How To Heal After A Layoff with Yowei Shaw

The Anxious Achiever

Morra Aarons-Mele

Business, Careers, Management, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.7 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Layoffs do more than drain your bank account, they shake your sense of worth, belonging, and identity. In this episode, Yowei Shaw, an emotional investigative journalist shares what it felt like to get laid off from NPR, why the experience upends identity and dignity, and how the social systems around unemployment actually make healing harder. We talk about the strange behaviors that show up before and after a layoff, how companies actually decide who goes (spoiler: it’s often opaque), and ways to recover. Get ready to rethink what safety, identity, and recovery look like after a layoff. Check out our sponsors: Northwest Registered Agent - Protect your privacy, build your brand, and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes! Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/achieverfree In this Episode, You Will Learn 00:00 Meet Yowei Shaw, an emotional investigative journalist. 05:15 What it felt like inside NPR during the layoff month. 11:00 What changed at work during the layoffs? 19:45 Is HR your enemy? 22:30 Why intense shame is a common experience after being laid off. 25:00 Stigma and hiring discrimination against laid-off workers. 30:00 How losing the illusion can be liberating. 32:45 How identity changes after leaving a big brand and why that can be a creative opportunity. Resources + Links Get a copy of my book - The Anxious Achiever Watch the podcast on YouTube Find more resources on our website morraam.com Follow Follow me: on LinkedIn @morraaronsmele + Instagram @morraam Follow Yowei: @yoweishaw

Transcript

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0:00.0	Are you launching a business? Get more from Northwest Registered Agent. Protect your privacy,
0:08.5	build your brand, and get your complete business identity in 10 clicks and 10 minutes.
0:13.6	Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash achiever free.
0:22.4	Layoffs aren't as complicated for our wallets and our sense of what we're doing every day.
0:29.7	They are very, very thorny emotionally.
0:33.1	And so today we'll explore how to heal after a layoff.
0:37.4	I'm Maura Aaron's Mealy, and this is the anxious achiever, the show that looks at the intersection
0:42.9	of mental health and work and leadership and asks, how can we do it all better?
0:48.7	I was at the hair salon yesterday, and two women were talking about their adult children, both of whom had been laid off
0:56.6	within the past few weeks from pretty high profile sounding tech jobs. They said, gosh, it's getting
1:02.0	bad out there. And it is. October, 2025 was the worst October for layoffs since 2003.
1:12.6	Layoffs are painful.
1:15.2	They are financially challenging.
1:17.7	And they hit us where it hurts.
1:20.1	And so today, Yo-e-Shah takes us through her own healing after a layoff.
1:27.0	What she learned about the sense or nonsense of how
1:31.4	organizations do layoff, and most importantly, her instructions to find healing after a layoff.
1:38.6	She is an emotional investigative journalist, and you'll really enjoy our conversation.
1:45.8	Yo-A. Shaw on Healing after a layoff.
1:51.5	You are an emotional investigative journalist, which I think sounds like the most needed and coolest thing ever.
2:01.0	Thank you.
2:02.3	Tell us what that entails.
	...

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