The email went out. The list was final. Your name was not on it.
You expected relief. Instead you feel worse than you did before, and you have probably not said that out loud to anyone.
You are not being ungrateful. Keeping your job through a round of layoffs is its own kind of hard. It comes with feelings that most workplaces never make room for.
Your team changed overnight. The people you talked to every day are gone. There was no real goodbye, or there was one thread that went quiet by Friday.
Work does not give grief a place to go. Projects continue. The calendar refills by Monday. So the loss sits there without a name on it.
In my work with clients, this is usually the last thing they mention. They will describe the new workload for ten minutes before they say they miss someone.
Grief that has no name tends to come out sideways. It shows up as irritability, flatness, or trouble caring about work you used to care about.
You still have your job. So it feels wrong to admit you are having a hard time.
That logic sounds fair. It is not true. Keeping your job and feeling awful can both be real at the same time.
Guilt like this does not help the people who were let go. It only makes you quieter about your own week. I say a version of that to clients often, because the comparison to others is what usually keeps them from asking for support.
You do not have to earn the right to struggle by having it worse than someone else.
Roles get absorbed quietly after layoffs. You pick up a project because someone has to. Two weeks later it is simply yours, and nobody ever named the handoff.
You are covering more with fewer people. That is added pressure, not a sign that you cannot keep up.
This is where burnout usually begins. It shows up in a particular way for tech workers, where the pace was already high before anything changed.
Once you have watched it happen, you know it can happen to you.
Before the layoff, your job was a background assumption. You did not think about it. Now it is a live question, and the question does not shut off during the workday.
Small things start to read as signals. A meeting gets moved. A manager replies with one word. Your mind checks each one for meaning.
That scanning is tiring, even when your own role is secure. It is common after any large change at work, including a sudden return-to-office mandate.
A few things I recommend to clients in this position:
Call the loss what it is. You are grieving people you saw every day. Naming it takes it out of the background.
Stop measuring your pain against theirs. Your week is hard on its own terms. It does not need to be the hardest one.
Write down what actually changed in your job. List the tasks you absorbed. Seeing it on paper is often the first proof that you are not slow. You are covering more.
Notice the scanning without acting on it. When you catch yourself reading a canceled meeting for clues, say what you are doing. This is my mind looking for danger, not new information.
Watch for burnout signs. Exhaustion that sleep does not fix. Cynicism about work you used to care about. The sense that nothing you do matters. Once that has set in, therapy for burnout helps more than another weekend of rest.
If you kept your job and still feel awful, that is worth talking through with someone. The therapists at Good Therapy SF work with San Francisco professionals dealing with work stress, anxiety, and the aftermath of major change at work. Reach out to learn more.
About the Author
Dr. Tom McDonagh, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder of Good Therapy SF. He trained at Vanderbilt and completed his postdoctoral work at Kaiser Permanente. His practice focuses on anxiety, OCD, panic, and work stress, with a special focus on San Francisco professionals. Good Therapy SF is located at 870 Market Street, Suite 617, San Francisco, CA.
