extreme anxiety and depression following job loss - when will it end?

OP, kindly it sounds like you are at crisis point with your mental health. I felt similar recently after struggling hugely with anxiety starting a new job. Felt like the end of the world and I was having multiple panic attacks daily. I know you’ve said you have started medication and are awaiting therapy. If you’ve only just started medication (I went onto an SSRI to help control the anxiety) it can take a while to kick in and almost make you feel worse in the short term. I’d encourage you to go back to the GP and get further support to get your mental health under control. As a previous poster mentioned there are options to calm you right now. You will feel better and get out of this crisis, but you need to give it time and be kind to yourself. I’m out the other side and can see how I felt trapped in a deep black hole and in a mental health spiral but once you get the meds right it will help massively. I’m off them now and doing so much better. Please speak to your GP.

Stop going over old ground. Start building a new you. You CANNOT go back. Given you cannot go back, what do you want to do now? The earthquake came, your house was destroyed: now what? You CHOOSE to live. You CHOOSE to create a COMPLETELY NEW life. Difficult? Yes. But going over the old stuff is not going to serve you well here. You need to build something new. And that does not have to be related to job or income (and it sounds like you are trying to get a new job, which is great -- but build in something else). As good as what you had before? Almost certainly not to begin with. But do it.

OP, I’ve read your posts and here are my thoughts. I mean them extremely gently but it’s really clear from how you express yourself that you need to change something moving forward.

I can see that you frame things in an incredibly black-and-white, all-or-nothing way. You would absolutely benefit from some Dialectical Behaviour Therapy to pull your thinking away from absolutes/devastation and towards a more nuanced view of your situation. You will continue to make knee jerk decisions in future without help to address your rigid/inflexible framing of the past. If you need medication etc. to help you in the meantime, this is worth investigating.

I wish you loads of luck in the future.

A place to start might be to think about what a happy life means for you? It might be financial success, feeling fulfilled, being of use to others, being more creative, having time for things that fill your cup - it can literally mean anything. But if you don’t know what happy means for you, you won’t find it.

It’s human to mourn what we’ve lost, while also redirecting ourselves to look at the future so take time to do both. Try to avoid what ifs, they keep us stuck. Instead think what now…

You have to live in the present, with plans for the future. You can't change the past. Is there a minimum wage you need to be earning?

You may well have made a catastrophic mistake, most people have a decision they can point to that changed the course of their life - for better or worse. Is beating yourself up about it serving you well?

You can’t change it now but you can change what comes next. Think about your skills and experience, how can you use them to your benefit? You may not reach the salary you had previously but that doesn’t mean all is lost. You’ve had success before, that can happen again but it won’t if you’re sat on the sofa in your dressing gown berating yourself.

To get some perspective on things, I find it helpful when I get stuck in cycles of negative self-talk to imagine it's another person saying these things to me about themselves.

So if someone you loved was telling you that they had lost their job, wrecked their life, knew that this job loss would be the "defining point of their life forever", what would YOU think?

Would you think - "yeah, you're right, you're a complete loser, your job was the totality of your worth and now it's gone, you are completely worthless"? Is that what you think about anyone else? If not, why should you hold yourself to such impossibly high standards?

I suspect you'd probably be horrified if someone you cared about was expressing these views about themselves.

So look at this way: you are in a hormone storm. Your body is inundating you with stress hormones, and the base of your brain thinks you are in an extreme survival situation (a lion is looking at you). Physiologically your body is sending distress signals to your brain, and they are being sent back again. Try to take a moment to step out of the noise and panic in your head, and try to regulate yourself physically. Get outside for a walk. You absolutely can do it. Then eat a healthy, hot meal. Tell your brain to shut up for half an hour. You will pay attention to the crisis later. (Really, imagine it is a dragon living in your head and you have to tell it to shut up you will deal with it later.) If you can regulate a bit, then maybe tomorrow open the box to look at the dragon again to see if you can do anything, take any action, reframe how you look at it. Right now, though, you are in a cortisol storm and you just can't. Good luck OP.

Go back to whoever prescribed the medication, it’s not working. Be honest about the state you are in. You need extra help. I’m sorry.

@strugglingseptember2025 do you want to talk to us about why you left the unicorn role? What appeared better about the new role? What happened there for you to leave?

I ask because I think you’re using a lot of defeatist language (I understand why!) and you’re losing perspective. @Butchyrestingface is right; unless you were sacked for something massive, this is not the end of the road.

Start small. Go for a walk. But with music or a pod cast to distract. Our brains are like algorithms in some ways - the more we think about something eg negative thoughts the more we are likely to think it again and again. Research shows this.
When on your walk listen to music and podcasts and gently turn your thoughts to something else when you notice the obsessional thoughts
You are more than your job - you are a mother, daughter etc etc. Focus on that right now. These are the things we will be remembered for. Not our jobs.
I hope you have a good psychologist or psychiatrist? Who is not just a counselor? Who uses researched back therapy combined with medication?
Practise being kind to yourself. I cannot imagine you would be talking to your children the way you are talking about yourself.

I feel for you, I have two friends in the same situation where they cannot even get interviews for jobs we all know they can do with their hands behind their back - because for 20 years, they have been very successful in those careers. And they’re in two different sectors, which shows how tough it is out there.

They are feeling the same loss of identity, loss of purpose, loss of ‘usefulness’, loss of control, loss of confidence. I see how much it affects them as we join together in utter disbelief that they’re still out of work.

So I really feel for you. I wonder if some career coaching would be helpful as I know some good ones who help unpack experiences around toxic jobs, crises of confidence after redundancy etc. something that would help you move on from ‘why it happened’ and stop beating yourself up over it.

Because you can’t change it. You need to find a way to stop going over it and move forward.

I don’t know why you lost the job (and I’m not asking you to say). But whatever the reason - redundancy, they let you go before probation, they deemed you not to be performing, it just wasn’t the right fit - this is a blip. You have many more years of success behind you than this one-off blip.

I trust you are registered with relevant recruiters for your sector who can promote you to would-be employers. I hope you are using your LinkedIn network and asking people to share roles with you when they see them. I see you’ve tried for other roles at your old place but have you reached out individually to the hiring manager? The recruitment algorithms are horrendous and might filter you out as ‘too senior’ before anyone actually puts eyes on your application.

Good luck. Keep going.

Were you sacked for criminal incompetence, dishonesty or something that is likely to damage your chances of gaining other employment?

Because if not, it sounds like you are being INCREDIBLY, irrationally hard on yourself. Lots of people lose jobs, even high earners, and can struggle to replicate that level of lifestyle or achievement again. It doesn't mean they are worth less or their lives are not worth living. You still have a child and a family who love you. Surely that is worth much more than job?

I felt this way when my husband left me with a baby and a toddler. I was given lorazepam from the GP which helped but making sure I ate properly also made a huge difference as I wasn’t eating and it made me feel far worse. Please stop beating yourself up we all make mistakes and somethings are out of our control. Things do get better in time and you will eventually see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Kindly, you'll feel even worse if you're not eating or exercising.
Go and put a potato in the oven. Anything, just basic food. Whilst its cooking have a big glass of water and stand in the garden. All you have to focus on is doing that for now, and once you've nourished your body a bit your mind will feel much more able to make plans for next steps.