I know what you mean: even when you can see redundancy coming, even when it's strictly last-in-first-out (as it was for me many years ago) you still tend to think that if you had somehow shone more, they wouldn't have picked you.
My last job was a totally new kind of work for me (after (winning) horrendous dispute with previous employer) I was still training for the qualification and cramming in a few days work a week to pay the bills. They kept asking if I'd be available at the end of the second short contract; then three days before I was to start the third - sorry, no job after all. (This was a couple of weeks before the big crash, as it happened.)
I kinda crashed, myself. However much you rationalise it, there's nothing quite like being told you're surplus to requirements to put a dent in your view of yourself as a capable person. (
If I was crap at it, why did no-one bother to tell me...?) And I'd been too complacent and not got a back-up plan; in a cyclical industry (and a new one to me) I was out on my ear at precisely the wrong part of the cycle. I really lost my nerve, specially with the job market drying up - not even a bit of shelf-stacking to be had.
Months later I found out from an ex-colleague that, as well as all the temps, they'd sacked most of the permanent staff that same week. It was nothing to do with me as such. I wished to hell they'd bothered to tell me!
Of course, then I had to face the fact that really I beat myself up unnecessarily and ate away my own confidence (as well as my savings!).
Unfortunately, for me, the iron had already got cold, so to speak. Realising it was nothing really to do with me hasn't brought my nerve back. I suppose technically it's not redundancy, but it amounts to the same thing. And strange to say, redundancy doesn't get easier second or third time around.
You just gotta keep on keeping on.
