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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.
edited
THIS.
Getting diagnosed and treated cost me my job.
Now that I analyze it, especially after reading this comment which filled in a few missing pieces, it wasn’t just the burnout or the challenges of unmasking.
I lost my edge. I did my best work when I was in a state of high anxiety, and when I lost that I stopped doing my best work, and I just did reasonably acceptable normal levels of work until the burnout got so bad that I could barely function even at normal levels.
Gosh, it’s sad to realize that the thing that gave me the star power was also the thing that was killing me and it’s sad to realize that I’m never gonna be like that again. I thought I was a Type A personality, a go-getter. Turns out, I was just an unmedicated, highly anxious panicking person high on adrenaline with ADHD, and all my productivity came from that.
The unfortunate thing is that there aren’t a lot of employment contracts that actually work for those of us with this presentation.
We absolutely outperform most normies in times of crisis, but holding us in low expectations status until the shit hits the fan is beyond all but the most enlightened organizational structures.
This is kinda sad realisation to be fair, since I feel like I thrive the most at my work when we are under a lot of pressure and understaffed and need to essentially do 4 different jobs at the same time (like right now with people sick). Not having any time to let my mind wander is perfect, I'm so incredibly productive and sharp and have everything under control and the moment the situation gets back to normal I also return to my base level blobbing around and procrastinating. It's so frustrating since to the coworkers whose slack I'm picking up when they are sick/on holiday/whatever mostly only get to experience my low productivity work effort and therefore I get accused of being lazy and wasting time. And my boss' opinion of it all is "well it seems like we are overstaffed since stuff gets done equally well or even better when less people are there".
Exactly. And they can’t understand why I was doing so well when everything was going wrong, or why I can’t catch that lightning in a bottle and whip it out to get routine, skull crushingly boring work done.
Well, Rhonda, if you lifted a car to save your kid, why can’t you deadlift 300lbs on demand when your kid isn’t getting crushed by the barbell? If you ran so fast when a bear was chasing you, why can’t you do it now when there isn’t a bear? /s
I see myself in this comment and I don't like it. Burnout is something I wouldn't wish on anyone. Corporate life chewed me up and spit me out. 😭
It took ages for me to heal, reframe and regulate myself again, even for animal volunteering, which is one of my forever loves on this earth.
So focus on my passions and regulations it is 😭😭😭
"this must be how everyone feels right?"
Thank God for therapy. 6 years in.
Literally, therapy has partially saved my life trajectory.
Ive recently got severely burned out at university because after years of relying purely on exam stress to motivate myself to study during my bachelors, I’ve suddenly realised that now in my masters I’ve sort of habituated to the academic stress and now don’t really feel that anxious about exams anymore nor do I worry that much about the grades. Expect that even though it might sound positive, it also meant that now that I had an exam I just couldn’t motivate myself to study period, which then lead to me failing the course with the lowest grade I’ve ever gotten in my life. But hey at least I was not anxious during the exam season
Had this happen in my first year of college. Couldnt get a proper panic response from deadlines or exams anymore and so I just couldn’t do anything. Ended up essentially flunking out. Now I’m just stuck in limbo, trying desperately to find medication that works, trying to figure out what to do with myself. No luck so far, but here’s to hoping?
Last fall I went to the doc for a sinus headache. Turns out 260/160 blood pressure is really fucking bad. 4 redbulls a day without food will fucking kill you apparently lol. I’ve got it mostly under control, but I go back to the stressful toxic hell hole job. I’ve realized that I will hold onto anger like heroine. So now if somebody pisses me off I let them know right away. No more holding onto shit. I’m gona throw it all back at the end of the day
That's why I'm working the 211 crisis line. Each call gives me just enough anxiety to lock in but they usually don't take that long and I get breaks in between so it balances out pretty nicely
How did that end up for you?
I'm at that burn out stage now.
This happened to me, I went down on work hours and got into therapy and medicated and now I feel like I miss the stress induced anxiety cuz it actually got me to do things but now I just feel so relaxed and blasé about everything and now I don’t feel anxious enough
This is the one!
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.
This sub heals a little piece of me daily, tbh. I had 0 idea some of the stuff I’ve been hardest on myself for 39 years, other people are just rawdogging as well.
Rawdogging my shitty brain for 51 years 🥂✨️
Glad I can start my journey 😭😭
Same over here -
Honestly the one thing that helped me the most was just the realization/diagnoses of ADHD. I've been rawdogging it my whole life and never knew.
Hey! Some of us have shame and anger as a backup to the anxiety.
That worked for me right up until it didn’t. Now I’m just ashamed and burnt out.
Worked great for a few years until I got burnt out and everything fell apart and now everyone’s concerned on how i’ve been behaving emotionally lately
yeah I also get by on the guilt and anger when im uneducated which is a lot lately bc of the multi year long Adderall shortage
I don’t miss the anxiety but damn I do miss the productivity
For me the productivity, unmedicated, is sporadic. Even in a stressful environment, once the novelty goes I lose my momentum
Going from frantic panic-fueled sprints to just peacefully watching a deadline sail right past you is such a bizarre feeling.
Uh-oh. Because I rely on the anxiety and the idea that I might disappoint my wife if I don't do the thing and even then I fail to do the thing a solid 30-40% of the time. When medicated how tf am I going to do the thing ?
Well… If you get on the right meds that help manage the executive dysfunction and task paralysis part of ADHD, you’ll be able to function closer to what a normal non-ADHD person does.
It took a good year for me to find one that works for me. And it’s not perfect because I still have to, I don’t know how to put it, but it helps keep me unstuck. I still have to talk myself into doing the thing, but it’s a lot easier when there’s some motivation ready to do it, if that makes sense. But I get it, I do also rely on panic and threats as motivation, which I’m working through.
I once explained to my friend (who is incredibly empathetic) what I thought was a normal solution to needing to get tasks done - fear that I will disappoint my wife if I don't- and the friend was like 🥺 "that must be so incredibly stressful living all the time like you're going let people down" and I was like "but... that's normal, right? Like I've lived my whole life being told people important to me are disappointed"
It was sobering to discover that's not normal
There's a lot of strategies and scaffolding that you can use. But it's trial and error to figure out what works for you. Right now, body doubling, keeping things in line of sight, having a giant calendar and checklist in the kitchen (where I see it), and habit stacking have been relatively helpful. Still dealing with figuring out the fatigue, high blood pressure, gut issues, and weakened immune system due to being stuck in fight or flight too long tho.
Yup. Have been rebuilding my entire self since burnout, diagnosis, and giving up my high stress career and quieting the urge to stress myself out to be productive. Imposter syndrome, negative self talk, catastrophising... all learnt behaviours to keep levels of stress high to be productive. But your body can only take it so far.
I once had a doctor say "I only ever see these signs of stress in really high-stress jobs... you work in design yeah?" Like... "You should not be this stressed!"
This half my problem now. Anxiety is gone, brain chaos gone, constantly planing 10000000 conversations that never happen, the double think on messages... too.. none of that.. except now I have 0 initiation or drive to start anything. Go to gym? Nope. Do laundry? Nope. Do dishes? Nope. Work? Possibly. Etc. Infuriating as ao many people dont understand that i WANT to do these things but getting from thinking to actually doing it, its like there just isnt a connection so my body doesn't know how to start even if ive done jt a million times. Fuckin weird.
Why is doing shit so difficult?!!
Because our brains were structured differently, and they don’t function the way that a neurotypical person’s brain does.
Once I hit forty this stopped working anyways. Yall have been warned.
Ugh, same. It's becoming increasingly clear to me just how much I used to rely on panic adrenaline to get things done. Now I'm trialing a new process of relying on medication and unfiltered autism.
!gif
Is... is there a known solution to this? Because this is my issue.
Last-minute work get's done with crazy precision for me. Either last-minute work or when my tray is piled high with assignments, and the stress from having to get them all done gets them all done.
I'm sure this is terrible for my nervous system but it's what works 🫠
Oh. OH. This is eye-opening.
Genuine plea for advice on how to work through this? I've been really struggling to get anything done now that my life situation has calmed and I'm no longer stressed.
Ah... that explains a lot
Crazy thing: I’ve healed (at least in part), worked hard on doing things way way way in advance cause I knew doing things late would lead to me not submitting anything (went back to uni at 28). after fixing the anxiety, I’m actually feeling myself going back to doing things last minute: just not too too much. Maybe the main thing is that perfectionism finally lifted: my new motto is, whatever, just do it, even if it’s not good. I do get the last minute adrenaline, but it’s now Back to what it felt like when I was a child: postponing, but not to the point of freaking out about it. The whole story is much more complicated than this of course, but I hope the gist of it is clear
I kind of burned out a long time ago. That last minute adrenaline has gotten less and less effective over the years. When I was still in school, I went from doing assignments the night before they’re due to doing them right before the unit ends right before the quarter ends to doing that but with the semester or with the year. It became almost like a drug that you gain tolerance for over time.
"But if I stop terrorising and punishing myself... how will I ever get anything done?"
My problem was that I'd spent 40 years constantly being told that I need to be trying harder. At everything. All of the time. But I had a threshold of effort that I just couldn't push past. I could operate at 70% with 95% effort without totally exhausting myself.
Then I got medicated. But I did not know any other way of working. So suddenly I'm just fucking thrashing my way through work. I'm so productive. That 95% effort is finally producing 95% productivity! Not being able to stop for lunch or ever take a break is finally paying off! Amazing!
Only... that set the expectations. And it only took about 4 months (and a lot of other people leaving) for me to be trying to do 2.5 people's work to an excellent standard. Even working an extra 8 hours on top of my 5 day week wasn't enough to keep it all rolling. The crashout was brutal.
I kept forgetting to take my supposedly, highly addictive, Adderall. And then, when I set an alarm to remind me, and took them regularly. My body just got use to it and they no longer did anything... 🥲
Learning this the hard way this year as I started medication again since I was in my teens 30 years ago. So hard to get anything done.
I think this is sort of what happened when I tried Bupropion.
Before, I'd have major anxiety about how much stuff I was procrastinating. That anxiety built up until it boiled over and I would go on like 72-hour binges of some form of productivity. With some luck, that binge would sweep over work I needed to catch up on, or chores I was putting off, and I could scrape by.
After, I no longer had anxiety about how much stuff I was procrastinating...
... so I just kept procrastinating.
Forever.
Until I realized like 4 months had gone by and I couldn't think of a single productive thing that I'd done.
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