HEALING THE IDENTITY FRACTURE: Managing Strategic Exits and Career Reinvention

Careers rarely collapse all at once. They erode quietly-through shrinking leverage, stalled growth, and roles that look stable long after they've stopped compounding value.Healing the Identity Fracture examines what happens when professional identity becomes anchored to work the market no longer rewards. Rather than offering reinvention slogans or motivational advice, S. Yale Stern provides a clear framework for understanding career decay, the panic it triggers, and the predictable mistakes professionals make when they sense the ground shifting beneath them.Drawing on psychology, behavioral economics, and organizational analysis, the book explains why many pivots fail despite good intentions and how experienced professionals can rebuild leverage deliberately-without burning income, credibility, or trust.This is a strategic guide for readers who no longer believe in the linear career, but still want agency, dignity, and control over what comes next.