In my counselling practice, grief was almost always part of the picture my clients shared with me. We commonly associate grief with the loss of a loved one, but grief has many forms, and one area I think we don’t talk about enough is the grief experienced with job loss and career transitions. Not just unexpected job loss or retirement, but also positive changes like promotion or moving on to an exciting new opportunity.
Work and identity are very intertwined. Just think of the first question you are asked when you meet someone for the first time: “What do you do?”
It is also very common for work to become a distraction and coping mechanism when people are dealing with challenges, pain and grief in their personal life. It can become the one steady, reliable place you can turn to when everything else in your life feels like it is falling apart. So what do you do when this is disrupted?
When I look at my career history, grief is a thread that runs through every role I have had: every transition included a goodbye.
My chronic pain diagnosis in my early twenties forced me to reassess both what I wanted to do with my life and who I thought I was. Part of the treatment programme I attended at the time included grief counselling. Because chronic illness forces you to change your expectations of yourself, you grieve the loss of the life you thought was promised. I am grateful for where my life has gone, but my younger self requires that I acknowledge that this was an incredibly painful experience.
I’m grateful for that counselling as it eventually led me to a new career path. Becoming a counsellor gave me purpose, direction and a new identity. Then, do you know what happened when I took a holiday? I broke down in tears because I didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t working. I’m still working through the dichotomy I live with: that for me, work must be meaningful while recognising that rest and downtime are essential to my wellbeing.
My transition from student to manager was fast. I was excited and appreciative of the recognition and opportunity. But I had to learn very quickly how to grieve the change in relationships; the people who had been my mentors and my teachers suddenly became my employees. I lost some of the support I was used to getting, and I also lost a layer of protection as it became my role to advocate and negotiate with higher management on behalf of the team.
I enjoyed the challenge, but some days I missed my old life. It was an unsettling time. I have a memory of arriving at work, looking down at my feet and realising my shoes didn’t match.
I then moved cities and went on to a role that fundamentally changed me. It was a role that always had an expiry date because we moved to that city for my husband to complete a four-year training course. From my first interview, I was transparent and stated, “I can only do this job for four years.” Everyone knew I would be leaving, but when the time came, it was still so hard to say goodbye. The sense of community and collegial support I gained was so special to me, and really taught me what it means to lead with heart and authenticity.
This was a grief I anticipated, but what I didn’t expect was just how destabilising that would feel, especially as it was followed by my move to another new city.
I then started a new job that was completely different. I went from leading a small organisation to being a small part of a large organisation. And the timing was particularly challenging, as I started that job just before Covid took hold in New Zealand.
I had no time to settle and learn my role. To adapt to a global pandemic, my role changed daily. I could see things that concerned me but was not in a position to address them, and the job I signed up for turned into something completely different. It was a storm that hit and eroded my sense of confidence and identity.
It was supervision that helped me return to stable ground, to rebuild myself and seek out a new environment.
It was a transition that I needed to make. I finished that role on a Friday and started a new one the following Monday. Looking back, I should have given myself a transition break, but I was so excited for the new opportunity that I didn’t listen to advice.
If I had, it might have been easier to work through the grief of saying goodbye to the things I loved about the previous role, mostly my colleagues, who were incredible people and provided support to me when I really needed it.
I also experienced a heavy sense of survivor’s guilt that I had left my comrades to die on the battlefield. Rather dramatic, but sometimes emotions feel that way.
Looking back on these experiences, I can recognise that even when it was my decision, even when it was a promotion, even when I knew I had to leave for my own wellbeing, each movement was an emotional experience: saying goodbye to colleagues, to a community, to achievements, to a sense of comfort and stability, and to an identity.
“Career transitions are inevitably disruptive for the person experiencing them and often for their entourage. We emphasize identity as core to the decisions, processes, and outcomes of careers in movement. For people changing careers, centering on one’s identity shifts the focus from the uncertainty of transition to what matters most to the individual.”
— Ibarra, Wittman & Smith (2026)
This is where supervision comes in. Good supervision creates a space to expand the lens beyond the disruption and give voice to the complex emotions and thoughts.
For example, it is a place where you can say, “I’m grateful for this promotion, but I miss when my colleagues treated me more like a friend.”
A place to remember who you are when you don’t know what you are doing. A place to be reminded that wellbeing requires attention to many parts of the self. Your professional identity is an important part of who you are, but it isn’t everything you are, and it is an identity that will shape-shift over time.
While supervision is a requirement in many helping professions, I believe anyone can benefit from having a space to make sense of the changes, challenges, losses and possibilities that come with our working lives.
References
Ibarra, H., Wittman, S., & Smith, K. (2026). Career transition and professional identity: Dynamic processes, multiple selves, and nonlinear trajectories. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 13, 137–163. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-020924-071546
McEwen, A., Davys, A., & Weil, J. (2025). Supervision for genetic counselors: The role of career-long supervision to develop resilient practitioners. Journal of Genetic Counseling, 34(1), e70014. https://doi.org/10.1002/jgc4.70014
