Five months into a bad stretch and everyone in my life has handed me a bottle of something. I now own magnesium, ashwagandha, a B complex, and something with 'adrenal' on the label that I already suspect is nonsense.…
I'm signed off for four weeks and the company has been decent about it. The problem is that what broke me is a manager who reassigns my work at 6pm and a team that's been two people short since January, and neither of…
Took my entire annual leave in one block, went somewhere nice, slept a lot, and came back feeling exactly the same — flat, cynical about work I used to actually like, and dreading Monday from roughly Saturday lunchtime.…
Four months into a signed off leave from a job I was good at for nine years. I sleep, I walk, I do very little, and I still can't read a book or answer a message without a spike of dread. Everything I find online says…
Fieldwork done, data analysed, and I have written 4,000 words in five months. I open the file, read one paragraph, feel physically sick, and close it. My supervisor is kind but busy and I've been telling him it's going…
Off work, reading in short bursts, and the recommendations I keep getting are either corporate wellness books that boil down to 'do yoga at 6am' or academic ones I cannot hold in my head right now. I'd like one book,…
Diagnosed at 34, and looking back this is my fourth crash rather than my first. The usual burnout advice — take a break, do something you enjoy, see friends — makes it worse, because socialising is one of the things…