I’m out of a job after issues at the schools where I worked. Is it my fault? | Family

I have been a teacher since over 20 years old and I loved it. I I had promotions every two years and I happily moved up the ladder. This year, however, I was laid off because of a restructuring and it left me feeling completely confused. I tried to find positions at the level I was working at, but was unsuccessful. He left I feel lost and unclear.

The last five years of education were difficult. I left the previous school I had worked at because I felt that the director was not able to support me following the death of my Mom. School before I left after the whistleblow on a senior leader for bullying. I’m worried repeated problems and feeling unhappy it all comes from me, and one way or another I look for conflicts or problems.

I have a a happy life with my partner and three children, as well as fantastic friends and siblings. But work is important to me and being out of he Makes me question my identity and wonder if I can cut it In school environments.

It sounds like the first 15 years of your career were pretty linear and a lot has happened in the last five years. When things happen relatively intensely, it’s easy to feel out of control. And when we feel out of control, we tend to fall back on coping mechanisms that we learned a long time ago — and one of them is often blaming ourselves, because it’s easier to blame ourselves than to get angry at the world, which seems too big to exploit. Not being supported during a bereavement and having to leave because of someone else’s bullying are examples of an environment that was unsupportive, rather than being the catalyst.

I went to see psychotherapist Mark Vahrmeyer, who told me, “That doesn’t mean you’re manufacturing conflict. Sometimes conscientious people doubt themselves in poorly run institutions and doubt their own perceptions. But if these experiences repeat themselves, we sometimes have to wonder if the workplace has become a stage on which older relational patterns are reproduced: authority figures that fail us, structures that fail to protect, loyalty that is not reciprocated, etc. You may be allowing anger to turn into self-doubt.”

We both wondered if anything had changed after losing your mother. “It may have reactivated a deeper experience of being left alone with grief,” Vahrmeyer said, “in which case the institutional failure will carry an intensity beyond the immediate facts.”

It also felt like your work and your identity were very fused, as they are for a lot of people. “Your job may have become a place where you gained value and where uncertainty was avoided,” Vahrmeyer said. So now it’s like you’ve lost a version of yourself – no wonder you feel completely confused.

Vahrmeyer also asked: “From the point of view of being fired, what hurt you more: your income or your routine? What seems more unbearable to you: being without a job, without a project or without a clear identity? And what has career development protected you from feeling?”

Your life outside of work seems rich and busy, which is great, and this aspect of your life can help you stabilize now. Maybe you’re no longer in love with teaching, which happens, but you’re so enmeshed in this world that maybe it’s hard to see what else you want to do, so you’ve reframed it as if you can’t give it up — and yet you have for the last two decades.

I’m not a career counselor, but I’m wondering if you can sit in the confusion for a bit (you didn’t mention that you were desperate to work for financial reasons, so I assume you have some breathing room) to figure out what your inner voice is telling you to do next? Does it represent a betrayal to leave teaching? As traumatic as all of this may seem, you will get through it. Times like these can often lead to enormous growth.

Each week, Annalisa Barbieri tackles a personal issue sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa, please send your problem to Ask.annalisa@theguardian.com. Annalisa regrets not being able to enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions. The latest series of Annalisa’s podcast is available here.