Or like what happened with me. You enter into a high stress work environment and thrive and succeed on the stress and anxiety because it drives you to perform well. Right up until you completely burn out and realise that forcing yourself into those situations wasn't actually good at all and you were constantly damaging yourself without knowing it.
Edit: I genuinely wasn't expecting so many people to resonate with this and respond. I appreciate you all replying and sharing your experiences with me. I responded to someone who asked how I ended up. I thought it would be beneficial to put that response here too:
I eventually had a massive anxiety attack the night before going into work. I was massively overworked and doing far more than the scope of my job. I ended up going off on the sick for quite a while. I'm in the UK so we have good laws protecting you if you are off for medical reasons.
I eventually went back to that job and left not long afterwards for a better job elsewhere. I was at this job through most of COVID but the stress of not being able to perform as well as I could in my previous job really ate me up, then after getting assigned a really bad manager/supervisor I went off on the sick again... this time for a year.
While on the sick from that job I managed to find another job elsewhere eventually thanks to some previous connections I had. I was at this new job for a couple of years but eventually the stress built up again, they kept changing my responsibilities and piling on more and more work and changing how things worked and I snapped again. I'm still currently off on sick from this job. I'm still technically employed by them but its been over a year and a half now and I don't feel any healthier than the first day I was off sick.
Now I genuinely consider myself a broken person. I can barely function with anything in life from basic household tasks to motivating myself to even play a video game. I'm basically a living zombie that spends my days rotting away on reddit, youtube and tiktok because it's the only thing that gets me through the day.
The truth is that I've always been this broken person but I've kept it hidden behind so many layers and masks that I forced myself to keep functioning over the years despite that. Breaking down so many times and working remotely allowed me to rest in myself and realise that 99% of who I was projecting was just a complete facade and I realised that I just didn't have the strength to put up my defences anymore and pretend to be that strong person again... so here I am writing about it on reddit no healthier now than I ever was in my life.
For anyone wondering what help I've sought out. I've been on pretty much anti-depressant you can imagine for the last 20+ years. None of them helped. I was on a bunch of different non-stimulant ADHD meds which didn't help and eventually got stimulant based ADHD meds which also didn't help. Eventually my medical health team discharged me and even after I tried to get them to take me back they refused. So right now I am completely 100% unmedicated and unsupported by any health foundation in the country (Scotland).
I have been "encouraged" to take some therapy by my mother which I am planning to do soon but I don't think it's going to help, talking to someone doesn't fix or change anything in me as far as I'm concerned at this point I need something that will literally alter my brain in drastic ways like electro-shock or something extreme like that. For anyone reading this I hope your journey is more positive than mine and you find help and positive change that works for you.
I think it's fine for small periods of crunch, but making it an every day thing (which I absolutely did for 3 years straight) led directly into burnout for me.
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u/MrXuiryus 9h ago edited 7h ago
Or like what happened with me. You enter into a high stress work environment and thrive and succeed on the stress and anxiety because it drives you to perform well. Right up until you completely burn out and realise that forcing yourself into those situations wasn't actually good at all and you were constantly damaging yourself without knowing it.
Edit: I genuinely wasn't expecting so many people to resonate with this and respond. I appreciate you all replying and sharing your experiences with me. I responded to someone who asked how I ended up. I thought it would be beneficial to put that response here too:
For anyone wondering what help I've sought out. I've been on pretty much anti-depressant you can imagine for the last 20+ years. None of them helped. I was on a bunch of different non-stimulant ADHD meds which didn't help and eventually got stimulant based ADHD meds which also didn't help. Eventually my medical health team discharged me and even after I tried to get them to take me back they refused. So right now I am completely 100% unmedicated and unsupported by any health foundation in the country (Scotland).
I have been "encouraged" to take some therapy by my mother which I am planning to do soon but I don't think it's going to help, talking to someone doesn't fix or change anything in me as far as I'm concerned at this point I need something that will literally alter my brain in drastic ways like electro-shock or something extreme like that. For anyone reading this I hope your journey is more positive than mine and you find help and positive change that works for you.