But nobody else will ever know that. I’m functional and back in the industry, but it’s not the sort of thing people discuss at the water cooler.
So I’d like to ask if anyone else had a secret breakdown? I’m curious if my story is an outlier, or if this is one of those things that “just happens” to some people.
And when I really try to focus I just go blank in my head. Can't explain shit.
I'm trying to slowly get back on the pony just because I'm ashamed of all the salary I've collected for what little work I've been able to do.
Haven't done therapy lately but one thing that comes to mind is how futile everything is. I know it's a cliché but I'm almost 40 so this isn't your regular teenage angst "nothing matters", I thought I was past that.
It might be rooted in the fact that I don't have kids, I haven't found purpose yet. But the thoughts that come to mind is that this could all end tomorrow and wtf are we working for when we could be living?
I got treatment for it.
It means you've had an underlying issue. It probably wasn't entirely caused by the work-related stress.
After it happens, you know somethin's up, or could be up at any unpredictable time. My goal in therapy and with medication is to manage the episodes while being as much of myself as I can without a relapse.
To your point, I think psychological disorders are common in tech fields. PTSD or BPD, for example, frequently have "control compulsion" issues. Being compelled to control works very well if you are managing a fleet of 10,000 servers. It's been difficult to explain to my old friends why I would care about things like latency and GC STW events because a normal person without control issues doesn't find it emotionally appealing. Psychotic/hallucinatory/delusional features have short-term value in certain situations, like coming up with new product ideas or rapidly "pivoting" between market fits. I won't say it's normal, but I will say it's predictable.
The second breakdown was precipitated by medication - withdrawals from Gabapentin, a medication prescribed for nerve pain. While seemingly benign, this medication causes some awful, awful withdrawals, including interdose withdrawals that are akin to benzo withdrawals. And I’m apparently hypersensitive to this stuff.
I spent two months depressed, anxious, suicidal, and feeling like I have no control over my mind.
It’s 1-1 for medication so far. One short course of SSRIs saved me. One short course of Gabapentin ruined my for months.
I had two episodes like this 40+ years ago. I sought mental health advice and have never regretted it. In my own situation CBT worked fine so I have a strong bias toward it, as does my continuing mental health professional.
Non-CBT therapy especially, but really any mental health treatment should be something you discuss with a health professional. Not that you can't discuss it otherwise, (see first paragraph) but it's important you do seek professional advice for treatment.
In the interest of openly sharing, I've had inklings of psychosis in the past while also being an absolute top performer at work. It's damaged my relationships, but never to the point of a psychotic break. A combination of getting way too focused on work for months/years, burning out, stopping exercising to try and "claw back time" for more work, way too much caffeine to push further, weed to chill and push creativity, and exploring various dosages of modafinil/adderall without a prescription. Turns out that's not something you can do to your brain for all too long, but it was also "easy" to get back to my old self once I stopped pretending I was somehow special and could cheat the system and instead focused on being as healthy of a human as I could muster. My direct boss at work and I have a very strong relationship and so he had awareness of where I was at, but nobody else.
Again, not trying to steal any limelight. Your scenario sounds more extreme and you have my deepest condolences. You're not completely alone in fighting demons.
There are things no one can do for us and we must face ourselves. Only you can take a first step to seek help, or step back onto a known healthy path. Thanks for starting this conversation.
I lost my job because the company closed, then my relationship fell apart after 10 years, I somehow managed to find another job but then this company _also_ shutdown, then immediately after COVID hit and during that extreme period of anxiety and loneliness I found out my dad is gravely ill..
I eventually manage to dig myself out but it required a lot of hard work and mental discipline.
There was a Church near my house which remained opened during COVID due to it being empty 90% of the time. One day I was driving and passed by it and for some reason decided to go in (I always considered myself a rational Atheist) and just sitting there looking at the Altar gave me peace. After a while of doing this, I noticed a shift in my mentality.
I started reading and researching things I had never interest in: religious texts, philosophy, history and art. This helped me expand my mind, I realized that instead of licking my wounds, I could focus on my neighbors and those in need and that people in history had gone though harsher times and survived for me to be here, so I owe it to them to keep going.
I finally I made a decision to start exercising, eating healthy, sleeping, setting a routine and slowly recover.
As a side note, I eventually ended up converting to Catholicism but that is unrelated to above, in fact my conversion didn't even start until a year after and it took a lot of effort and convincing.
If you are reading this and are struggling, know that you are not alone. My heart beats for you as a stranger and if anything, I need you to keep going because our survival depends on each other.
I'll say this is even more acute if you're a man. We can't _really_ complain about work. We have to suffer in silence.
Startup. I'm a technical cofounder with a non-technical cofounder (guy with money who wants to build something) and another less technical cofounder (PHD research type, not a builder). Working from home, I did everything. Built, hired, managed, designed product, assisted the ML team with their shit, managed the ever increasing grandiose scope of the business guy.
In the process, I lost my GF, it affected my health (both mental and physical), family things happened in life and I was royally burnt out. I'm back to work now (somewhere much more steady), but there was a 3 month period where things were _really_ touch and go.
It gets better. Focus on you. To hell with everything else. You can't be great (whatever that means to you), or get better, if you don't cultivate yourself first. Everyone outside of yourself with keep taking until you say no.
That said, the most brilliant people I know all have some kind of mental illness or substance abuse issue they seem to be managing. So you are not alone in that respect.
I never had a psychotic episode, but there was an 18 month period where I strongly considered suicide almost every day despite outwardly exhibiting success and normalcy. I made many elaborate plans but never quite worked up the nerve to carry them out. Nobody had any idea at the time, and if I had killed myself I am certain it would have been one of those news stories where everybody says they never saw it coming. You never know what people are going through in their minds.
These days, I don't care so much. I know I have useful if not spectacular skills, and I know if my current employer won't appreciate it or use them, then I'll find something else soon enough. Economic desperation is far enough away that it will hopefully stay far enough away, come what may. Up to a point obviously. The curveballs life can throw at you is infinite, as an old American friend said.
Long walks in the woods are still a great way to stay sane, or at least sane-ish. Don't know about imaginary fossils, but wild mushrooms of the culinary sort is great as a goal for one's wandering.
Roughly 3% of people in the U.S. are reported to experience psychosis at some point in their lives. Those are only the ones that report it.
Then thanks to a lot of luck, I was able to secure some passive income which allowed me to just sustain myself for the next 3 years through the COVID19 pandemic. It was exactly what I needed to sustain myself down to the dollar. I could probably write a book about what happened to me over the past 5 years or so but I still can't quite make sense of things...
Basically, many people from the blockchain community I was a member of turned against me for no good reason, then COVID19 happened and the government response to it fed into a sense of increasing paranoia. Once you know that a small/medium group of people are conspiring against you (e.g. actively working together to see you fail), it doesn't take much to start believing that maybe a larger group... Maybe the government is also working against you or people like you (though at least with lockdowns and vax mandates I didn't feel like a lone target).
Once you've worked in blockchain sector, all those crazy conspiracy theories about government agencies manipulating people and politicians through psyops don't seem so far fetched. I guess it makes sense. Cryptocurrencies are kind of like foreign states in a way... The sector is probably overrun with government agents.
It's good I distanced myself, it was a real brainf***.
The hardest thing was to admit I needed help (used to be a high performer: I solve my own problems!). It was very late, and by then it took a couple years, therapy and medication to recover. My doctor was very optimistic though. These sort of breakdowns happens to be very typical, and he was convinced that I would do a full recovery. I was skeptical. He was right.
The second hardest thing for me was to understand that it wasn't my fault. Athletes break their muscles often due to overwork. Brains can also break. In both cases recovery requires time, and often some treatment.
Don't be hard on yourself. I wish you the best!
Covid isolation, lack of separation between remote work and personal life and a having a 2-year at home at all times without family help led me to two consecutive visits to a mental hospital. I had never experienced any signs of mental illness other than some mild depression and anxiety. I was well into my 30s. However, with my mental break, I was fully gone for about a month and half.
It wasn't fossils for me, At various points, I believed that:
- I was dead
- Water is the only thing needed to sustain human life and we're all being poisoned
- My daughter was dead
- I was in hell
- I was abducted by aliens
- I was in a real life version of the Simpsons (where I was Bart Simpson and the other mental hospital patients were other characters)
- I had perfect pitch and could harmonize better than Brian Wilson
- I was a genius
- My mom and dad were trying to kill me
- I was the spiritual successor to Daniel Johnston
- I could travel through time
I had to go through 14+ ECT procedures to come back to reality and the transition back reality was the most difficult experience of my life as I felt broken was deeply, deeply depressed and suicidal and that I was failure to my family. It was and has been very isolating to not have an outlet to talk about this experience with anyone. This is a throwaway account, but I have an email if in my profile if you (or anyone else) wants to discuss mental health issues honestly and not feel so alone or judged.
Throughout my career I've constantly felt like I've failed upwards. I'm now 1 rung down from CTO and frankly if it wasn't for my anxiety I could probably fill that role, but lately i've found myself saying repeatedly to my wife "I just want to be a small cog again".
I left enterprise IT 5 years ago for reasons I can no longer quite remember - I think most of it was because I felt like I had nowhere to go and I couldn't engage with the work I was doing. In retrospect, maybe I didn't try hard enough to find fulfilling work within that company? I loved my colleagues and it turns out the corporate structure actually worked for me - I like the relative safety of 25 levels of beaurocracy and middle management as long as I get left to do some problem-solving.
Now I work in startups, It feels like I'm constantly about to collapse from the anxiety of the unknown. As a grown-ass adult, I've had awful experiences of people shouting in my face because some unimportant task has not been completed, which is not something I should have to tolerate.
I keep telling myself that "they need you, you don't need them" and looking for ways out, but my anxiety around stability for my family means I can't just bin it off and go for something else in this current job market.
I've done CBT but it doesn't really work for me. I need to engage direct therapy at this point I think. I also try to find hobbies that are completely detached from what I do for a day job.
PS: I am not a pdoc but experienced with psychosis myself, it sounds like you experienced a Grandeur Delusion with hallucinations get that checked out.
I did end up in the hospital once for a week. I found myself repeating the same actions over and over again because I couldn’t remember doing them, I had a hard time speaking (everything came out in slow motion and stuttering), and I think I had a bout of depersonalization. The DRs thought I was drunk or on something. I wasn’t. Never did figure out what happened.
It was probably all stress related. I had to quit my job and move closer to family. Ended up costing me $$$ due to bad timing (lost options that weren’t fully vested) I have to be very careful about work.
I tried therapy and medication. Maybe it helped. Maybe it’s just something you learn to cope with. Recognize it for what it is. You’re a person who’s somewhat fragile. You might have a breakdown. If you can recognize warning signs try to catch it early. I have a lot of respect for people who have grit and endurance - I want to be the kind of person who can do big things and work hard and accomplish the seemingly impossible - but at least in my experience, mental health doesn’t always play well with that and it takes a long time to recover.
Personally work was the “main” thing I put energy into for a long time. And it’s not anymore. And that makes me sad. But at least I’m not losing my marbles anymore (knock on wood).
The isolation from the pandemic, combined with being a recent immigrant in a country whose language I didn't speak, and seasonal depression from shorter days and colder weather than I had ever experienced before, hit me like a ton of bricks.
I was deeply depressed, it impacted my job, which sent my anxiety through the roof, making the depression worse, in a feedback cycle from hell.
I tried medication and therapy. The medication was honestly useless, and the therapy only helped in perhaps preventing things getting worse.
What really worked was changing what I could. The pandemic was getting better already, so I worked on the rest. I moved to a country where I spoke the native language, with longer days on winter, and a hybrid job, so I'd be around people at least some of the time.
I'm still sad, and lonely, and often ansious. But it's all back to a level with which I can deal, so life goes on.
I still had to dance around the last job only lasting 6 months, when I was interviewing for this one, though. Mumbling some bullshit about "things not working out" seemed to do the trick.
This I don't quite get. Why are you blaming yourself for what ex-post seems to have been a medical condition? Do you feel you somehow caused it or that it was within your powers to handle it better?
In any case its in the past. What is important is to understand causes to prevent possible recurrence, or manage it better if its unavoidable
You do not need to forgive yourself. You should be thankful that you (presumably) have a loving and caring family that helped you through it and that you were eventually able to regain a measure of mental health and sanity. I certainly am immensely grateful for those things.
It was my first burnout so it wasn't so clear back then, but in hindsight I had been working until midnight just because I was so eager. I was 18 when I got the job in 2004, dropped out of school, suddenly had access to all the bandwidth and servers I ever dreamed of.
So I thought I was staying late for me, but it was wearing on me. One day the boss and my mentor were fighting and I just ran out the door because I felt these feelings well up inside me, sat in the stairwell crying.
I have a great manager at work, but we were relatively new then: I had just transferred into the team before the virus broke loose. He was stellar and very supportive. My whole team was, so much that I shared my story as I recovered instead of hiding my diagnosis.
Nonetheless, It took me almost a year to recover from brain fog and rebuild the trust to work at my level. It was really hard to remain focused and get through working on simple things that I could have done 10y ago. It felt like quicksand for my brain. I almost left the company because of it.
Now, with all the layoffs, I wonder if I did the right thing. Am I at risk due to lower than expected performance [my performance had recovered since then, but who knows]? Is it better this way anyway, for a fatter severance package? Would the sparkle of new challenges in a new company gave me a faster personal trajectory?
TBH, I don't really care that much about career for the money. I just need the innovation of a different level of work to keep me motivated.
This coincided with a couple physical traumas I experienced during COVID. I went to an ENT doctor because I thought I had sudden hearing loss in one ear. She prescribed a high-dose steroid for a couple weeks. She then conducted a hearing exam a few days into it and said I didn’t have hearing loss and she didn’t see a need for me to continue the steroid. It didn’t sound like a big deal if I did continue, so I did but I later learned they are extremely serious after I suddenly developed tinnitus. This obviously exacerbated my frustrations and depressive feelings. Secondly, I went to a dermatologist for acne scars. He prescribed a laser that he burned my entire face with, and above everything else this is the worst experience of my life.
It’s been a bit over two years I’ve been dealing with all this. A lot of times I wish for an end. I am not a direct casualty of COVID, but I do feel like it brought about the conditions that made it clear I was never going to survive in this world without family support. It just happened to be COVID that showed this, but any other adversity that came my way would have likely done the same. I have also been delving deeper into my psyche and discovered I fit various diagnoses for things like autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, body dysmorphia, highly sensitive personality, and so on. I don’t know how much of these are nature vs nurture given my extensive trauma, but to answer your question, yes, I’ve lost my marbles and I don’t know if I’ll ever find them given the absolute clusterfuck I’m in.
Per my perception I've gone "missing in action" for some months or even a few years during my life. Did not check any inboxes or report to anyone. For me, these episodes have been valuable, but yes, I am guilty of neglecting my family and friends during these periods.
Summa summarum I think in some situations it is the only rational option.
As Bertrand Russell said in The Conquest of Happiness
"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."
That said, I'm (perhaps morbidly) curious about the experience. Were you having fun finding fossils?
I now dread taking on resposibilities or even reaching out to people I lost contact with, fearing a relapse of sorts. Therapy wasn't particularly useful, maybe because I got myself to go after I was already snapping out of it. My guess is that it sort of "just happens" to some people under the "right" circumstances.
1. If you're okay with burning bridges with your coworkers. It's fine to just ghost them for a few weeks to a month. This immediately removes you from the source of stress and can give you the time to decompress. You'll either be fired or you'll have to quit (don't give a notice) after you feel a bit better. In either case reach out to your manager on your personal email or text. Apologize and give a short message that you are dealing with personal issues.
2. It's okay to withdraw from personal responsibilities. Obviously you can't ignore your friends and family like you can your coworkers but cancelling events or withdrawing from things you used to do is a perfectly valid strategy.
3. Engaging in escapism is a perfectly valid way to handle these negative emotions. Anything is fine as long as it takes your mind of off this issue.
4. Avoid mentally strenuous activities. You want to do things that are passive and low effort. If it's easy and it can give you a self esteem boost then it's worth it.
5. Find an easy job with laid back coworkers and a good work life balance. There's nothing wrong with being a big fish in a small pond. Find fulfillment outside of work.
6. Try your best to avoid coping with drugs or alcohol but if it helps in the short term then go ahead. Indulge yourself. Just make sure that you avoid getting addicted. Set rules for yourself no matter how arbitrary and stick with them.
Obviously try asking for help, therapy, medication, medical leave, meditating, getting new hobbies and other perfectly reasonable things first. It's harder to do but it also gives the most benefits. However, if like me, you felt truly trapped. If the thought of talking to someone (therapist, manager, family, friends, acquaintances) is incredibly daunting and makes you sick to your stomach. If the thought of leaving it all behind sounds appealing, try the advice posted above. Then, once you're ready, you can take the actually good advice and build yourself up.
Summa summarum I think in some situations it is the only rational option.
Tech is full of people's bad coping mechanisms - cynicism, denial, escapism, self-medication, maladaptive humour, dissociation, procrastination, rumination, anxious avoidance, etc. I think that many people are one life event from losing their marbles, especially in ambitious and stressful roles. And many probably have stories about mental health crises they will never share.
My coworkers started talking about me behind my back. I shared a wall with my boss's office and she would just constantly talk about me and I could hear our best engineer through the vents critiquing every little commit I made. I blew up on them and was fired and became completely isolated.
Then I slowly discovered that my neighbors had started listening in to me talking to myself. They installed cameras in my house and a speaker and microphone on my dog's collar so they could talk to me while I was walking him. Every little thing I did they talked about. They started streaming me and it was like I was on a TV show and everybody thought I was in on it and having fun. But I wasn't. I started pulling out my hair to show the audience I was not happy with the situation because the audience knew how much I loved my hair. Then I started cutting and they just kept thinking it was all part of the show. I was absolutely desperate why would they not just leave me alone? I downed a bottle of benadryl and tylenol to get them to come and show themselves because I was serious.
I woke up a day later with my 70lb dog lying on top of me trying to wake me up and in a very groggy moment of clarity realized what had happened and called my mom to pick me up immediately. This was 8 years ago and I haven't had another real break.
I have to have a good attitude about what I'm doing or I'll burn out. Stop sleeping properly and just turn into a wreck. While external factors play their part I've learned a lot is my internal response to the external.
I think everyone is vulnerable to some sort of snap if they're under too much stress for too long.
I'm glad to hear things are looking better for you.
Step Two. Connect that distress to its roots in the traumatic past by fast-forwarding through your childhood history and noticing where the feelings and body sensations you notice right now best fit. [“Fast-forward” means no more than 20–30 seconds! Focusing on or thinking about the past for more than that short time risks activating the trauma responses.]
Step Three. Identify the internalized old belief that developed as a result of that experience. [Ask yourself: “What would any human being come to believe about themselves in that situation?” Or think about the negative beliefs that most trouble you day to day and identify them as related to the past, not to you personally.]
Step Four. Find a way to challenge that old belief so that you can begin to develop new beliefs that better fit your life today. [You are already challenging those beliefs the moment you label them as “old.” That is the first sub-step. The next sub-step is to create a new possible belief, such as “I had to believe this in order to survive” or “This belief helped me to survive because it made me more ________.”] It is not necessary to come up with a new positive belief or to expect yourself to believe it. It is only necessary to challenge the old beliefs.
Without repeated practice of new reactions and new beliefs, the same responses that helped you survive will continue to be triggered over and over again. It appears that the brain and body are slower to let go of responses associated with survival under threat, and the only way to combat that phenomenon is to keep practicing the new responses until they become increasingly automatic."
-- Janina Fisher: Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma
Im still not 100% recovered but 90% of the way. I just really don't like working in tech but have some how risen to a very high level and the golden handcuffs prevent me from leaving.
How did I get passed this? I don't recommend this. I was lying in bed with a migraine. I smoked a bunch of pot, told myself I was done with this nonsense and it was all in my head. Things were not that bad. Forced myself out of bed and to move around. Said no more. I have not had a migraine in over a year. I essentially patched myself in a moment of drug induced clarity.
I think the reason is I am trading hours of my life for money doing work I really don't like. It's essentially an existential crisis.
During Covid lockdowns, his business went under, and his marriage began to suffer. Pretty soon he was experiencing manic episodes brought on by the grief/stress of losing his livelhood, and he wasn't taking any treatment because it was in his manic phase that he was coming up with ideas for a new business. He'd be up all hours of the night and completely worn out and depressed during the days.
His marriage ended, he moved out into a working farm which he bought, changed his phone number, and I haven't seen or heard anything about him since.
I'm a huge believer in therapy. I don't think it's only for people with mental or emotional health issues; I think everyone should do it (like physical activity or eating salads). If you haven't already, I strongly recommend you do the work to find a therapist you trust and like and start working through your experience.
Also, though I'm not a therapist myself, I think a critical part of your recovery will be letting go of your guilt and forgiving yourself. There's no shame in what you went through: you got sick. That's the end of it.
I still wonder from time to time whether that episode was an indicator of something wrong with my brain that will only reveal itself later in life.
Thank you for sharing your story. I think stories like yours are probably much more common than any of us realize. If we allow the stigma to hold us back from talking about things like this openly, we will never make progress.
Even if the message "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" may be worth learning.
I think mental health problems are common in tech but go massively under reported. I say this because autism in engineers is higher than the general population and things like ADHD and depression commonly occur alongside it. It seems to me that some of the reasons that make people so successful in tech might also make them more vulnerable to mental health issues. Now combine that with a culture that seems to under value caring for yourself and prioritise peak performance to a fault ... and you've got a problem.
It sounds like you are aware of the impact it had on your family, I would just encourage you to very actively try to demonstrate to them that you understand it and want to make sure their life improves as yours does.
In my friend's case, I think pride has kept them from fully acknowledging just how shitty they made the lives of those around them. Everyone stuck by them because we love them. Their spouse in particular feels like they put up with hell and now that the person is healthy again they don't want to spend time making up for "the past".
It's not easy, but if you have the capacity for it, I encourage it.
Other than that, congratulations on getting through and getting back. A lot of folks come out of a break like that and do not reenter work or past hobbies in any meaningful way.
I started therapy six months after that, it has helped me a lot. I am pretty open about it with my friends, my boss at work knows about it.
Strategizing exit plans, to get on with a new life elsewhere. Maybe this is what I'm supposed to have learnt?
Sometimes I even question if I'm awake or that this is reality at all.
As for why this sort of thing happens? Not sure. Maybe because of the feeling that I should be more successful than I am at the moment, and the fear I've wasted time that could have been more productive. Or maybe the isolation from a company that doesn't offer much support and a lengthy pandemic.
Medications helped a bit, lifestyle changes helped a bit, therapy wasn't super helpful for me (but I know that it can be very helpful for some people, I don't want to discourage anyone from giving it a shot). Eventually just enough time and distance have started to allow healing. The hardest thing for me is that I have essentially lost a half decade of my life. My memory of the past several years is extremely patchy, my career progression has been zilch, I've lost track of friends and missed out on relationships. I feel like I'm still in my 20s but I am in my mid 30s now. In a lot of ways I regard who I was over those years as kind of a totally different person, like I was in and out of a coma and I've just started to wake up over the past several months. I'm grateful for whatever part of me held my life together through those years, but they're a kind of stranger to me. Whole years of my life I can maybe remember where I was for a handful of holidays, and that only because there are pictures of me and that helps track down the threads of memory that remain.
Years ago, right at the beginning of my career, I had some kind of neurotic breakdown. It was diagnosed as schizophrenia at the time (since I had delusions of reference), but I haven't relapsed or had any long-term symptoms.
I think maybe it was caused by stress. I had never lived on my own as an adult before that, and never had a real job either. It was too much change at once, and I didn't know how to push back or set boundaries.
It's not the only time I overexerted myself because my brain wasn't giving me clear "slow down" signals.
I recovered from that and only a couple of the oldest employees remember it.
I've suffered a breakdown as well, not a secret one.
Went wandering, got in some trouble, lost well job in tech, ended up in a hospital. Took me couple of years to recover from and one could say I'm still recovering.
I went and sought help right after. Found decent psychiatrist/therapist with whom I could discuss the experience.
Also my friends and my siblings came through, helped to rescue me and recover for which I"m forever grateful.
Years later, I'm in different stage of my life and every now and then I think about what my therapist told me at the time:
It was a breakthrough not a breakdown
Some years ago I found myself working at a job I felt trapped in, under an abusive boss feeling like a failure and slowly getting more and depressed. Meanwhile, my long term relationship ended. After that I was somewhat out of commission for a full year, just going with the flow.
So yeah, I don’t know if it helps but I think having some kind of break down when things go south is not at all abnormal.
Personally I make quite vivid dreams that make me contemplate how fine is the line of between mind and reality when I wake up. It seems like a subtle mental process and I can totally imagine how it could fail with fragilities and pressure.
everywhere like on walls and blankets and carpets and breakfast foods? anything with texture? makes me think of HPPD https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perc...
I think it's part of the problem than this is the case. It would probably even benefit you now, and certainly would have back then if you had talked about these things with more people.
People do recover, so I assume you have a decent amount of company.
You might have ADHD, OCD, chronic depression or other disorders as well. Worth talking to a therapist (and not some stranger on the internet).
As for myself I can work hard day-night to get the job done for 3 months only. Either it will get done by that time. Else I will get burnt and have to take a large break before returning.
Limiting you exposure to coding 4 hours might help, but I was never able to limit it like that.
Mental health is important, we all have to take care of ourselves, and nobody should ever be stigmatized for being sick.
Not only is it a good book anyway, but your story really reminded me of it.
Also back in the industry. Still feel on the edge of a break at times, but I hold on now rather than throw my hands up and quit because having SOME external constant is very useful to me.
Its the sad part of all those recent layoffs. Some of those people are gonna get fucked up and never worked again. Maybe up to 1%. Hundreds or thousands of people.
Was it your fault though? It sounds like you are blaming yourself for it on some level. It’s likely that you have a health condition that manifested itself in this particular way.
We are constantly evolving and finding ourselves. Keep your head up!
I’m still on the BP medicine because it stressed me out so much.
1. Its burnout
2. Its depression
3. Its midlife crisis
None of these are defined or have a 'cure' . So whats the point of these diagnosis.
How is your family now? Is it intact? Have they been able to forgive you?
Glad you seem to be doing better.
- Extremely depressed and anxious. (Still able to function at a pretty high level at work, but outside of work, spent all my time sleeping or crying, was very lonely, etc.) I eventually came out of this after a long series of antidepressant medications and counseling but ultimately I think a lot of the improvement came from adding traditional fats back into my diet. I had been on low-fat food for so long I think I was starving my brain of necessary fats. My mom had followed the food advice of the time which was to reduce butter, eggs, etc. I kept up with that through my twenties and it did not serve me well.
- Extremely stressed. I have worked for some very demanding bosses in startup environments. I'd wind up sleeping badly, grinding my teeth producing TMJ pain, reflux - wound up in the ER for a suspected heart attack in my early 30s (after tests it seemed like there was no actual heart problem, just very bad reflux due to stress).
- "Lost it" at a co-worker due to a COVID gaslighting/minimizing boss and co-worker. Due to a daughter who was high risk due to Down Syndrome/congenital heart disorder, I took COVID very seriously and my supervisor... did not. In fact he made a mockery of both CDC and company safety guidelines; he'd wear his mask on his chin, pull it up over his nose briefly when he rolled his chair to within 6 feet of me, then pull it down again as he rolled away; he got the whole team in a room for a Christmas party and proceeded to give a speech with his mask off. Co-worker who worked next to me was monkey see, monkey do. I was already stressed, putting in a lot of long hours, and was constantly asking him to please comply with the mask rule. One evening after a week of way too little sleep and asking him the third time that day to please keep his mask on, I lost it and really blew up at him. I was fired "for cause," the first time that ever happened to me. It meant I was not able to collect unemployment.
I regret the last one; I should have been able to walk away and take it up with HR. The thing is, by the time a work situation gets to the point where you have to involve HR, that job situation has likely gone irredeemably sour. I had no growth path in that job after almost 7 years; the software development efforts were being migrated to a new division in China run by a nepotism hire. Really, I should have left the job earlier. I have a tendency to really, really want to complete projects I have put years of work into, even when the company does not treat me properly, and I enjoyed the work I did there. It's sometimes bad to love your work, especially when combined with an excessive work ethic that was beaten into me as a child. It has taken me years to be forced into healthier a work/life balance so if I had any advice, it would be to seek that balance earlier than I did.