Maybe OP is just having the reasonable response to corporate work and the rest of us are deluded.
But yeah, talking to therapists is like a cheat code OP. You'll feel better. But you might just be having a totally rational experience.
Edit: since this seems to be the wrong place to have this conversation (my mistake), I'd like to emphasize that my point is that you should seek therapy as it was suggested OP, but also to commiserate that offices are often horrible experiences.
Not all therapists are good. If you try somebody and don't connect or trust them, try to find somebody else. Internalizing stress really destroys the body, and it's important to find somebody you trust to help process it.
I would like to emphasize that I agree with you (and my original comment): Therapy is a cheat code! It will make your life immeasurably better. Everyone should do it!
Lots of bad things exist, being able to function in the face of Bad Things does not require you to deny or ignore that reality.
Poisonous spiders exist, but overcoming arachnophobia (an unusually debilitating reaction to encountering spiders) isn’t a “delusion that spiders are safe”, and won’t make you try to kiss a Black Widow.
Most therapists I've had recently have said something along the lines of "therapy should be temporary for most people, if you're a few months in and not seeing measurable progress then you might need another therapist." This is in keeping with my experience, which is that you make progress on whatever issue brought you to therapy, the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and it's no longer worth the time and expense.
Of course some people have more serious conditions and do need to be in therapy constantly, but that isn't the norm for most who experience mental health problems.
Also - never needed therapy? Ever? For anything? Not even a little bit? Sounds like some self examination might be in order.
No, I've never needed therapy. I self examine on a regular basis. I have generally followed a stoic philosophy of life, which means regularly working on my physical and mental wellness. I've steered clear of unhealthy addictions and other problem generators. Therapy is just one tool in a large toolbox of mental health.
What do you do if part of your condition is that it is really hard for you to connect with and trust people?
Trust is also a push-pull thing in the first place, so going in with an honest attempt can help you gauge your reaction before learn who to trust.
I struggle to believe that's actually what they said. That sounds more like your interpretation of what they said, and in particular, a funhouse mirror description of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
I've literally just been through this, and I can 100% say it actually helped. I'm still on the drugs but I've got just enough tools to create just enough minor delusions to ride out the current funk and get to a better place where I can come off the drugs. I'm pretty glad I caught it in time as I can totally see what that level of stress/anxiety/depression does to people and I'm particularly vulnerable to it.
Dan Lyons wrote the fake Steve Jobs blog, Disrupted, and was one of the writers on Silicon Valley.
What do you mean by that? A delusion is often a symptom of a mental health issue, something doctors treat to get rid of, so I don't understand it's use in this context.
Take care.
[0] I had a string of bad luck regarding jobs, and I hated the whole work concept, but I got lucky and found a new place which is peaceful and interesting enough. Maybe you can find something like that.
Work is for earning slavery units to live life. Everything outside of work is your actual life. Create hard edged barriers between work and not work. Develop and foster deep hobbies you enjoy. This takes effort. I would suggest they not be computer based hobbies.
Even the author of this article fell into that trap IMO. Of course the whole article was about them recognizing it. They felt their work was super important and let it slowly eat their life. You get so invested in promotions and grinding things out, making projects look good for promotions. It is all toxic as heck. Like, when you see that happening just, stop. Who knows what will happen, but at least you won’t lose yourself. You may not get promoted as fast, but on a difficult project being eaten by politics that is likely anyway, our own heroics can’t overcome inertia like that.
Work isn’t worth it. Do right by the project, but just stop caring about it so much. Sorry, older tech survivor rant over. But, yeah, take care of yourselves, the golden FAANG chains aren’t worth your health :)
Cleaning up my eating habits and consuming probiotics seems to have helped a lot. I can eat limited amounts of gluten now without my back hurting, or my stomach complaining about it. I still struggle with cravings of sugar and cream at times, especially when I'm fighting depressive events. Eating things the body craves is an easy out. It's limiting those actions with mind, when it is not so healthy, that challenge many of us.
https://extension.umn.edu/small-grains-harvest-and-storage/m...
What didn't work for me is buying a fancy car, expensive shoes, semi-luxury remodels of my home, etc. -- those were just net negatives like a drug that keeps life bearable just a little longer. Frankly I suspect _needing_ those things are often a symptom of not being content with your life.
It's been said "a why to live can bear almost any how". The problem in your case is that the stress can make your precarious health situation worse. But maybe the why > how mitigates stress ? It did in my case. Sorry and thanks for sharing. Anyone of us can go from good to poor health so it is worth contemplating your situation.
1. Truly take the time to realize that your life is valuable and worth prioritizing. Somehow my only identity morphed into filling the 'superman' roll at work and successful executive at home. If I hadn't saved the company from X or performed some herculean feat I had no worth at work. If I didn't get the next promotion I had no worth at home. But guess what? I had huge worth as a husband and especially as a father, and I sacrificed that because I couldn't see it. You are valuable. You have worth. You are worthy of love. And hopefully, if you are in the right place, you are loved. Being superman/the wonder kid at work/the executive big dog so your wife can show off to the Joneses does not define you. And eventually you age out of the wonder kid role or just actually break in the superman role because, sorry, none of us are superman. And all that fancy stuff? In 10 years its all outdated and you either need to throw it away and replace it or you are too uncool to be one of the cool kids.
2. Find a mentor. Someone who has been through it, who knows what's BS and what isn't, and can help you with what's important. My healthiest work environments were when I had a mentor. One of the most valuable things a mentor always reminded me of when I was deep into an 80 hour week fighting fires. No one is going to die because of this, and no one is going to remember it in 5 years. That and a manager's job is to provide his team the tools they need to do their job, not make his employees tools to do his.
3. Find a community. Relating back to step one, it helps us to value ourselves when we see others valuing us. If you can't find any other, go to an addiction group. You are an addict, maybe in search of an addiction at this point because your character is still holding out, but if you continue this path and haven't already you WILL find your addiction sooner or later.
4. Do not let others tear you down. I had a horrible relationship with my ex-wife. Instead of working to fix it I put tons of energy into going to court in my head why I was right, she was wrong and horrible. Tons of energy into why she was right to think I was a total piece of shit and falsely think I was not worthy of love (see 1 above). Tons of energy into why I deserved a treat/reward for all the hard work I did that no one properly gave me recognition for and deserved, and secretly rewarding myself in the most destructive of ways. At the time I hated my wife. I'm not sure it could be fixed looking back, but I would give anything to go back and put the energy into that relationship that I put into stupid work projects and addiction. Instead the mother of my children, the woman who picked me forever, my best friend from high school on, with whom I shared every major life event, will never talk to me again. A lifetime of memories I don't get to share with her. Family vacation memories. The first time we ordered lemon light at Takara's and remember how good it used to be. Never again a 'dad will you make your amazing ribs this weekend?'.
5. If you have a family, make sure to have a worry tree in your front yard. After a crap work day, after a 1.5 hour commute (I'm oldschool from when people still went to work in the office, you spoiled kids these days!), before going into the house, I paused and left my worries at the worry tree to be picked up in the morning, and went into the house leaving work behind and myself ready to be present for my kids when I opened that door and they ran up screaming excitedly 'daddy's home' :'( When we moved I didn't setup a new worry tree routine and I that is one of my biggest regrets. So many lost evenings because I came home in a shit attitude.
6. Don't white knuckle through life. Ask for help. Ask for help at work. Ask for help at home. Ask for help from a mentor. Ask for help from friends. Definitely don't keep track of all the times you didn't get help/what you wanted in your head. If you didn't ask for it, it's on you. If you keep track of it in your head, you are just wasting energy/brain power. You can't judge people on not helping/appreciating you if you don't show them what you need. No one is going to fix this for you. No one is going to say 'wow, Bob's really deserves a break/help/affection' unless you are lucky enough to have amazing people around you. Ask for a break. Ask for help. Ask for affection. Find enough self worth somehow to know you are worthy of all of those things! If work doesn't respect that, leave. They are a zombie company and will suck you dry. I gave 15 years to a company in a field that I felt made a difference. Made them millions. Signed over patents. Impacted hundreds of thousand of people lives in a positive way. In the end I was worth 2 weeks notice. And nothing I ever did mattered when I was left so broken I utterly and completely failed my children and wife.
Sorry for my rant. I have a mens 'stop being a shitty person' group tonight where it is my night to talk about my story, so I have been thinking about this stuff today and just kind of threw up all over this reply. I apologize for the word vomit.
I had a coworker who developed shingles as we were nearing the deadline on a project that had all sorts of problems in layers of the stack we didn't control, and my sister developed shingles after being laid off. The first thing I associate with that disease is stress.
I'm pointing this out in case you're endlessly ruminating on what is wrong with you, why can't you just buckle down and deal, whatever, and you're coming home to an empty apartment and Netflix year after year. That's missing the big picture. I'm not saying you should start a family if you don't have one. Maybe you can't or won't, in which case, be gentle with yourself and make sure that you are taking the whole picture into account when you compare yourself with others.
For me there were some really obvious signs early in my career that I didn't recognize until much later when they led to diagnosis (and mostly successful treatment) of chronic illness - it's easy to assume that things in your workplace are bad because they have to be.
Bringing the stress home is definitely a tough thing. I don't have any answers for you on that. It might help to try and find work you're good at but don't care about, oddly enough, but that poses its own challenges.
> How do I avoid becoming mentally trapped in the workplace mindset?
Think about starting your own business, or at least find a job where you have a greater degree of freedom, or perhaps where you feel you have more of an impact.
it can have the opposite effect on the down times. no one is looking after you to make sure to make rent, and alot of engineers don't have the kind of training or personality that lends to cold calling. at least I don't...I can't even imagine what that would look like for systems programmers - "oh hi, I'm just calling to see if you need any device drivers written". ".......uh..."
Be careful with things you think are safe. Tortilla chips can have too much cross contamination so experiment when it's safe to 'get the sickness' and find what works for you. When my daughter and I were first diagnosed we couldn't drink coke because the carmel color supposedly had gluten. Some craft rootbeers/dark sodas still have the 'bad' natural color not the 'good' artificial one. Another tricky one that got me a lot until I figured it out, red wine can use a wheat paste to seal the barrels. So cheap steel aged reds only. Red wine is the only thing that gets cheaper when you go gluten free :)
Also I hope you like Mexican food corn tortillas and chips are a life saver.
If those problems are important, is there a way to work on them for pay? Like through a nonprofit, for example?
My life (eg. family) is already destroyed because of environment. Stress adds up to the damage.
Do not rule out: lyme and other diseases - it is hard to detect those and try bandaid treatments for symptoms. Mold issues in the home/work/car - again this is sickening.
When you have a weak immune systems, you get affected with some of the daemonic disease, and then EMF, stress etc. wreaks havoc on your body.
Yes, you can CONTROL stress and EMF exposures - and reduce the impact on your body.
/s
I'm always amazed at the change in perspective after being in a job for a while. While unemployed, I feel competent, I make progress on hard problems nobody else in the world is working on, and I feel good. While employed, stupid crap stresses me constantly, I can't leave the stress at work, I bring it home, I obsess about social hierarchies that can vanish in an instant. Everytime I've left a job I'm amazed that after just a couple days I can barely remember what I was working on before and what stressed me, like my brain knows all of that no longer matters and let's it go in an instant.
How can I keep a healthy outside perspective while remaining employed? How do I avoid becoming mentally trapped in the workplace mindset? I've been giving this a lot of thought, but no answers so far.