Work and burnout

[Laaaayla]

I need some advice.

I’m a solicitor. I work 4 days per week. My job is intense and full on. It has slowly taken over my whole life and I cannot breathe.

I am eating, sleeping and breathing it. I have no great love for it. It’s just so intense that I think I’ve become a bit obsessed with always staying ahead of the game and keeping my head above the water. I work every night until bedtime. I am completely and utterly burned out.

I have two small children (school and nursery) and I love them to the ends of the earth but I feel like I have nothing left to give them just now. I feel like I barely spend any time with them and now the 7 year old has started moaning about my work. I feel terrible.

But when I’m not working I am thinking about work. Worrying about how much I have to do. I feel like the anxiety doesn’t stop until I can switch on my laptop.

I can’t do this any more. I’m desperately looking for a way out but I can’t find any jobs that won’t involve a huge paycut. We can’t take a huge paycut. I think about suicide sometimes because I can’t do it any more and I feel so utterly.l trapped but I wouldn’t ever do that to my girls and my husband.

Thing is that my husband thinks it’s just me - he said it doesn’t matter if I find a new job, my mindset is such that I will work myself into the ground anyway.

I’m so lost.

I didn't want to read and run. It sounds like you are at the end of your tether which isn't a nice place to be. You need some urgent time away from work to rest a little and take stock of things to work out what you can change to make it better and more manageable. This might be things you can change with external circumstances or things you can change with how you handle things internally. You won't know until you are removed from the situation and get space to reflect.

What is clear from your post is that you can't go on as you. You are running on empty and without giving yourself a break now you could end up in a far worse situation soon.

I'm sorry your husband isn't sympathetic. You do need to open up to someone in real life (friend or Doctor?) today because when you have thoughts of harm it's a warning bell that things are really bad. You need some time, TLC and help to get you out of this trapped place you find yourself in.

It is possible but you won't get there on our own and/or without changing something in your situation. If it helps you feel better, you are not alone us women often give too much to the detriment of ourselves. Reaching out here is a good first step. Good luck - it will and can get better if you take some more steps now.

Thank you. He’s not not sympathetic. He’s just at a bit of a loss as to how to help I think.

I think about suicide sometimes because I can’t do it any more and I feel so utterly.l trapped but I wouldn’t ever do that to my girls and my husband.

This rings huge alarm bells. Can you visit your GP and ask to be signed off with stress for a few weeks? You sound incredibly burnt out and it’s clear that you can’t go on like this.

I’m not a solicitor so I can only imagine the stress you’re under, and I can’t even begin to give you advice about how to deal with the workload.

Are you expected to be available 24/7? Is there any way you can speak to your manager/another colleague and set some clear boundaries e.g. I will not be available after 6.30pm in the evenings.

I really feel for you, OP. I was on the brink of burnout 2 years ago. The only thing that helped me was stepping back.
YOU are your own most important asset, even if it doesn't feel that way now. You have to stop working so much as it's making you ill, and start looking after yourself.

Can you take any leave- just to spend on you?
Can you limit working hours?
Can you arrange private counselling, just for you, to talk things through with someone neutral and share your thoughts about suicide?

Lots of OP!

My husband wants me to get signed off (he doesn’t know about the suicide stuff) but I feel like the anxiety of being away from it would be even worse. I need to leave. And I will leave as soon as I can.

It’s not so much that they expect me to be 24/7 but the levels of work are such that it’s hard not to be. And yeah I’m probably a bit obsessive about it too. I catastrophise a lot.

@Laaaayla as a solicitor and having worked in previous partner positions I completely sympathise. Have you looked at In house work? The pressures are different and the pay is usually roughly the same and the benefits are better. I'd look at taking some time off write a pros and cons of your current role and see what you can transfer over skill wise. Fellow ex colleagues of mine have also gone into lecturing which they enjoy its lower paid but much less stress. I mention the pay a lot due to you saying you can't take a huge cut. IME moving firms doesn't always help as they are largely the same. Look at moving out of private practice if you can.

You really need to take some time off. I would recommend that you speak to your GP about how you feel and get signed off with stress. It is only by stepping away that you will realise that the world won’t fall apart if you don’t do something immediately.
You think you can’t stop but you honestly honestly can. Look after yourself.

I would get signed off so that you can work out where to move on to and hopefully give you some breathing space. I’m a social worker and I experienced burn out a couple of years ago; I was so anxious all the time and I was losing weight because my stomach was churning all the time with anxiety that I couldn’t eat, I found it hard to sleep and it was all I thought about. I ended up changing jobs to a less stressful area of social work and it was like being able to breathe again. If I hadn’t of changed jobs when I did then I’d have had to take time off as I was not in a good place mentally. I retrospect I can see that it wasn’t me but the workload I had was completely unmanageable and the pressures I was put under were impossible.
Earlier in in my career I also had some cbt which was really helpful in developing coping mechanisms around working in a pressurised job which is definitely recommend

I am desperately trying to go in house. My husband works in house as a solicitor and has half the stress I do. He’s also really good at compartmentalising.

I came here from your other post.

You are too important to burn out. Your children are too important to lose their mother.

Get signed off. Take some time out.

Look for another role while you are signed off.

It isn't normal to feel like this. Your employer shouldn't be working you like this.

Believe me when I say the anxiety will lift once you get used to the idea of being off for a while.

I'm not talking about being signed off for 2 weeks.

At this stage of stress and burnout you need much more than that. I've been where you are now.

Do you have private health insurance via work?

I had a month off and went back, thought I was staying, but had an epiphany that I just wasn't happy, so found something else.

Agree you need to get signed off.

Have you always been like this? What do you think will happen if you take your foot off the pedal? You need to look at why you work so hard.

DH is a workaholic and it's so sad to see him missing all these chances to live his life in order to please management who shaft him all the time anyway.

Laaaayla I am a solicitor too and my job can be full on and intense, almost overwhelming sometimes.

What sort of law do you do?

I used to work for a corporate law firm and they wanted blood tbh.

I now work for a high street firm and although while I am at work it is full on, I leave for home and that's it until the next day.

What sort of firm do you work for?

In house is an option, but fairly far and few between I would say.

If you are feeling suicidal, then you really need to take a break, take stock and decide what you need to do, and quickly.

Hi, came here from your S&B thread. I'm also a 36yo Scots lawyer but mercifully I do work in house and have a great work life balance. We work hard, but the atmosphere is supportive and the pay/conditions are good.

What area do you specialise in? It can be so hard to move once you've got PQE in a particular area. Although I've loved my work at times I have fancied a change of scene and realised I'm probably too niche to change with any particular ease.

I know how it is to feel miserable at work and it takes over everything.

Hi Laaaayla, having read your post here and the one is style and beauty too, I’m guessing that you’re an over achiever? I recognise the thinking - when you have a work/life problem like you’ve shared here, throwing yourself into a style and beauty overhaul project is a way of managing the problem. Except I don’t know if it is really. Do you need to ‘work harder’ on something right now? Do you need to set yourself even more targets and pressure? Or do you really just need to be kind to yourself and give yourself a break?

I’ve been where you are now. Get signed off and get the permission you need to stop, rest and recover. I suspect what you need is not to ‘do,’ but just to ‘be’.

I felt like that a year ago. I got signed off for three weeks, slept a lot, cried a lot, did a course of CBT (very helpful indeed) and had many frank and honest conversations with my head of dept about what I could and could not handle once I returned. Things are much better now and I feel I have the tools I need to keep it that way.

OP - I felt the same a few years back. Taking the time out (I had 6 weeks off) really helped me. It gave me the breathing space I needed to start to feel my life was under my control, not dominated by work.

I went back but with a clear plan to get an in-house position. It took longer than I hoped, but moving jobs (with a better work-life balance culture) has made life so much easier.

Please take some time out.

No job is worth losing your life over, and you are already losing your life over this one.
Make some plans. Can you move to a cheaper property? What other cutbacks are possible? If both you are your DH are solicitors you will have a good income and you can make other choices that will allow you to live. You are not on the breadline. One friend of mine gave up law to be a gardener/landscape gardener.

I started reading your post and nodding along until you got to the bit about suicidal thoughts. That really is an alarm bell and you need to get some help and to hand your notice in if you can’t get signed-off. You are in a very vulnerable position and something needs to change .

I’m a doctor and had a similar relationship to my job to the one you are describing. I got burnt out 2 years ago. It was a slow process -it took about 6 months until I realised what was happening to me, and that it was not just “work stress”, it was much more serious.

I took a few days off sick here and there at times when I was really not coping, and went back the following day/week. That was the minimum I could do to keep going but it was the wrong strategy. I remember feeling that I needed a 5-day weekend to recover from a normal week.

Then after a bad situation happened at work I was so stressed that I couldn’t sleep at night and was a wreck the following morning. I went to my GP and asked to be signed off for a week. I’ve seen colleagues be signed off for months but a week was the most I could allow myself without feeling too guilty (though if that happened again I would definitely be off for longer. Trust me, work will cope).

When I returned I asked to see occupational health and asked them to sign me off to work part-time for a few months until I made some changes to my work schedule.

It took about 3 months for me to feel normal again at work. When I returned from that week off I felt shattered inside (almost a physical feeling) and had to take things really slowly. I cancelled a lot of non-essential commitments and tried not to accept any extra work (e.g., projects, additional teaching) that came my way, even if it seemed good for my CV.

After a few months I started to feel normal again. Now I have a slightly different approach to work - I’d love to say I did a 180 degrees turn but it was more like 60 degrees! - and I am more realistic regarding what I can or cannot do. I also learned to delegate more, to ask for help when I need it, to not accept all deadlines immediately, and to switch off (or at least try to) when I finish work. A big change was stopping negative recurrent thoughts about work politics and little things that annoyed me.

I was only able to figure out what was wrong once I took time off. If you are able to do that, please consider it.