{"id":33154,"date":"2025-09-25T09:41:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T09:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-was-unemployed-for-a-year-and-felt-like-the-broke-friend-heres-how-i-found-the-confidence-i-needed-to-keep-chugging-on\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T09:41:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T09:41:23","slug":"i-was-unemployed-for-a-year-and-felt-like-the-broke-friend-heres-how-i-found-the-confidence-i-needed-to-keep-chugging-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-was-unemployed-for-a-year-and-felt-like-the-broke-friend-heres-how-i-found-the-confidence-i-needed-to-keep-chugging-on\/","title":{"rendered":"I was unemployed for a year and felt like &#8216;the broke friend.&#8217; Here&#8217;s how I found the confidence I needed to keep chugging on."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68d3f597f9db348adc0c0f94?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Jasmine Lee\"\/><figcaption>Jasmine Lee says facing two layoffs in two years felt like a quarter-life crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Jasmine Lee<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Jasmine Lee faced two layoffs in two years, leading to a year of long-term unemployment.<\/li>\n<li>Support from her partner, therapy, and a women&#039;s network helped her regain confidence.<\/li>\n<li>She pivoted to a digital marketing teaching role, finding fulfillment and stability.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jasmine Lee, a 29-year-old digital marketing AI teaching assistant based in Lincolnshire, England. It&#039;s been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>My foundation was shaken after two layoffs in two years.<\/p>\n<p>In early 2023, I was laid off from my editorial role at a startup. Later that year, I landed a new job in digital marketing, only to be laid off again after six months. It sent me into what felt like a quarter-life crisis, and I lost my sense of purpose and direction.<\/p>\n<p>Despite being in a privileged position in which my partner, with whom I live, was able to handle living costs like rent and groceries, I experienced immense self-doubt and anxiety about if I was doing enough.<\/p>\n<p>The sense of depression I felt about losing my job made it difficult to get out of bed and find the motivation to work, but I eventually landed a role after one year.<\/p>\n<h2>Leaning on the people close to me was helpful<\/h2>\n<p>My partner and my close friends are some of the biggest emotional support systems in my life.<\/p>\n<p>Since my partner and I live together, we talk every day about what&#039;s going on in our lives. I opened up to him on multiple occasions about how I felt like I had hit a dead end and there was no future for my career. He encouraged me to go to the gym with him. I told him &quot;fine&quot; and that I&#039;d try it out, but I ended up sticking with it.<\/p>\n<p>We live in a rural area, and most of my friends live far away, so keeping up with them on the phone was also helpful and encouraging.<\/p>\n<h2>Therapy helped me to reframe my negative thoughts<\/h2>\n<p>There are some emotional problems that loved ones just aren&#039;t equipped to help with, so I sought out therapy. I was able to access text-only therapy through my partner&#039;s employment benefits, but I would recommend in-person therapy if it&#039;s accessible.<\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest things my therapist helped me with was reframing my negative thoughts, namely my recurring feeling that I&#039;m tired of feeling like the &quot;broke friend.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>I hated feeling like the friend who squandered her career potential. At nearly 30 years of age, this is not at all the financial situation I imagined myself in when I was burning myself out throughout high school and university, trying to build myself a career I could be proud of.<\/p>\n<p>My therapist helped me see that I&#039;ve just encountered some obstacles. I&#039;m doing my best to grow in my career and overcome my challenges.<\/p>\n<h2>I joined a women&#039;s organization for peer support<\/h2>\n<p>While my loved ones and therapist were helpful, I was looking for a space to feel less alone in my struggles.<\/p>\n<p>I attended an event, called Power Hours, put on by a women&#039;s organization, to meet with other women in the UK who were looking for jobs or career pivots. After that, I started attending some of their free workshops with services such as CV feedback, career coaching, and Acas, which is the UK&#039;s public body that provides advice on employment rights.<\/p>\n<p>I even took part in some of their guided journaling and mindfulness workshops. The recurring mantra that really stuck with me is &quot;rejection is redirection.&quot; It&#039;s a more optimistic way of looking at obstacles in my life.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Staying busy and trying new things gave me confidence<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>During my second layoff, I started taking up hobbies I never thought I&#039;d be capable of, like sewing and coding. I even took up a public speaking opportunity, which I never thought I&#039;d do, but I would do it again.<\/p>\n<p>Proving myself capable, time and time again, gave me the confidence I needed to keep chugging on with job applications. I eventually applied for a teaching assistant role for a digital marketing AI boot camp I had recently completed, and I got hired. I love my job, and I&#039;m happy I pivoted to teaching digital marketing.<\/p>\n<p>During mental dips, my support systems helped remind me that I am a person who is worthy of respect and love outside of my career. Without them, this experience would have been far more isolating and difficult to handle.<\/p>\n<p>There are still moments when I look at a friend&#039;s life, one who&#039;s making double or triple my income, and I feel bad about myself, but after two layoffs in two years, I am immensely grateful to even have a stable paycheck and a warm home.<\/p>\n<p><em>Do you have a story to share about navigating long-term unemployment? If so, please reach out to the reporter at tmartinelli@businessinsider.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jasmine Lee says facing two layoffs in two years felt like a quarter-life crisis. Jasmine Lee Jasmine Lee faced two layoffs in two years, leading to a year of long-term unemployment. Support from her partner, therapy, and a women&#039;s network helped her regain confidence. She pivoted to a digital marketing teaching role, finding fulfillment and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33155,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}