zimmer
You slumb the depths of country music. You sure there’s not more out there?
00:54:48 – Yowei Shaw
You know what? I should have. But you know what?
00:54:51 – Eric Zimmer
That’s where you’re gonna find them. Sure.
00:54:54 – Yowei Shaw
But also, I’m not sure that would match the vibe of my choreography of the pole dancing.
00:54:59 – Eric Zimmer
Yes.
00:55:00 – Chris Forbes
Yes.
00:55:00 – Yowei Shaw
So, anyways, I was like, why not just make my own layoff song? We’re already here. Why not go all the way? And I’m very lucky to have a music producer as a husband who can make it. So and so he helped me out, and we made this ridiculous song called Gold Star. And the reason why it’s titled gold Star is because after I got laid off, I remember people would do all kinds of nice things for me. Send me fried chicken. I love fried chicken. People would get me a massage. I love massage. Just all these nice things. But what I really wanted, if I’m being honest, was a trophy, okay? I just wanted a trophy to my self esteem. Something to combat the negative voices in my head. Like, basically, I want a gold star to sort of combat what I’m feeling. And so this is, like, I’m hoping it finds laid off folks, you know? This is sort of a gold star. Like, I’m soothing myself, and hopefully, you know, this can be a gold star for you. And then I made this ridiculous pole dancing video that is available online right now, though it might not be forever, because I might come to my senses and decide to pull it from the.
00:56:17 – Eric Zimmer
Internet if it’s still out there. When this episode releases, we’ll put a link in the show notes. I’ve heard the song. I have not yet watched the video. The thing that made me laugh the most during that process, though, I mean, every part of it is great and funny, was your husband introducing you to auto tune, which is a way of trying to make those of us who don’t sing very well sound coherent. And it’s so funny because he was like, I’ve never seen my computer have to work this hard. And it’s funny because this is quite some time ago, probably at least 15 years ago, I went to a friend’s house in Tennessee, and I used to be a songwriter, and so I had some songs, and I was trying to sing. And we got what must have been a very early version of autotune, right? It was a box. You didn’t plug it in your computer. And the running joke, basically, after that was that, like, anytime it tried to process me, the box would start smoking. It had to work so hard. So when he said, I’ve never seen this machine work this hard, I had a good laugh. I was like, I’ve been there. Oh my gosh.
00:57:24 – Yowei Shaw
Yeah. Autotune is my friend. Thank God for autotune.
00:57:29 – Eric Zimmer
Yes.
00:57:30 – Yowei Shaw
There’s no way I would have the courageous to have sung that song or put it on the Internet without the help of a lot of autotune.
00:57:38 – Eric Zimmer
All right, well, we are gonna wrap up now in the post show conversation. We’re gonna talk a little bit longer cause I wanna talk about you’ve launched this new podcast to report on this, but there was an interim step in there along the way that ended up, I think, being the hardest, maybe emotional moment for you of this whole journey. And I’d like to talk about that a little bit in the post show conversation. Listeners, as always, if you would like access to that, if you would like access to ad free episodes, a special episode I do each week called a teaching song and a poem. And to be part of our community, we have community meetings once a month. We’d love to have you be part of the community and you can do that by going to oneyoufeed.net join Yowei. Thank you so much. This has been really enjoyable from top to bottom.
00:58:27 – Yowei Shaw
Thank you for having me. This was so fun. Thank you for listening to my song and not judging me too harshly.00:58:33 –
Eric Zimmer
No, it’s a good pop song.
