This story has a happy ending but is a journey and in progress. My burnout would end up requiring a new identity to heal, building back up the pieces of who I am and what I value. Freeing myself from my guarded and frightened nature has been the benefit of “forced growth,” otherwise known as rock bottom or a mid-life crisis. Where what I had been doing just no longer works any longer and changes are required to stop feeling like roadkill.

When I was in the middle of the rock bottom, from the outside, I seemed to keep going and only a few knew how bad I was feeling. I did not quit my job although I was being abused, I did not leave my family although I neglected them working too much, I did not hurt myself, I did not move away (although I was days away from it and had a plan). I did stuff my feelings, not stand up for myself, drank, ate too little, slept too little. I neglected my family, friends and self-care. I listened too much to the bullies and narcissists at work and the negative voices in my head from the past.

I was running and scared and kept overworking (70-100 hours a week while traveling during the pandemic) and using addictive poor coping methods to drown out the anger, self-contempt, criticism, and rejection. I had been running my entire life, running away from my childhood abuse, and work was the refuge, the only place I found my worth and my validation. I had a boss that manipulated and used this against me for his benefit with his narcissistic gaslighting. This abuse was too close to what I had endured at home growing up, so it was very confusing – was it love or hate? Well, both, it was a trauma bond I would learn after I was free from its gravity, by that time, crumpled, crying on the floor a shell of myself and drowning in resentment. The discard phase being as bad as everyone describes it to be – hoovering followed by abuse, then wanting me to stay when it became apparent that the narcissist’s career would be affected.

At the point I was crying every day, I wanted something different for my life, but I was completely broken. I started CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) therapy, which helped me not just leave my role, but also confirmed that I was being manipulated. I also had a new acronym for what I had been feeling for years – PTSD or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. With this new diagnosis, I researched other methods of treatment and found EMDR or Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. I was strictly against using medication, due to my childhood abuse, so these newer therapy methods of helping me address the hypervigilance, flashbacks, insomnia, anger, fear and other symptoms were definitely welcomed.

I continued with two different therapists and therapies as I was finally bought into the process as I neared my forties. I was fortunate to be able to afford this level of outside help and I recognize not all are so lucky. There were times when digging up the past was so painful and I had avoided feeling the pain for so long, I was telling my therapist that I hated therapy and was miserable. One target (which ironically was about forced therapy as a child) took months to work through. At some point, the EMDR was performed standing up and bracing myself on the therapist to show that I could now stand-up to my abusers when my boundaries being violated, which I recognize is not normal protocol. But every week the PTSD and depression fog started to lift a little each time. I forgave myself for crying randomly as it was part of feeling the anger and sadness that I had kept bottled up for decades. Suddenly, a feeling or memory wasn’t as scary as before and a mid-life crisis did not seem so bad.