Throwaway account, no names, vague time and place details, for reasons.
I loved my job, programming and developing software was what I always wanted to do, and had been very successful doing it for years. My company was shooting for new areas, with underwhelming results so far, but trying nevertheless.
Then, at one point, my personal life took a serious blow, one that relatively quickly destroyed my relationship with my spouse, but without the ability to separate or divorce. Social and family-at-large life, which had never been intense but was always satisfying, vanished. During that time, my company's situation simultaneously degraded in quality of projects, budgets and general outlook, and my job increased in scope with a lot less hands on programming, less resources, more management, more teams and more firefighting (human and technical). Like in the personal side, I was professionally stuck without the ability to make drastic changes.
After a few months of this, with increasingly frequent episodes of stress and anxiety, I ran out of steam and blew up completely. I took a leave under medical supervision, doing therapy and working on coming to terms with all the various aspects of what I was dealing with. Despite the newly available time to do whatever I wanted (within reason), I couldn't do anything at all. My mind ached to do some coding for its own sake, but it took a long time before my body could again be able to keep focus on anything for more than a few minutes.
Time has passed. Therapy helped, coming to terms has continued to advance at a very slow pace but is still very far from complete. My focus came back, and I went back to work in pretty much the same circumstances, professional and personal, that I was before the blowup. Part of the anxiety turned into desire to overcome challenges, another part remained (and still does) as energy-draining anxiety.
I wake up every day knowing that I'm not over it. I remind myself that me and everyone around me wants, and to various degrees needs, me to go on. I hope that things work out, and it is quite possible that they will, although it is impossible to predict how, when or to what extent. I have learned to allow myself some room to, in the bad days, not be the nice and strong person I want to be, and instead let weakness take over while I try to rest. One weak day something bad may happen. Many days trying to stay strong may lead me down the hole again, hard. I just try not to think of, or control, the future much anymore.
I loved my job, programming and developing software was what I always wanted to do, and had been very successful doing it for years. My company was shooting for new areas, with underwhelming results so far, but trying nevertheless.
Then, at one point, my personal life took a serious blow, one that relatively quickly destroyed my relationship with my spouse, but without the ability to separate or divorce. Social and family-at-large life, which had never been intense but was always satisfying, vanished. During that time, my company's situation simultaneously degraded in quality of projects, budgets and general outlook, and my job increased in scope with a lot less hands on programming, less resources, more management, more teams and more firefighting (human and technical). Like in the personal side, I was professionally stuck without the ability to make drastic changes.
After a few months of this, with increasingly frequent episodes of stress and anxiety, I ran out of steam and blew up completely. I took a leave under medical supervision, doing therapy and working on coming to terms with all the various aspects of what I was dealing with. Despite the newly available time to do whatever I wanted (within reason), I couldn't do anything at all. My mind ached to do some coding for its own sake, but it took a long time before my body could again be able to keep focus on anything for more than a few minutes.
Time has passed. Therapy helped, coming to terms has continued to advance at a very slow pace but is still very far from complete. My focus came back, and I went back to work in pretty much the same circumstances, professional and personal, that I was before the blowup. Part of the anxiety turned into desire to overcome challenges, another part remained (and still does) as energy-draining anxiety.
I wake up every day knowing that I'm not over it. I remind myself that me and everyone around me wants, and to various degrees needs, me to go on. I hope that things work out, and it is quite possible that they will, although it is impossible to predict how, when or to what extent. I have learned to allow myself some room to, in the bad days, not be the nice and strong person I want to be, and instead let weakness take over while I try to rest. One weak day something bad may happen. Many days trying to stay strong may lead me down the hole again, hard. I just try not to think of, or control, the future much anymore.