For more than 17 years, Yvonne Nance knew just who she was -- the helpful voice at the other end of the line when people called AT&T for directory assistance.
That ended in December, when AT&T Inc. informed the 47-year-old mother of four that she was among 12,000 workers being cut from the telecom giant's payroll.
Two months later, Nance is confused.
"I'm going to my 30th class reunion in July," the Los Angeles resident said. "What do I put on my bio? Unemployed? Homemaker? That I used to work at AT&T for 17 1/2 years?"
She paused to get her feelings under control.
"Right now, I don't feel so good about myself," Nance said. "I've always had a job. I've never been laid off from a job. Some days, I don't even want to get out of bed."
The statistics are alarming: Nearly 2 million people have lost their jobs in the last three months, almost 600,000 in January alone. The national unemployment rate has reached 7.6%. In California it's 9.3%.
But the numbers are only half the story.
The other half is what happens to people and families when a job disappears. The psychological and emotional toll can be devastating.
"Our culture is based on what people do and how much they make," said Sharon Tucker, an L.A. psychologist who says an increasing number of her clients are dealing with layoff-related issues. "For a lot of people, being laid off means your identity has been taken away."
Dorothea Braginsky, a psychology professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut who has spent decades studying how layoffs affect people, said the link between people's jobs and their sense of self-worth is established at an early age -- and reinforced throughout our lives.
"One of the first things we ask little children is what they want to be when they grow up," she said. "When we meet people at a party, one of the first things we ask is what they do. It really becomes an essential part of self-definition."
Beginning in the 1970s, Braginsky started following a group of 50 men who'd lost their jobs.
She found that the trauma of the experience could be long-lasting, for both the men and their loved ones.
"The men who found new jobs eventually recovered their self-esteem, but it never got back to the point of men who had not lost their jobs," Braginsky said.
At the same time, she saw cynicism and distrust rise among those who'd been laid off. These feelings affected relationships with spouses and were passed on to children.
