It will not leave a nasty mark on your resume. That's your anxiety telling you that. Nobody cares unless there are other red flags to pair with it (e.g. lots of short tenure jobs, etc).

I took 6 months off last time I did a job switch. I had 10+ offers from top companies and not a single one of them asked me about the break or cared.

Exactly this. And a potential employer has an issue with the "gap" in the resume - RUN FOR THE HILLS (or if you need job immediately take it and continue interviewing and leave as soon as another opportunity present itself).

About a year ago we had an open position and hired SPECIFICALLY a person who took some time off after COVID. She was like "it was insanely stressful time and I need some time to regroup" and everyone who interviewed her was like "perfect, just perfect"!

Gaps should not be an issue. But it’s still good to have a ready talking point around a gap if asked about it in an interview. If you are perceived as being evasive about an employment gap, it’s not unreasonable for an interviewer to draw a negative inference about that. At that point it’s not your potential employer with the problem regarding the gap…it’s you.

Just about anything can be spun to a positive or at least neutral light.

I can vouch for this advice. I had an encounter with a bad employer and a 6 month period without a job. I ended up taking a position somewhere that treated me like a freak for it and tried to use it to weaken negotiation. Additionally, they took issue to me not having many multi-year roles. Normally, I'd not tolerate that, but sometimes you just need health insurance (thanks, USA).

That place ended up being a terrible place to work for a number of reasons. I eventually found a much better team who didn't question any of that. It was an entirely freeing experience. It truthfully would have been a liability to stay there any longer as the leadership and technical skills were not there. I left alongside many other people and haven't looked back.

Depends. If you were let go from a well known and perceived successful organization that didn’t have a public mass layoff in the press, I am damn sure going to red flag that if you are interviewing with me.

You know that you don't have to show employment dates on your resume, right? If you feel like it, you can just show the number of months/years you worked at each position. No one is really going to bother to add them all up to see if they match the calendar years.

We're usually too focused on finding the few people that meet our requirements and don't have the time to waste looking for red flags.

I have two, one year long+ gaps on my resume at almost 40. Only a single employer has even asked about it. Though my situation is perhaps a bit different I suppose in that when I was was asked, I had about as "good" of a reason as you can possibly have, and they proceeded to make an offer.

All in all though, it's not impacted my ability to re-enter the job market, though I must admit I did assume prior that it would.

This will obviously vary by job market, country and your own capability to sell yourself I imagine.