I was made redundant and I did not choose this.

The practical comes first, and that is correct

Most people go straight at the money and the applications, and that is likely the right order. Income is often the immediate problem. Nothing here suggests you should be doing something more reflective instead.

What tends to arrive later

It is usually not the first week. It is the third rejection, or the first Monday with nothing in the diary at all. Sleep tends to go before mood does. Most people have not told everyone, and describing yourself at a party becomes something you plan in advance.

What you have actually lost

It helps to be precise about this, because it is more than income.

Marie Jahoda, whose work on unemployment in the 1930s still underpins this field, identified five things a job supplies beyond the wage: a structure to the day, contact with other people, a shared purpose, a status, and a reason to be active. Losing the wage is the obvious problem. Losing the other five in the same afternoon is why this feels disproportionate to the size of the financial gap, and why someone who is financially fine can still be flattened by it.

If you have caught yourself thinking you ought to be coping better because the money is manageable, that is the reason it does not follow.

This is not a weakness, and that is a finding rather than an encouragement

Paul and Moser's meta-analysis, which pooled results across a large number of studies, found not only that unemployment is associated with worse mental health but that it may cause it. The direction runs from the job loss to the distress, not the other way round.

That is worth knowing, because the alternative explanation, that something was already wrong with you, is both more painful and less accurate.

Age, and what is actually true

People over 50 do take longer to get back into work. That is a documented pattern in UK labour market data rather than a reflection of effort, and the Office for National Statistics has examined specifically what helps and hinders people over 50 returning to the workplace.

Knowing it is a pattern is worth something, because the alternative explanation available to you at three in the morning is that it is specifically about you.

What tends to help

Something in the diary that is not an application. Jahoda's list is the practical use of all this: if a job supplied five things and you are replacing only the income, the other four need deliberate attention, and they can come from more than one place.

A description of what happened that you can say out loud without rehearsing it first.

And separating two questions that get tangled together: what will pay, and what this is going to be for. The second is not indulgent, and answering it usually makes the first easier rather than harder.

When it is more than this

Low mood that persists for weeks, disturbed sleep, or losing interest in things you used to enjoy are worth taking to your GP, or to Mind. Being made redundant is a loss, and it is too often treated as an administrative event.