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A message landed in my inbox three months after our last session.

"I got laid off again," she wrote. 

"Same story, different company. I think I'm cursed."

But she wasn't cursed.

She was caught in the cycle I see over and over again.

And I’m sure you know it too.

The one that starts with panic and ends with déjà vu.

The Layoff Loop 

Eight months earlier, she'd been let go from a marketing role. 

Devastated, confused, and desperate for income, she'd jumped straight into job search mode. No pause. No processing. 

Just: "I need a job. Any job. Now."

She found one. Similar role, similar company culture, similar problems she'd been dealing with before.

And now, eight months later, she was laid off again.

"I think there's something wrong with me," she said.

There wasn't. 

But there was something wrong with her approach.

Why Familiar Isn't Safe

The most expensive career mistake I see people make isn't choosing the wrong job. It's choosing the next job for the wrong reasons.

When you lose a job you didn't want to lose, your brain goes into survival mode. 

Logic gets hijacked by fear. The voice in your head immediately starts screaming: "Get back out there! Prove your worth! Show them you're fine!"

So you polish up that resume. You start applying to anything that looks familiar. You interview for roles that feel safe because they're exactly like what you just lost.

And you end up right back where you started.

Unprocessed Grief Follows You

We spoke about this a couple of weeks ago. 

When you don't process what happened, you bring all those residual feelings with you into the new role.

Every time something goes sideways—a difficult conversation with your boss, a project that gets canceled, a reorganization announcement—your nervous system lights up with recognition.

"Oh, here we go. It's happening again."

The fear that you tried to outrun by getting hired quickly? It follows you. The imposter syndrome that whispered you weren't good enough at the last place? It gets louder.

You start second-guessing every interaction. Overanalyzing every meeting. Looking for signs that this job, too, is about to disappear.

You become so focused on avoiding another layoff that you can't actually do the work.

Meanwhile, you're probably in the wrong environment anyway. Because in your rush to land somewhere and anywhere that you didn't ask the hard questions:

• What was actually broken at the last place?

• What role did the company culture play in your experience?

• Were you genuinely happy there, or just comfortable?

• What would you need to be different this time?

Instead, you took familiar.

Familiar felt safe. Familiar felt like proof that you were still valuable. Familiar felt like the fastest way to stop the financial and emotional bleeding.

But familiar just got you laid off.

There's a different way to do this.

It starts with hitting pause instead of hitting apply. It means sitting with the discomfort of not knowing what's next while you figure out what just happened.

It means asking our clients questions like these:

• What was I tolerating that I don't want to tolerate again?

• What kind of environment do I actually need to do my best work?

• What would success look like beyond just having a paycheck?

• What patterns from your last role do you absolutely not want to repeat?

• What would have to be different about your next environment for you to feel genuinely supported?

• Beyond the job description, what cultural red flags will you actually pay attention to this time?

• How will you know if you're making this decision from fear or from clarity?

• What support do you need during this transition that you didn't get last time?

I'm not saying don't look for work.

I'm saying don't let panic drive the search.

Because when you make your next career move from a place of processing rather than reacting, you're not just avoiding the same mistakes—you're positioning yourself to make choices that actually move you forward.

The client who emailed me about being "cursed"?

This time, we're doing things differently. 

We're taking time to understand what happened twice. We're identifying the patterns she couldn't see when she was rushing to replace her income. We’re slowing down. 

She's frustrated with the pace. She wants to be working already. But she also knows that fast got her nowhere good.

Slow might actually get her somewhere better.

The job market will still be there in three months. The opportunities will still exist. But your chance to break the cycle and make an intentional choice instead of a reactionary one?

That only exists right now.

In the space between what ended and what begins next.

Talk soon,
Heather

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