How I didn’t deal with professional heartbreak

On the last day of June 2001 I left a company that had consumed my professional life.

After over a decade of hard work, success and fun, it was all over.

Events at the company had taken an unexpected turn in the previous twelve months and the bright future I envisaged was no more.

Although I resigned, it wasn’t what I wanted.

As a senior leader, when you no longer have the confidence of the managing director, you have no future there.

My departure was unnecessarily drawn out and messy, which added to the pain I was already experiencing.

Thankfully, my fantastic team gave me an unofficial company farewell, showing their appreciation for my contribution and sadness at my departure.

I moved from Sydney to Melbourne the day immediately after my last day at work and started a new job the following month.

My former employer’s culture and financial performance ebbed away, then it was bought by a larger company that retired the brand within a few short years.

It was only this week, when reading the Harvard Business Review, that I found a full and accurate description of the emotional turmoil I experienced all those years ago.

The article by senior editor Gretchen Gavett discusses “professional heartbreak” described by author and host of The Anxious Achiever podcast Morra Aarons-Mele as, “….the loss of something work-related that feels as personally wounding as grief or heartbreak in your personal life. This can be because something happened that’s so deeply counter to your values system that you feel morally wounded. It can be the loss of something that you loved, like your business or a long tenure at a company, or a loss of a professional identity you’ve worked for many years to build. It can be a betrayal from a colleague, boss, or client you thought you knew. Regardless of the circumstances, professional heartbreak brings up all the big emotions.”

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

I felt grief.

How it happened was counter to my values system and made me feel morally wounded.

I had lost what I loved – my long-standing role in a company I was deeply committed to.

I lost my professional identity.

I felt betrayed by a person I thought I knew.

As Morra Aarons-Mele says, “….professional heartbreak often stems from a fundamental clash between your personal values and those of your employer… (and) strikes deepest when our sense of self becomes inseparable from our work.”

My sense of self was thoroughly intertwined with my work. The professional identity I had invested twelve years in building was gone (in my eyes, at least) because I refused to adjust my personal values to fit with those of my new boss.

In mid-2023, former colleagues organised a reunion. Although it required flying to Sydney, I had nothing preventing me from attending. The reunion invitation even featured a photo of the three co-founders I took at the company’s five-year anniversary party.

I didn’t go.

Maybe I was still feeling a mixture of anger, shame and embarassment for how my tenure ended (although nobody attending the reunion played a role in my departure).

The following week, I was sent the ‘remember when’ slide pack, which was shown at the reunion, and the photos taken that night.

Looking through the slide pack and photos, I immediately regretted not attending.

As I looked at all the familiar faces, from then and now, I remembered all the great people I worked for and with, and how much success and fun we had together.

I needed to get over myself.

The final piece of the emotional puzzle is finally having a label to describe my experience that I can identify with and embrace.

Nearly twenty-four years ago, I went through tremendous professional heartbreak …and I am now over it.

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