This is something Malcat said to me when I wondered why I was feeling more depressed and anxious after my family situation started to improve. When you mentioned leaving your job because of burnout I had to find this quote. I don't know if it will help with the situation but it might feel better to know that someone else is going through something similar.
Also, it's not unusual for mental health to suffer when things are less objectively intense, because when things are really bad, you dissociate to a certain degree and can't feel the damage that's happening. That's why so many people think they can handle so much, but they can't, they're just deferring the processing.
That's really insightful; thanks for finding that quote (and thanks Malcat for sharing your wisdom; I always appreciate your posts :) ).
I have definitely experienced this delayed reaction at various times of my life but haven't quite thought about it in this way, especially not when it comes to work stresses...those are socially constructed as things we are expected to just handle, right? To compartmentalize, to close the door on when we go home after work, to not allow to have an effect on our real inner lives. I feel that even when we are spending most of our waking hours at work, the challenges we face there are somehow not supposed to have a real effect on us that causes actual damage that we then need actual time and effort to recover from. We are supposed to be strong and simply not let this happen. And even if you're having crying jags after work, well, that's not
long-term damage that you'll have to process later, right? Simply remove the cause, and that'll flip the switch right back to the way you were before. Yeah.
Probably this all intersects with the traditional refusal to recognize that mental health needs are real + the associated stigmatization of them. It's wonderful to see how much attitudes around that are changing, but obviously there's a lot of lingering...stuff.
On a more personal note, I have been feeling pretty validated in my burned-out-ness by watching my replacement take on (a scaled down version of) my responsibilities; we've had a few conversations that boil down to wondering how to possibly stay in shouting distance of being on top of everything. Me: "You can't. Accept that now." Replacement: "...I don't know how you did this* for five years..." Me: Hahahahaha. (=shell-shocked laughter sprinkled with a weird combo of excitement at leaving + flashbacks to, ahem,
particularly challenging moments of a couple of years ago when I was on the brink of quitting multiple times)
*Honestly, I don't either. It's
much better at work now than it was two years ago, but as Malcat described...I dissociated and deferred the processing for a bunch of what happened then. I felt I had to; people were depending on me to keep functioning at a high level, and so I did, come hell or high water. I don't regret that, but I'm so glad I decided to go ahead and pull the plug now and lay all of this down. Three more weeks until my last day...and I'm resolved to have very gentle expectations of myself and really prioritize my mental and physical health for at least the next several months.