By Just Ask Maxx

Everyone talks about the people who got laid off. Almost nobody talks about the people who were left.

You still have your badge. Your login still works. And you feel awful. You’re doing three people’s work, you jump every time your manager schedules a “quick chat,” and you feel guilty for being relieved.

That’s layoff survivor syndrome. With so many companies cutting jobs this year and pointing to AI as the reason, a lot of offices are full of it right now.

What layoff survivor guilt looks like

• Guilt: “Why me and not her? She has kids.”
• Fear: “Am I next? Should I be updating my résumé tonight?”
• Anger: at leadership, at the company, sometimes at the people who left.
• Exhaustion: the work didn’t leave with your coworkers. It landed on you.
• Detachment: you stop caring, because caring feels dangerous.

You’re not alone in it. Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2026 report found that the share of employees who say they’re thriving has dropped sharply since 2024, from 66% to 44%. Nearly every executive in that survey expects AI to cut at least some jobs in the next two years. People can feel that.

What I tell clients who stayed

A client of mine, I’ll call her Lauren, survived two rounds of cuts at her company. She came to me saying she felt like she was “working on a sinking ship and pretending to like the view.” She wasn’t sleeping. She’d stopped speaking up in meetings because she didn’t want to stand out.

We started with one question: What can you actually control here? Not the budget. Not the next round. But her hours, her boundaries, her skills, and her backup plan. Within a month she’d stopped answering email after 8 p.m., signed up for a training her company was paying for anyway, and had coffee with two people outside the company. Just knowing she had options let her breathe.

If you’re the one who stayed

1. Name it. Relief and guilt can live in the same body. Feeling both doesn’t make you a bad person.
2. Reach out to the people who left. A message, a reference, an introduction. It helps them, and it helps you.
3. Get honest about the workload. Ask your manager directly what’s being dropped, not just added.
4. Build your bridge quietly. Update your résumé. Learn the tools everyone’s afraid of. Keep your network warm. Being prepared isn’t disloyal.
5. Protect your evenings. Fear will tell you to prove your worth with your weekends. Don’t let it.

If you lead a team after layoffs

Your people don’t need a pep talk. They need the truth, as much as you can give. Say what you know and what you don’t. Take work off their plates instead of just reshuffling it. Check in one-on-one. A leader who’s honest in a scary season earns more loyalty than one who pretends everything’s fine.

Keeping your job isn’t the end of the story. How you take care of yourself after is.

Want support through a career transition? Life Coaching Today has career and executive coaches available. Find your coach or book a free 15-minute discovery call with Just Ask Maxx.

Read the book: Red Flags: A Woman’s Survival Guide to Dating in the Manosphere by Kiddada Asmara Grey and Georgia Ann Hunter Jones. Get your copy on Amazon.

Just Ask Maxx is the founder of Life Coaching Today, a Master Relationship Coach, Master Hypnotherapist, Certified NLP Practitioner and Certified Divorce Mediator. She writes the weekly Just Ask Maxx column and co-hosts He Said, She Said.