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.
Oof sorry to hear that but thank you for sharing. I kinda feel like I'm going down the same path so I'm trying to avoid it. I hope you can figure things out and pull yourself out of this. I know it's hard especially when work has been your life for so long but there is more to life, even with however bleak everything appears.
Thank you for sharing this. Your lived experience sounds an awful lot like mine, and like you I'm still trying to find a solution. Still hanging on to my current job by my fingernails. Every day is a struggle.
hey i know it's just my perspective but as someone who's been dealing with depression/burnout/adhd medication carousel for decades with no real benefit, i've finally had some positive results from transcranial magnetic stimulation. i'm on week four now, and the other day i realized i was just sitting there enjoying the sight of a tree through a window, with none of the usual heaviness or fog. idk what your situation is like, but if you could maybe check that out sometime it might help take the edge off at least.
5
u/MrXuiryus 7h ago
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.