We mentally beat ourselves down by listening to those constantly recycling tapes. Our spirits sink, our energy evaporates, and our self-esteem plummets. This negativity, and its destructive effect on our psyche, can be contained by three techniques:

1. Awareness of what our mind is doing and consciously interrupting its tirade.

2. A refocus of our mental attention to prior successes and accomplishments, no matter how small, to counter idea that we are lifelong screw-ups.

3. Reframing our value as a person from specific employee/worker role into total personality that we are: in our intimate and social relationships, in our family, in our community.

Applying for work sets us up to judged but we need to remind ourselves that only a small discrete portion of who we are is being examined. As a whole person, we are far more than a worker and no employer can judge us on our totality.

The displaced worker is confronted with choice of working at a level far below his/her skills, education, and abilities warrant, or staying unemployed. When government reports that in near future "Every one who wants a job will get one," connotation of unemployment is that jobless workers do not WANT to work. This political myth leads to increased depression, diminished self-esteem, and final conclusion by legions of unemployed that their personal fears turned out to be true: they are worthless, unwanted, redundant. The universal anxiety about not being quite good enough, not measuring up, not able to run with big dogs has been validated and mental health of unemployed deteriorates further.