Show Notes
The case of the podcast host who got laid off and took it personally. When Yowei got laid off from NPR, she knew it was a business decision. It wasn't about her performance. She had savings, severance, and support. So why did it still feel like getting rejected by the entire life she'd built? Why does it feel so personal when it's not? Yowei goes looking for answers, talking to experts about why losing a job can feel so devastating. In this episode: the history of layoffs, the shame of unemployment, why we tie our self-worth to our jobs, and how getting laid off led to the creation of Proxy.
From the episode: — Ofer Sharone — sociologist at UMass Amherst, and author of The Stigma Trap: College-Educated, Experienced, and Long-Term Unemployed
New to Proxy? Try Bisexual Wife Guy for a classic Proxy case, or.HR by Proxy, for the first full proxy converstion we ever recorded.
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More from Proxy with Yowei Shaw
The case of the woman who's scared of a shipwreck. Georgia knows the Titanic can't hurt her. So why does just looking at a picture fill her with dread? And can she make the fear go away? We find her a proxy who has spent decades helping people overcome their most irrational fears. In this episode: how strange fears develop and what it actually takes to overcome a phobia.
The case of the tryhard who wants to care less. Yowei has a problem. She overprepares, overthinks, and worries so much about doing a good job that sometimes it makes her worse at her job. Can you care deeply about your work without being consumed by whether it succeeds? Yowei finds a proxy who manages to do serious, thoughtful work while seemingly not caring what anyone thinks. In this episode: ambition, rejection, the surprising costs and benefits of caring less, and the art of low investment.
The case of the other woman. Ellie never thought she’d be the other woman. Then she fell in love with a married man. We find Ellie a proxy: another woman who knows what it's like to fall in love with someone else's husband. In this episode: shame, responsibility, the messy morality of affairs, and what happens when you get the happy ending you weren't supposed to have.
The case of the guy who keeps falling for his female friends. Ryan Jay has a problem. He makes friends with women. They get close. Then he falls for them. It’s happened enough times that Ryan Jay is starting to question whether he actually knows how to be friends with women without wanting to date them. So we bring in a proxy to help Ryan Jay figure out why friendship keeps turning into romance for him — and whether there’s another way to do this. In this episode: the blurry line between friendship and romance, why we fall for our friends, and whether it's possible to change who we fall for.
The case of the future doctor who's scared to ask for help with her drinking. Chloe loves her life. There's just one problem: she's drinking more than she wants to, and she doesn't understand why. She's about to start medical school, but she's scared that asking for help could jeopardize her future career. So how do you deal with a drinking problem before your life falls apart? We find her a proxy who struggled with drinking at Chloe's age and went on to become an addiction psychiatrist. In this episode: the blurry line between drinking too much and having a drinking problem, why asking for help can be so scary, and what actually helps people change.