Every company-wide email could be the one. Every calendar invite from a manager you don't usually meet with sends your heart racing. Layoff anxiety is living under a threat you can't predict, can't control, and can't stop thinking about. The waiting is often worse than the thing itself.
Waiting for the Bad News
The weight of not knowing takes a specific toll. These might sound familiar.
A manager's tone in a meeting. A hiring freeze announced casually. A colleague's empty desk. You scan for signals constantly, piecing together evidence for a conclusion you're terrified to reach. Every detail becomes a clue in a story you can't stop writing.
You leave work but the anxiety doesn't. Evenings are spent refreshing email, checking news about the company, running financial scenarios. Weekends don't feel like weekends when the threat is always humming in the background.
If you just work hard enough, they won't pick you. So you push longer hours, say yes to everything, make yourself indispensable. But layoffs often aren't about performance — and the overwork just adds exhaustion to the anxiety.
Others got cut and you're still here. Relief mixes with guilt. And the relief doesn't last — because you know another round could come. Being the one who stayed doesn't feel like winning. It feels like waiting.
If that constant scanning is draining you, it might help to just get the fear out of your head so you can see it more clearly.
Why Layoff Anxiety Builds
Layoff anxiety isn't irrational — it's a response to real stakes and real uncertainty.
When job anxiety connects to deeper money worries, the stress can compound fast — especially when financial stress is already present.
When Financial Stress CompoundsThe hardest part is telling the difference between productive preparation and anxious spiraling. It can help to separate what's actionable from what's just worry.
Living With Job Uncertainty
Job insecurity can't be eliminated — but it can be channeled.
Prepare What You Can
Resume, network, savings. Action reduces helplessness.
Limit Signal-Checking
Constant scanning changes nothing except your anxiety.
Live in Today
You have a job today. Can you work without borrowing tomorrow's worry?
Talk to Others
The isolation makes it worse. Others carry this too.
If the anxiety is spreading into everything — not just work but sleep, relationships, weekends — it might be part of a broader pattern of feeling on edge at work.
Feeling on Edge at WorkGround Yourself Today
If the fear of being let go is running loud today, ground yourself with these.
Quick steps help in the moment — but career uncertainty that lingers for months needs more than a checklist. thisOne is a thinking partner that helps you process the uncertainty over time. Not just "what should I do" but "what am I actually feeling and what do I need." A place to think through the uncertainty.
What This Really Means
The fear of being let go is rational fear about real stakes. You're not overreacting — you're responding to genuine uncertainty. The goal isn't to feel nothing. It's to prepare what you can, accept what you can't, and stop letting the waiting steal the life you have right now.