Stop asking people ‘what do you do?’

For people who have taken career breaks, four little words—“What do you do?”—can provoke dread. It seems to conceal a bundle of judgments: What’s your social status? What’s your income? What’s your education? Are you worth my time to talk to?

This has long been an issue for professional women who leave the workforce to raise kids. They describe feeling invisible and being ignored by people they meet. But the dreaded question is now affecting a wider swath of people: stay-at-home fathers, career-changing young people, gig workers, baby boomers forced into retirement and laid-off workers.

“It is truly the absolute worst question you can get when you’re out of work. Society wants to put you in an easy-to-digest box,” says Orlando-based Jen Kling, 40, a consumer brand marketer who has been laid off three times and is now an independent consultant.

It’s also a head-scratcher when trying to frame an answer. When New York entrepreneur James Reichert, 62, moved to Canada temporarily for his then-wife’s job, he printed up business cards that read “Trophy Husband.” When Ashley Scott, 35, a Philadelphia corporate sustainability manager, was laid off from a previous job, she took to telling people she was in grad school. She found that when she said “I’m looking for a job, or I just got laid off… People would look at you like you’re a loser.”

For many of us, work isn’t just a way to pay for our lives; it’s how we define ourselves—and others. We are what we do. Psychologists have a term for this: “enmeshment.” The concept was first coined to describe an unhealthy blurring of boundaries in personal relationships. But it applies with almost absurd accuracy to our relationship with work, when we are so closely linked to our careers that we have no idea who we are without them.

Career experts encourage staying in the game by freelancing, consulting or starting a new business. But once you’ve had an impressive title, saying you’re “self-employed” can feel ego-crushing. When Kelly McMenamin, 50, worked as a financial analyst, she recalls, “I would walk around Manhattan dressed for interviewing CEOs.” After she left that prestigious job and began a home-organizing business with her sister, everything changed: “The first day you’re a small-business owner and nobody calls you back, you go from being ‘somebody’ to you’re nobody,” she says. She is now a nonprofit executive.

Many people hold tight to their former work identity. But “former’ seems so sad,” says Rachel Fortenberry-Deutschel, 59, who until recently was a top automotive parts executive in Detroit: “I’m not ready to face the reality of ‘former.’” Nor is she ready to embrace “retired,” as her grown children have urged her to do. “My identity was too much connected” to the job, she says . “I value myself too much for what I can do at work.”

Job titles can be especially important for people who belong to traditionally marginalized groups. Fortenberry-Deutschel, who was born in Brazil, says that having the title of global vice president gave her instant credibility with people she met. It was a crucial part of her own identity as well, “knowing I was able to be successful despite being an immigrant, despite being a female in the [male-dominated] automotive industry, despite being divorced. I like that validation that work gave to me.”

In some ways, our obsession with career as a proxy for identity is a uniquely American affliction, dating from the stern demands of the Protestant work ethic. Today that singular focus has metastasized into an unhealthy obsession that the writer Derek Thompson has dubbed “workism,” in which career replaces other kinds of community, including religion.

“Perception is everything, and the way you’re sometimes perceived when you’ve been laid off is mind boggling,” says Scott, the corporate sustainability manager. Growing up in a blue-collar family of military veterans, she learned to “keep your head down, work hard, and your loyalty will be rewarded.” So when she was laid off for the first time in 2019, it “felt like I was being punched in the gut…I didn’t know who I was without my job title.” When Scott was laid off a second time, in 2023, “I was still recovering emotionally from the first one. It made me feel awful about myself.”

Janna Koretz, a Boston-based psychologist whose practice focuses on people in high-stress jobs, says that response is common. “Part of the reason why it feels personal is that fear of not having an identity,” she says. When people lose their jobs, “they feel incredibly lost. It puts people into an existential situation.”

Retirees know the feeling. This year marks “peak 65,” when more than 4 million Americans will reach the traditional retirement age—the highest number in history. This is a cohort that very often doesn’t want to quit, even if it can afford to do so. Researchers have found that baby boomers are more tied to their careers, and more loyal to their companies, than younger generations. Their lives tend to be “work-centric,” according to a 2022 Johns Hopkins University report.

America’s culture of work may be changing, if slowly. During the pandemic, millions of people reprioritized their lives. “There is more openness in younger generations as to not necessarily always having the exact journey as someone else,” says Liz Weaver, 39, of Bethesda, Md. She left her corporate communications job earlier this year and has pivoted into career coaching. Jobs aren’t a topic of conversation in her circle, she says: “I feel really strongly I don’t judge people, and the people I hang out with don’t judge me.”

For those suffering from career “enmeshment,” experts offer some suggestions on how to separate yourself from your job—and how to stop judging others.

Assess your values. What gives your life meaning? At Harvard Business School’s “Life After CEO” workshop, Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic, urges retiring executives to take six months or a year to reflect on what is important to them. This allows them to discover new kinds of meaning and relevance, such as volunteering, sitting on boards or, like one of the workshop’s participants, returning to his college music major and becoming a singer/songwriter.

Reframe your skills. Whatever your expertise or passion, it can be redirected. When Angela Calman, 52, of Portsmouth, R.I., was diagnosed with a rare illness, she had to quit the career she loved as a high-powered communications executive and endure a year of punishing chemotherapy.

“This was a huge identity crisis for me. So much of who I am is wrapped up in what I do and loving my career,” she says. But as she builds back her strength, she is refocusing her skills by creating a nonprofit, the Amyloid Action Network, to direct research into her disease and related conditions. “I’d been very good at writing other people’s narratives my whole life,” she says. “I now needed to write my own.”

Get some perspective. For Teri Wadsworth, 45, of Evanston, Ill., losing her job was a wake-up call. A decade ago, when the innovation consulting firm she runs with her husband was going through a slow stretch, they had to lay off their staff and their children’s nanny. “I didn’t really know who I was right then,” she says. But the experience of full-time parenting changed her perspective. “Being home in some ways was just glorious. The first day I went to pick up my little girl she came running across the playground and gave me a huge hug. There were a lot of moments like that,” Wadsworth remembers. When the business recovered, she and her husband reorganized their schedules so that they wouldn’t need a nanny: It “helped me realize you can reprioritize.”

Make tiny changes. Koretz, the Boston-based psychologist who has written about career enmeshment, urges clients to ease into new activities, to “build the other parts of themselves and figure out what they can do with their time and with their life to help them be fulfilled.” The key, she says, is to take small steps, rather than jumping in all at once: “Our clients, when they are told to exercise more, they sign up for a marathon. That’s not a sustainable life choice.”

Change your intro. Find new ways to introduce yourself and greet new acquaintances that don’t rely on work. Even a generic question like “What are you up to?” or “How are you doing?” can elicit a more meaningful response than “What do you do?” Fortenberry-Deutschel says she is at a loss when people ask what she does, now that she doesn’t have a job. But she loves the question “What do you like doing?” because it allows her to talk about her passion for running. “It transitions immediately to the positive,” she says.

David Johnson, 53, a Washington, D.C.-based marketing and strategy consultant who has taken multiple career breaks, now leans into his identity, detours and all: “When people ask me what I do, I answer simply, ‘I rock.’”

Joanne Lipman is the former chief content officer of Gannett and editor in chief of USA Today. She is the author of “Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work.”