Not long ago, I was at lunch with my friend Abby. She was telling me about all the drama at the company she had left three months earlier. Abby was animated, certain, righteous. And every third sentence started with “we.” We hired this person to solve that problem. I don’t know what they’re doing. We’re losing money.
Abby was long gone from both the company and the corporate world, but she sure wasn’t talking that way.
When someone leaves a job but they can’t shake the “we” pronoun, part of their identity is still at their desk. Even though they exited the building, they haven’t psychologically handed in their badge.
If this is happening to you, take it as a sign that your job was giving you something that you just haven’t replaced yet. Let’s figure out what that is.
Information is Currency
Abby was still connected to people who work at her old company. She talked to them all the time, so she had a steady feed of gossip. Who got hired, what departments are imploding, which VP is making awful decisions.
And because she was on the inside for so long, she had all the context she needed to participate in these conversations. She couldn’t get enough of them. In fact, it felt kind of like self-medication.
The drama kept her connected to something that still feels like hers. The anger kept her emotionally engaged. Maintaining that bitterness is like maintaining a relationship; it requires attention and investment. In a weird way, the company still had her on the payroll — just in emotional currency.
Abby is involved in several new activities: volunteering and a side project, while she figures out what’s next. But they haven’t completely grabbed her yet, so the old company wins by default. It’s familiar and loaded with meaning.
What Work Was Actually Doing
There are a few things we all need to flourish in the world, and you get some of those things from your job. The people closest to you at work don’t just help the day go by faster, they are relationships that might vanish once you leave.
The kudos you get from colleagues and managers help you feel a sense of accomplishment, which we all need.
Abby experienced all of this and more at her job. And even though she was beyond ready to leave, her job also gave her a sense of meaning, a purpose. Her work mattered, even if it only mattered to her company and its customers. Weirdly, meaning operates independently of enjoyment. So even if you didn’t like the job but it gave you a sense of meaning, losing it will still create feelings of grief.
Besides, the job was absorbing and complex. Abby was confident in the job she knew so well; she understood how to win there.
It can be hard to remember all of this when your friends look at you and say, “but you hated that job.” Maybe so, but if it was providing many of the things you need to feel human, losing it can be devastating.
So Abby isn’t out here looking for corporate drama. She doesn’t want to go back to the job and she doesn’t actually miss any of the stuff that frustrated her. But it was familiar, and a piece of her heart is still back there. It’s like she keeps driving back to the old house on autopilot, months after moving out.
The Equivalent Replacement Problem
People do new things after leaving. They volunteer, they take classes, they start something. And they assume that activity will replace everything they got at the job.
And it will, but it will take a lot longer than you think.
Showing up to a volunteer shift once a week doesn’t replace the daily immersion in a world where you had relationships, status, complexity, and stakes. You need an equivalent replacement; not just something to do, but something that delivers the same psychological portfolio.
This doesn’t happen instantly, of course. You can’t just swap decade-long colleagues for people you just met at your volunteer shift. New relationships lack history, shared language, and accumulated context. They are still getting to know you, which takes time.
A steady stream of newness can be exhausting. So while you learn the ropes and meet new people, you can reconnect with friends who already know you. Giving yourself some time in familiar environments, with familiar people, can help you navigate the grief of losing everything your job provided.
Until that’s in place, the old company is going to keep winning the competition for emotional attention, because it’s the only thing that’s fully stocked.
The Shift From “We” to “They”
Moving from “we” to “they” is the result when emotionally attractive activities are in place.
It isn’t as simple as deciding to catch yourself every time you refer to the company with “we.” Because when you try to white-knuckle your way to detachment, you just deaden yourself inside. It happens only once something else has enough of your investment — your relationships, your stakes, your sense of mattering — that the old company starts to feel like someone else’s problem.
They hired that person. They know the system is failing. They’ll figure it out, or they won’t.
That shift happens naturally when you’ve built something that actually has you in it.
Care Differently
In the last couple of months, Abby dove deep into a theater project. When we get together now, she talks excitedly about choreography, blocking, and which actors still haven’t learned their lines. She’s considering applying for a job at her volunteer gig because she likes it there so much.
As she stays engaged with projects that feature regular contact with the same people, the “we” of the last company is starting to fade. My guess is that pretty soon, gossip sessions with old colleagues will start to lose their appeal.
Losing a job is way more than losing a paycheck. It makes sense that you’d keep aligning with something familiar after you leave.
You’ll figure out how to find purpose, people, and reward yourself for your accomplishments (feel free to borrow my strategy: whenever I complete literally anything, I say aloud to no one, “good job, Shelley!”).
When you notice that you’re slipping into “we” language when you talk about your old company, take it as a sign that something is still unbuilt.
Burn the map. Build what fits.
