I’m in the exact position as the OP. In fact this feels like a description of myself. I could barely achieve the simplest of tasks, so I quit my job. I just did nothing at home for a bit, now I’m backpacking. It’s been 2 months and so far my mental health hasn’t improved one bit. I still feel like my brain is trapped in mud; anything that requires minimum mental effort takes an insurmountable amount of energy. I’m not any happier. I might even be less happy. The only good thing is that I’m no longer letting people down. I’m not convinced I’ll feel any better in a year.
If today you only had 20% to give, and you gave it.
You gave 100%.
If today all you could do was: Brush your teeth then go back to bed. You've accomplished.
We are not PRODUCTIVITY MACHINES.
We are humans, just like birds are birding, squirrels are squirreling, bees are beeing?
I'm not saying to stay complacent, but we humans in this current society have set ourselves for failures.
OMG! I'm not making 250k a year, i'm a failure, I don't have a TRILLION dollar startup, I'm a failure (not saying you feel this way) but you get my point.
> If today you only had 20% to give, and you gave it. You gave 100%.
> If today all you could do was: Brush your teeth then go back to bed. You've accomplished.
I think this is especially important to remember during the negative self-talk cycles. For awhile I would try and push through telling myself things are in the past, I have moved on and it's time to look forward etc and would fail miserably. Then would hate on myself for failing my expectations on top of losing my ability to connect thoughts like I use too, or even come up with new ideas or see how systems worked anymore. So I started traveling regularly, 8-10 intl trips a year (with a few domestic) and while there were flashes of brilliance, mostly it was as dull and numb as everything else, and only slightly helped with life satisfaction, but not so much for the cognitive issues.
After a few years the slivers of color started coming back into my world, then covid hit. Right around the start I came down with long covid for about 12-18/mo (I assume, my mental processing felt like it no longer existed/got even worse than before and that it would never come back this time).
The negative self-talk cycle started back with a vengeance. At one point I started having panic attacks which I never had before, and at the time, didn't know what was happening. It forced me to accept the small steps forward. Where, if today I can take a shower, put on clean clothes and go to the grocery store and systematically go through the isles picking up each item without getting annoyed by other people "in my way/front of what I need", it was a successful day. With bonus points if I acknowledged other peoples existence or engaged in pleasantries with someone (most likely the cashier). These kinds of actions/goals were not the types of things I ever thought would make me feel like I had a successful day. Learning to see success in way that success was measured by what I could do - really changed things for me.
> OMG! I'm not making 250k a year, i'm a failure, I don't have a TRILLION dollar startup, I'm a failure (not saying you feel this way) but you get my point.
I struggle with this thinking. My job is nothing glorious -- boring, plain SWE state government work. I feel unvalued and unchallenged, but I also do not feel confident enough in my abilities to make any meaningful changes. What if I leave and/or and can't find anything? What if I find something and cannot perform well enough to keep it?
I feel like I am not "ready" to leave because I need to gain more valuable skills and knowledge, and I won't get it at my current position (Gov isn't really known for being up to date or using highly valuable tech stacks). I know I could probably accomplish more if I buckled down and put in the work, but I just don't have the mental energy or drive to do so for some reason.
But what if I do land some killer gig? Will I finally be happy? Probably not, and I never want work to be my entire life -- just a means to fund other areas of my life. So, I often flip-flop on if this whole "career game" is even worth playing. . .
I was in a similar position to you a couple of years ago. Burned out and quit my job, burned through my savings instead. After two months I felt no improvement and was beating myself up for being a failure, but after ten months I felt oddly re-energised, and ready to resume working.
I don't know what changed, I think it was just time taken to recover my mind. I wish you the best, it's a difficult state of mind to be in.
Same here. I started feeling much better only after 9-10 months off work (stay at home parent). Then returned to the same grind and one year later quit with a plan for a longer break. But after 7 months found a great matching job for me and wanted to go to work again.
After years of burnout and depression, I've just finished 6 months sabbatical and in retrospect, I think mental improvement started at ~4 months in. After 6 months I felt like I went back 5 years.
Imo, that's perfectly normal and to be expected. If you're part of a bad system, leaving that system will often be worse at first, but hopefully better in the long run.
