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Ask HN: Did anyone else lose their marbles?

• JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  I'm sorry for what you went through. That sounds rough. That said, I'm (perhaps morbidly) curious about the experience. Were you having fun finding fossils?
  • throoowwawaayy 4y ago
    I had a fucking blast. It felt like an adventure.
    • raffraffraff 4y ago
      Maybe that was some kind of self-preservation "GTFO and touch grass" ripcord. Edit: ok! I read some of your other posts about that time. You definitely need help. Glad you're feeling better.
• cdoxsey 4y ago
  Never had psychosis but have had a few major depression episodes (sleep all day, lose a bunch of weight, get stuck in a cycle of negative thoughts, etc). I did end up in the hospital once for a week. I found myself repeating the same actions over and over again because I couldn’t remember doing them, I had a hard time speaking (everything came out in slow motion and stuttering), and I think I had a bout of depersonalization. The DRs thought I was drunk or on something. I wasn’t. Never did figure out what happened. It was probably all stress related. I had to quit my job and move closer to family. Ended up costing me $$$ due to bad timing (lost options that weren’t fully vested) I have to be very careful about work. I tried therapy and medication. Maybe it helped. Maybe it’s just something you learn to cope with. Recognize it for what it is. You’re a person who’s somewhat fragile. You might have a breakdown. If you can recognize warning signs try to catch it early. I have a lot of respect for people who have grit and endurance - I want to be the kind of person who can do big things and work hard and accomplish the seemingly impossible - but at least in my experience, mental health doesn’t always play well with that and it takes a long time to recover. Personally work was the “main” thing I put energy into for a long time. And it’s not anymore. And that makes me sad. But at least I’m not losing my marbles anymore (knock on wood).
• SnowHill9902 4y ago
  Check your testosterone levels.
• AA-BA-94-2A-56 4y ago
  My mother went through a psychotic attack. I think she would have kept it secret, if not for the police finding and sectioning her. Roughly 3% of people in the U.S. are reported to experience psychosis at some point in their lives. Those are only the ones that report it.
  • goodpoint 4y ago
    The US is incredibly brutal and ineffective in handling psychotic episodes when the police gets involved.
    • datavirtue 4y ago
      Yeah, get a lawyer and prepare to lose your job.
• idontwantthis 4y ago
  You had a psychotic break. No that's not normal. I hope you got treatment.
• canthaveitall 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • infradig 4y ago
    Sounds perfectly clear to me. He was looking for something that in reality wasn't there, but in his delusional state he thought he found. Like a junkie in withdrawal seeing bugs crawling all over their skin.
  • Bouncingsoul1 4y ago
    "and looking for non-existent fossils, which I found. I eventually saw petrified sea creatures everywhere and stopped going to work, or answering my phone, paying bills, etc. Things ended predictably, in horrible slow motion." => I think he just interpreted "normal" patterns in stone as fossils
    • Alex3917 4y ago
      To be fair, it's pretty easy to find fossils of sea creatures if you look in road cuts that go through sedimentary rock. It's not some rare phenomenon that only occurs in a few places in the world, it just takes a few minutes of Googling and then looking around on Google Maps.
  • Dr_Birdbrain 4y ago
    I thought it was quite clear. i interpreted it as a humorous turn of phrase to say that not only did they hallucinate the belief of the fossils, but then they also hallucinated the fossils themselves, and later started seeing them everywhere.
    • moosedev 4y ago
      Agree, quite clear, nice writing.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • 4y ago
• Titan2189 4y ago
  Are you talking in metaphors?
  • eurasiantiger 4y ago
    They are describing a psychotic episode.
    • triyambakam 4y ago
      Is it a common metaphor?
      • gallopingcomp 4y ago
        The description is not a metaphor. “Lost my marbles” is a common one for psychosis, dementia and the like, though.
      • triyambakam 4y ago
        I know I'm being overly sensitive but I'm baffled at the downvotes on my post asking for clarification :/
        • quickthrower2 4y ago
          You asked if it was a common metaphor in reply to someone saying it is not a metaphor. Perhaps you replied to the wrong comment by mistake?
        • I_complete_me 4y ago
          If it's any consolation, I interpreted your question as "outside of this person's experience". It seems fair to ask the seemingly knowledgeable eurasiantiger such a question. In the interests of charitable interpretations.
      • eurasiantiger 4y ago
        It is not a metaphor. Psychotic episodes are typically marked by delusions and hallucinations caused by things like sleep deprivation and stress leading to excess catecholaminergic activity, which causes the brain to temporarily misinterpret the senses and construct delusional logic around the interpretations in an attempt to form a cohesive internal narrative of the experience.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• barbs 4y ago
  I'm sorry that happened to you. I hope someone has told this to you already but - please don't blame yourself. It obviously wasn't your intention to have a psychotic break. I hope you have the support to stay happy and healthy, I don't doubt you deserve it.
• neotrope 4y ago
  It happens to the best of us. For those of you who have friends going through something like this, your friend still needs you. Reach out. Have faith in them. You might be the reason they land on their feet.
• BxGyw2 4y ago
  Stress induced psychosis maybe? Were you using any chemicals? Feel like I understand the need to escape to the woods but not so sure about the fossils thing. Hope you are doing better now mate
  • throoowwawaayy 4y ago
    Thank you, and yes, I was taking dexedrine for ADHD, and I’m sure that was a factor here, or at least it didn’t help!
    • BxGyw2 4y ago
      Stimulants, and in particular sleep deprivation from stims (not implying that was you, it's just a common pattern), compounds delusions really hard. Make sure if you continue to take stims you eat good, sleep a lot & drink a healthy amount of water
    • loa_in_ 4y ago
      ADHD even without medication can make you hyperfixate on something for so long (usually if it's encouraged by environment) that you end up literally having not to think of it for a time if you want to recover your skill. Autism, excessive routines, isolation, lack of play and chaos helps make this happen too.
    • manmal 4y ago
      I‘d actually suspect the Dexedrine as the root cause of the psychosis.
      • BxGyw2 4y ago
        Why?
    • jugg1es 4y ago
      Dexedrine is powerful. I took that when I was a teenager for ADHD and I lost tons of weight down to maybe 140 and it drove a strong compulsion for more drug seeking. I also got straight A's and started my own website business, but I also would have terrible fights with my mom and got kicked out of my house. I think you may be able to attribute a lot of your experience to that drug. When I switched to Adderall, my entire life changed and things started feeling normal again.
• ec109685 4y ago
  What helped you get back on your feet?
• benatkin 4y ago
  That's a lot to unpack. Did you get Lyme disease? That's the thing keeping me from wandering some forests. Luckily I live on the west coast which has less Lyme disease.
  • projektfu 4y ago
    Taking the ticks off within 18 hours generally protects against infection with Lyme disease. There's also a vaccine, and proper clothing prevents the ticks from biting as well. The trouble is the black-legged ticks (I. scapularis) can be very small, especially the males.
• koliber 4y ago
  I’m sorry to hear what you’ve been through. It sounds terrifying. Was it your fault though? It sounds like you are blaming yourself for it on some level. It’s likely that you have a health condition that manifested itself in this particular way.
• BMorearty 4y ago
  > I’ll never forgive myself for what I put my family through. How is your family now? Is it intact? Have they been able to forgive you? Glad you seem to be doing better.
• SkyMarshal 4y ago
  Could also be severe burnout, which isn't uncommon. Sounds like you're better now, but if it recurs, try to talk to a mental health specialist and see what their prognosis is.
• max182 4y ago
  Mental health is a serious issue. The past few years I have been putting family and work before my own care and it caught up to me. 10xing is great, but if you have a mental condition the slightest thing can really set you back if you don't put your own health first. I am taking some time away from computer next few weeks last minute. Management seems fine with it and is offering any help they can. Though I didn't lose my marbles 100% slipping into depression is very real and can be scary. Don't hesitate to go to the ER or any other service if you need it. Take care of yourself.
• infradig 4y ago
  Had something similar, not quite a psychotic break, but had to take a year or two out of the game for my peace of mind.
• Bruhathrowaway 4y ago
  Yes in my case it was caused by ideas from a shitty self help book that i was trying out whilst a politcal battle was going on at work. Need to trace the origins which can only be done by talking to trusted people, ie family and probably not friends (which i got burnt by). Getting proffessional help was also not useful at all as they cared more about managing symptoms with meds rather than tracing the root cause.
  • BxGyw2 4y ago
    I'm sorry if this is autistically inappropriate but what was the book?
    • exikyut 4y ago
      Sorry not OP/answer, but IMO I don't think your question is inappropriate; I too would like to read that particular book while holding it at arm's length.
  • projektfu 4y ago
    But don't overly focus on a root cause to the detriment of getting help. Some people respond really well to the therapy of determining where they went wrong, how they were hurt, etc. Other people respond well to a day-to-day plan of being aware of your thoughts, challenging intrusive thoughts, etc. And medication works wonders for some, and is not great or sometimes detrimental to others.
• dools 4y ago
  I had a close friend go through something similar last year
• SeanAnderson 4y ago
  Sorry that happened to you. It sounds scary, but you sound like you're doing much better. I hope you are. In the interest of openly sharing, I've had inklings of psychosis in the past while also being an absolute top performer at work. It's damaged my relationships, but never to the point of a psychotic break. A combination of getting way too focused on work for months/years, burning out, stopping exercising to try and "claw back time" for more work, way too much caffeine to push further, weed to chill and push creativity, and exploring various dosages of modafinil/adderall without a prescription. Turns out that's not something you can do to your brain for all too long, but it was also "easy" to get back to my old self once I stopped pretending I was somehow special and could cheat the system and instead focused on being as healthy of a human as I could muster. My direct boss at work and I have a very strong relationship and so he had awareness of where I was at, but nobody else. Again, not trying to steal any limelight. Your scenario sounds more extreme and you have my deepest condolences. You're not completely alone in fighting demons.
  • throoowwawaayy 4y ago
    What a coincidence, I am also somehow special and think I can beat the system. So that is encouraging to hear, thank you.
    • strikelaserclaw 4y ago
      i mean, a lot of people think that (me included).
• nyargh 4y ago
  That's not normal to "just happen" for two years. I would seek professional medical advice, you may have serious underlying physiological issues that can trigger psychotic episodes as a symptom.
  • vintermann 4y ago
    I'm sure they have asked questions like that, and it is indeed possible to experience such episodes without there being anything terribly out of the ordinary with you long-term.
• xupybd 4y ago
  Not to that degree but I do have to watch my mental health. Prolonged unhappiness while pushing hard to perform at work tends to undo me. I have to have a good attitude about what I'm doing or I'll burn out. Stop sleeping properly and just turn into a wreck. While external factors play their part I've learned a lot is my internal response to the external. I think everyone is vulnerable to some sort of snap if they're under too much stress for too long. I'm glad to hear things are looking better for you.
• vintermann 4y ago
  Not exactly like that, no, but severe depression in combination with a divorce means I have "holes" too. That is common, at least. These days, I don't care so much. I know I have useful if not spectacular skills, and I know if my current employer won't appreciate it or use them, then I'll find something else soon enough. Economic desperation is far enough away that it will hopefully stay far enough away, come what may. Up to a point obviously. The curveballs life can throw at you is infinite, as an old American friend said. Long walks in the woods are still a great way to stay sane, or at least sane-ish. Don't know about imaginary fossils, but wild mushrooms of the culinary sort is great as a goal for one's wandering.
• deviner 4y ago
  anhedonia, struggling to pay bills, messing up with psychedelics, rich people on teslas everywhere you go look at you like they are better than you. life is great.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Zetobal 4y ago
  I am Bipolar 1 and usually in remission for about 5 years after these I go mad for 1-2 years. It's always a struggle to go back to work in the beginning I told lies like I was backpacking in xyz or just a work and travel year here and it usually worked. After enough rodeos I just was open about it and it worked out better than expected. The biggest part is to get over your nostalgia in Greek the literal translation is returning pain. You have to forgive yourself or it will always come back haunting you. PS: I am not a pdoc but experienced with psychosis myself, it sounds like you experienced a Grandeur Delusion with hallucinations get that checked out.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• college_physics 4y ago
  > I’ll never forgive myself This I don't quite get. Why are you blaming yourself for what ex-post seems to have been a medical condition? Do you feel you somehow caused it or that it was within your powers to handle it better? In any case its in the past. What is important is to understand causes to prevent possible recurrence, or manage it better if its unavoidable
  • raffraffraff 4y ago
    Not OP, but perhaps the regret is about putting too much pressure on themselves, not the aftermath. We owe it to our loved ones as much as to ourselves to keep a healthy balance in the things we do.
    • fsckboy 4y ago
      but that's like saying we owe it to our loved ones to never get sick. Mental illness is illness, it's not something you are doing to yourself.
      • raffraffraff 4y ago
        There are different types of illness. Some can happen, and there's nothing we can do about it. That's not the same as engaging in behaviour that causes illness. Self-destructive behaviour chips away at our physical and mental soundness. If we fail to regulate our actions in time we invite illness. We certainly owe it to our loved ones to avoid that.
    • throoowwawaayy 4y ago
      There is that, but I also don’t feel like “I was crazy” entirely absolves me. I could have made some better decisions for sure.
      • akdor1154 4y ago
        No-one ever gets every decision right. My fuckups have been lucky and haven't impacted my life too much. Your fuckups were unlucky in that they've interacted with an existing condition and thrown your life around a heap. That doesn't mean you're inferior to anyone, or have any worse/better judgement, it just means you drew a short straw. :(
• testmasterflex 4y ago
  Stop doing Amphetamines /not a doctor
• vbezhenar 4y ago
  My relative gone through schizophrenia and never recovered fully to normal life. You're happy that you did. Don't blame yourself, you have no control over it, it just happens. Be careful with your work-life balance and keep visiting doctors as long as needed. You can never be sure that it won't get back some day but treating this situation before it gets dire makes everything easier.
  • easymodex 4y ago
    Can you elaborate on "never recovered fully to normal life". My wife went through her first episode psychosis and it's likely schizophrenia. Did they ever realize that the delusions weren't true? Do they still have unusual behavior? Are they on maintenance meds? Sorry for the questions, I know there's a lot of stories the internet already, but I trust NH users opinions more than reddit and I'd really like an idea of how things might turn out in the long term.
    • vbezhenar 4y ago
      She couldn't return to work despite her attempts, she has issues communicating with other people, she acts weird sometimes. She definitely realized everything after she got treatment and meds and she mostly normal but still not quite. She's on maintenance meds for few years already. I think that every case is unique so don't take it for given. I live in poor country and our doctors might not be the best in the world (altough I think that they're competent enough), so here's that.
    • lightning19 4y ago
      I recall this from Lex Fridman's podcast, maybe it will help address some of your questions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk6mo-BCkzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk6mo-BCkzg I hope your wife gets better.
• jurassic 4y ago
  I think it is worth probably talking with a mental health professional about your experience. Even if you feel normal, you may not be the best person to judge whether you are actually behaving normally now or not. It is good to arm yourself with facts and opinions from experts, even if you choose not to act on the information now. And it can be useful to share the professional diagnosis with trusted friends or family members so they can help intervene and get you help if it happens again, so that next time it doesn't go on unchecked for years and leave your whole life in ruins. That said, the most brilliant people I know all have some kind of mental illness or substance abuse issue they seem to be managing. So you are not alone in that respect. I never had a psychotic episode, but there was an 18 month period where I strongly considered suicide almost every day despite outwardly exhibiting success and normalcy. I made many elaborate plans but never quite worked up the nerve to carry them out. Nobody had any idea at the time, and if I had killed myself I am certain it would have been one of those news stories where everybody says they never saw it coming. You never know what people are going through in their minds.
  • luxuryballs 4y ago
    I’ve always wondered how suicide becomes a viable option in the human mind, like at some point in life did we learn about it or is it a more natural mental progression? Like I wonder if someone raised in isolation would ever come up with the idea of killing yourself on their own or if it has to come from some outside influence. To be clear I’ve had thoughts like that too but I just can’t recall if I came up with it on my own or if it was a concept I learned elsewhere and then sort of leaned into in the darkest moments. I just can’t imagine my innate “child self” ever going there.
    • domain8543 4y ago
      This is easily provable by looking at instances of other species committing suicide.
    • jurassic 4y ago
      People choose suicide when their pain exceeds their resources for coping with pain. I think if I lived my entire existence on a desert island, I’d still have no trouble coming up with the idea to suicide if I was sufficiently miserable.
• habibur 4y ago
  Get a salaried job. Hopefully that will be less stressful than running a startup. As for myself I can work hard day-night to get the job done for 3 months only. Either it will get done by that time. Else I will get burnt and have to take a large break before returning. Limiting you exposure to coding 4 hours might help, but I was never able to limit it like that.
• tetsuhamu 4y ago
  Yes, I have. No, it's not normal. Yes, it "just happens" to some people, where "some people" are the set of people with pre-existing undiagnosed problems. I got treatment for it. It means you've had an underlying issue. It probably wasn't entirely caused by the work-related stress. After it happens, you know somethin's up, or could be up at any unpredictable time. My goal in therapy and with medication is to manage the episodes while being as much of myself as I can without a relapse. To your point, I think psychological disorders are common in tech fields. PTSD or BPD, for example, frequently have "control compulsion" issues. Being compelled to control works very well if you are managing a fleet of 10,000 servers. It's been difficult to explain to my old friends why I would care about things like latency and GC STW events because a normal person without control issues doesn't find it emotionally appealing. Psychotic/hallucinatory/delusional features have short-term value in certain situations, like coming up with new product ideas or rapidly "pivoting" between market fits. I won't say it's normal, but I will say it's predictable.
  • raffraffraff 4y ago
    While what you are saying may be 100% true, I think that basically everybody is capable of being driven over the edge by chronic stress. Everybody has a tipping point. That's normal. Perhaps the difference is what occurs after that point.
    • theGnuMe 4y ago
      Stress is an emotional reaction.
      • genewitch 4y ago
        what? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol no.
    • mcv 4y ago
      I think it's also important to focus on what happens before that point. Learn to identify the chronic stress and change something. Quit jobs that are hurting you.
• gd1 4y ago
  [dead]
• pwh 4y ago
  Not an outlier. This start up thing can get best of some of us. People who try to be helpful would tell you that you are not alone, though you feel very much alone and isolated, even in the middle of family or social gathering. At the time it made me listen to Fade to Black all day long when I was alone and somehow it helped to get through the day. Then there is that lingering, crushing guilt, which I could definitely relate. Sincerely hope you can find forgiveness for yourself.
• mkl95 4y ago
  I don't know if I would describe it as "losing my marbles". But I had some extreme OCD-like symptoms right after dropping out of university. I attribute it to my brain trying to cope with failure and uncertainty. The symptoms were gone after a few months, but looking back it's scary how unaware I was of what was going on in my head.
• easeout 4y ago
  (CW OCD) Twice in my life I've become helplessly obsessed with a given topic to the point that nearly everything I saw, heard, or thought about would build a new association back to the topic, forming a feedback loop. The first time it lasted a year. No one could tell because I was just acting like a weird teenager to them, but it was hugely debilitating. I couldn't get off the ride. The second time, maybe fifteen years later, I had since researched the condition. I recognized it was recurring with a new topic and managed to stop it over several straight days of deliberate, flashy distraction. By that time I had sought and found professional help, from which I learned quite a lot more. As far as my coworkers knew, I just took a few sick days. They didn't know I was struggling for sanity. I've been in good mental health for many years now, and I'm prepared. There are things no one can do for us and we must face ourselves. Only you can take a first step to seek help, or step back onto a known healthy path. Thanks for starting this conversation.
  • mach1ne 4y ago
    Interesting. What condition was this? Its psychology intrigues me.
    • easeout 4y ago
      Here it is. To me it's like a demon you can beat by knowing its name. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence
      • everlost 4y ago
        Fascinating. But is Limerence only when the obsession is targeted towards a person, rather than idea/object? I've noticed strong feelings of obsession towards an idea/goal, particularly when it's not achievable.
        • easeout 4y ago
          I've only experienced it as described in the article, with a person as the limerent object. The limerent state is sustained by uncertainty, the small and tantalizing chance it could work out the way you want and the undeniable chance it could fail. One way out of the situation is to make success impossible (say, by a breakup) and therefore reach certainty of the outcome. This is of course the last thing most people would do, but to end what feels like permanent madness, you take that deal. I think if this article really described you, you would stop dead in your tracks reading it. There is what the general public casually calls OCD and intrusive thoughts, and then there are many horrifying flavors of the real deal.
• easymodex 4y ago
  My wife went through psychosis in december for the first time and is still recovering. As you can imagine it has been a rough few months and I really want to know, in your experience, do you go back to normal afterwards? How long does it take? She is on antipsychotics and is way out of the acute phase, but she still has unusual behaviour like last week she covered up the TV with a towel and says she doesn't like phones or screens around her. She is not as loving as she was, wants a lot of alone time and she has changed some habits for no apparent reason and when I ask her about it she just replies she likes it like that and to stop bugging her. I'd say overall she's like 80-90% back to her old self but still has some weird changes to her personality. Does that fade as well or is this just the way she will be now?
  • camgunz 4y ago
    I'm not a doctor but, that sounds like schizophrenia to me. It's treatable, but with some downsides: - takes a little while to get the drug regimen right - side effects aren't wonderful (twitching is the main bummer) Maybe someone with more direct knowledge can chime in (or, yeah maybe this isn't schizophrenia), but this is my understanding.
  • throoowwawaayy 4y ago
    I don’t know if my situation has any overlap with your wife’s, but it took me 2-3 years after the incident above before I could say I felt normal-ish again. But I’ll never be entirely the same. I hope she gets there, it sounds like you’re taking good care of her!
  • dkn775 4y ago
    She probably wants alone time to indulge her conspiracies and stuff. The stuff is addictively fascinating to unravel. Is she doing any drugs like stimulants? Is she getting enough sleep? I had drug induced psychosis about 6 years ago. It lasted roughly 9 months with a 3 month ramp up where I didn’t notice it and then the remaining 6 months was absolutely wild. Lost job and was almost arrested numerous times. I will say that I went to rehab right as it was dying down (the end of the final month) and I had two months of summer after that before I got back to school and work. I was pretty much good after the month of rehab. Oddly enough AI research is what really kicked it off, then it went into the whole everything is connected, predictive programming, cognitive dissonance is the source of schizophrenia etc The beliefs I had come up with during this period, which sounded very profound at the time, have mostly faded away, I still think there was some good nuggets I came up with but it was surrounded by so much jibberish I could never make anything of it. She may retain some of the stuff she discovered but it’s not gonna be anything serious. There are little nuggets of profound knowledge that people discover on a psychosis journey that are hard to forget (for example - I realized how much of man’s intentions were towards money power or fame - and learned to identify people who operate with those motivators.
• lupex 4y ago
  I had a ~two years setback at work due to covid. It was not due a psychotic episode, but probably the effects felt similarly bad [to my coworkers]: my thoughts were all over the place, I could not carry a deep tech conversation as I would jump on a tangent and carry on different seemingly unrelated topics, I appeared confused and distracted all the time. I had compounding effects of brain fog and, then undiagnosed, ADHD: to the level that going out to get groceries was a struggle. I have a great manager at work, but we were relatively new then: I had just transferred into the team before the virus broke loose. He was stellar and very supportive. My whole team was, so much that I shared my story as I recovered instead of hiding my diagnosis. Nonetheless, It took me almost a year to recover from brain fog and rebuild the trust to work at my level. It was really hard to remain focused and get through working on simple things that I could have done 10y ago. It felt like quicksand for my brain. I almost left the company because of it. Now, with all the layoffs, I wonder if I did the right thing. Am I at risk due to lower than expected performance [my performance had recovered since then, but who knows]? Is it better this way anyway, for a fatter severance package? Would the sparkle of new challenges in a new company gave me a faster personal trajectory? TBH, I don't really care that much about career for the money. I just need the innovation of a different level of work to keep me motivated.
  • triceratops 4y ago
    I've heard a lot about brain fog, concentration issues, and lack of focus in the past 3 years. Could some of it be long-Covid after an asymptomatic infection?
    • simplyluke 4y ago
      They’re also all symptoms of depression, which many people experienced as a result of the isolation and stress of the pandemic.
• ggm 4y ago
  Normalising talking about it, is good. This needs to be something people can say, water cooler or no. I had two episodes like this 40+ years ago. I sought mental health advice and have never regretted it. In my own situation CBT worked fine so I have a strong bias toward it, as does my continuing mental health professional. Non-CBT therapy especially, but really any mental health treatment should be something you discuss with a health professional. Not that you can't discuss it otherwise, (see first paragraph) but it's important you do seek professional advice for treatment.
  • marttt 4y ago
    Interesting to hear from someone with psychotherapy experience from 40+ years ago. I wonder how much the core of professional mental help has changed over that many decades. There must have been a lot of stigma surrounding it back in those days; then again, since the "industry" must have been smaller, too, it was probably somewhat easier to find a really good therapist? Just thinking out loud out of curiosity -- as a person with mild but very successful mental help experience (in a tiny European country).
    • ggm 4y ago
      Actually CBT isn't much different now from then. It's a continuing model. Drug treatment is radically different. Views on ECT have swung full circle. To some extent the stigma has mellowed, it was always a bit edgy to state you were seeking or receiving help. But that said, problems like bulimia and anxiety were common at university. Group therapy was offered as an alternative. I have no idea if that's still done. I did not find it attractive. Because being gay was illegal a lot of gays were in mental health because of both concerns for their mental health and as a pathway out of stigmatisation. (This didn't apply to me but was an observation made to me) I had mental health treatment in the UK as crisis health management on the NHS and now have a continuing mental health program, in Australia which is a similar model in many ways. Perhaps the biggest chapter in mental health is the normalisation of PTSD as a real thing, and the re-emergence of MDMA and psychedelics as treatment paths. It always was a thing with mental health professionals but was treated with scepticism in the wider world. Drug addiction mental health is the other thing to look at but I have little experience there.
• magic_hamster 4y ago
  So, this never happened to me but I did definitely screw up in other ways that left a similar (read: way longer) gap of meaningful progress in my life. It took me a long time to get over the pure regret this caused. You can make up the lost time, by being wiser, happier, and if you can, more successful. Your life isn't over yet.
• wrldos 4y ago
  Ah yeah I totally lost it in 2019. Difficult to describe what happened but I just stopped functioning completely for about 6 months. I managed to hide it from everyone successfully which I don’t recommend. Fortunately something went click just as covid kicked off and I managed to sort it out. I’d go as far as saying that covid might have actually saved me because it brought most people down to where I was so it was easier to evaluate myself.
• 2devnull 4y ago
  Sometimes this can be a sign you need to put more energy into the spiritual side of your life. Many people find faith important to their mental well being. As society has abandoned its religious foundation, mental illness has increased. Perhaps psychosis is the mind’s way of saying, there’s more to all this.
  • lynx23 4y ago
    Other people, like me, need maximum distance to everything faithy and religious to stay mentally healthy and sane. Believers make me inherently nervous and restless.
  • BxGyw2 4y ago
    Something that helped me with this is reading and realising that spirituality / faith is not necessarily the crazy people knocking at your door with a moral code to sell and can be grounded in reality and lived experience ;)
  • SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
    Counterpoint: some might consider a lot of the aspects of many faiths as exacerbating to a mental health disorder. Plenty of mental health issues center around faith and specific religions, even. I think society is at a net positive for leaving "faith" behind, but spirituality can exist in the absence of any specific religion [0]. [0] https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/01/13/spirituality-krista-tippett https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/01/13/spirituality-kris...
    • suranyami 4y ago
      +1 for this.
    • projektfu 4y ago
      Yeah, a different friend of mine from another comment I made went from observant-religous to fanatical while losing weight and generating tons of work. Bipolar, obviously, and when he crashed it was very hard on him. He then became an atheist because the experience of being godspoken and then abandoned, and realizing it's just bipolar disorder, brings into question the basis of prophets, etc. Other people, perhaps, would look at the same example and say that bipolar is what happens when someone is being used as the mouthpiece of a god, but my friend ended up with the opposite conclusion.
• INTPenis 4y ago
  I've just become completely lethargic lately. And there's some sort of mental block stopping me from working. It's kinda insane because I can work on other stuff, but as soon as there's a simple task for my employer my mind just wanders off. And when I really try to focus I just go blank in my head. Can't explain shit. I'm trying to slowly get back on the pony just because I'm ashamed of all the salary I've collected for what little work I've been able to do. Haven't done therapy lately but one thing that comes to mind is how futile everything is. I know it's a cliché but I'm almost 40 so this isn't your regular teenage angst "nothing matters", I thought I was past that. It might be rooted in the fact that I don't have kids, I haven't found purpose yet. But the thoughts that come to mind is that this could all end tomorrow and wtf are we working for when we could be living?
  • BxGyw2 4y ago
    Every time I've felt like this it's been time for a change of responsibilities. Are you stagnant?
    • INTPenis 4y ago
      That's a really good point, yes. More than a decade with the same employer. But at the same time that employer provides such job security that it allows me to travel the world (which I just started) and still work. So that's kinda keeping me there. That is also what is motivating me to get back on track because I have a goal now, to travel, and my job is financing that, and the freedom my employer provides is making it possible. But yeah I have been dabbling in the job market to kickstart my motivation again. But it has to be a remote-only job of course.
      • BxGyw2 4y ago
        It's tough hey - I'm in the exact situation you're in right now - got my resume open on the other screen. I think it's important to always remember (jobs, relationships, any situation really) that although it can be hard to see outside your own situation the world is inconceivably large and numerically it's super unlikely that you can't find a day job equal or better than the one you're in. Good luck with the hunt dude
• INTPenis 4y ago
  I just want to reply to OP that I remember bursting into tears once at my first job back around 2006, and it was clearly burnout. It was my first burnout so it wasn't so clear back then, but in hindsight I had been working until midnight just because I was so eager. I was 18 when I got the job in 2004, dropped out of school, suddenly had access to all the bandwidth and servers I ever dreamed of. So I thought I was staying late for me, but it was wearing on me. One day the boss and my mentor were fighting and I just ran out the door because I felt these feelings well up inside me, sat in the stairwell crying.
• send-marbles 4y ago
  Yes, a couple of years ago. The story bears close resemblance to yours. Layers of stress at work and in personal life. No drugs were involved. I'm still recovering emotionally, mentally and financially. It was life-threatening. I now dread taking on resposibilities or even reaching out to people I lost contact with, fearing a relapse of sorts. Therapy wasn't particularly useful, maybe because I got myself to go after I was already snapping out of it. My guess is that it sort of "just happens" to some people under the "right" circumstances.
• John23832 4y ago
  Yes, I have. Sadly, it's more common than it should be. I'll say this is even more acute if you're a man. We can't _really_ complain about work. We have to suffer in silence. Startup. I'm a technical cofounder with a non-technical cofounder (guy with money who wants to build something) and another less technical cofounder (PHD research type, not a builder). Working from home, I did everything. Built, hired, managed, designed product, assisted the ML team with their shit, managed the ever increasing grandiose scope of the business guy. In the process, I lost my GF, it affected my health (both mental and physical), family things happened in life and I was royally burnt out. I'm back to work now (somewhere much more steady), but there was a 3 month period where things were _really_ touch and go. It gets better. Focus on you. To hell with everything else. You can't be great (whatever that means to you), or get better, if you don't cultivate yourself first. Everyone outside of yourself with keep taking until you say no.
• spaceman_2020 4y ago
  I’ve had two breakdowns. The first was out of the blue and had no real immediate cause. It left me with a perennial feeling of anxiety, paranoia and depression that lasted almost 8 years. It was only fixed with medication - a 3 month course of SSRIs that miraculously brought my back to my old self almost immediately. The second breakdown was precipitated by medication - withdrawals from Gabapentin, a medication prescribed for nerve pain. While seemingly benign, this medication causes some awful, awful withdrawals, including interdose withdrawals that are akin to benzo withdrawals. And I’m apparently hypersensitive to this stuff. I spent two months depressed, anxious, suicidal, and feeling like I have no control over my mind. It’s 1-1 for medication so far. One short course of SSRIs saved me. One short course of Gabapentin ruined my for months.
  • raspberry1337 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • osclarto 4y ago
      grow up. This is such a moronic comment and I hope at some point in the future you reach a level of maturity in your life where you'll understand why it is. someone opens up with a touching and personal story and you nitpick them with a trivial detail for no gain
      • SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
        I think the parent comment was misinterpreted, it sounds like they are highlighting that gabapentin is related to the neurotransmitter GABA (indeed it is a structural analogue). GABAergic drugs (benzos, alcohol) are notorious for causing horrendous and potentially lethal withdrawals. To me, that comment reads as though it's in agreement with the GP post, although it could probably have benefited from some context for the vast majority of people who are unfamiliar with the nature of neurotransmitters.
  • kanzenryu2 4y ago
    I was on Gabapentin for back/leg pain. The doctor warned that it was very important to ramp up the dose gradually, and ramp down gradually. I followed the advice carefully and had no issues. But it was tempting to think "I'm okay now, I won't need to take more pills".
• tarsinge 4y ago
  I have not experienced it myself but I have seen a relative having an episode like that, it was quite scary for me but like you that person is functional and back now. Personally I make quite vivid dreams that make me contemplate how fine is the line of between mind and reality when I wake up. It seems like a subtle mental process and I can totally imagine how it could fail with fragilities and pressure.
• camgunz 4y ago
  Mental stuff is hard; I've had my fair share of problems with depression and anxiety and it's no picnic. I'm a huge believer in therapy. I don't think it's only for people with mental or emotional health issues; I think everyone should do it (like physical activity or eating salads). If you haven't already, I strongly recommend you do the work to find a therapist you trust and like and start working through your experience. Also, though I'm not a therapist myself, I think a critical part of your recovery will be letting go of your guilt and forgiving yourself. There's no shame in what you went through: you got sick. That's the end of it.
• ArthurDent451 4y ago
  Back in 1980 I moved into a shared house in Sydney and one night I was woken up by commotion in the adjoining back yard. A man was sitting naked on top of the Hills Hoist hosing himself with cold water in the middle of winter and shouting "You're all as plastic as my little red guitar". Police and ambulance arrived and he was carted off. Neighbours told me that he was a computer programmer. Somehow I wiped this memory from my mind and took up a career as a coder. Fast forward 20 years and I was seeking medical advice for symptoms of "burn out". Thankfully not as severe as that poor chap in 1980.
  • throoowwawaayy 4y ago
    “Plastic as my little red guitar” is a savage burn though. :) I hope he got to a better place too.
• rjbwork 4y ago
  Yes, though long ago, before graduating college. Put a big damper on my life. Went from attending a Top 5 CS school to graduating 3 years late from a state school. I thought the government was going to assassinate me, that people everywhere I went knew who I was and were whispering about me, etc. Just severe psychosis. You do not need to forgive yourself. You should be thankful that you (presumably) have a loving and caring family that helped you through it and that you were eventually able to regain a measure of mental health and sanity. I certainly am immensely grateful for those things.
• johny248 4y ago
  You are not alone. I've suffered a breakdown as well, not a secret one. Went wandering, got in some trouble, lost well job in tech, ended up in a hospital. Took me couple of years to recover from and one could say I'm still recovering. I went and sought help right after. Found decent psychiatrist/therapist with whom I could discuss the experience. Also my friends and my siblings came through, helped to rescue me and recover for which I"m forever grateful. Years later, I'm in different stage of my life and every now and then I think about what my therapist told me at the time: It was a breakthrough not a breakdown
• wellanyway 4y ago
  > eventually saw petrified sea creatures everywhere That's way cooler than my OCD making me wash my hands until they bleed. Can we swap mental illnesses?
• lostmymarbles 4y ago
  I graduated from a top uni in 2019 less than a year before the world changed. I was enjoying my first look at real life and my first time having money, meeting girls I was interested in, developing friendships, and traveling. Then COVID hit and I couldn’t do much of any of this. Everyone I knew retreated to their hometowns with family and I was left alone. I never had any family, but I had been able to mostly mask that feeling during normal times with everything else going on in my life. But it really hit me hard then, and I started going stir-crazy and getting panic attacks about being alone forever. I started thinking about ending it because I’d never belong and I felt like I started to see everyone’s true colors. This coincided with a couple physical traumas I experienced during COVID. I went to an ENT doctor because I thought I had sudden hearing loss in one ear. She prescribed a high-dose steroid for a couple weeks. She then conducted a hearing exam a few days into it and said I didn’t have hearing loss and she didn’t see a need for me to continue the steroid. It didn’t sound like a big deal if I did continue, so I did but I later learned they are extremely serious after I suddenly developed tinnitus. This obviously exacerbated my frustrations and depressive feelings. Secondly, I went to a dermatologist for acne scars. He prescribed a laser that he burned my entire face with, and above everything else this is the worst experience of my life. It’s been a bit over two years I’ve been dealing with all this. A lot of times I wish for an end. I am not a direct casualty of COVID, but I do feel like it brought about the conditions that made it clear I was never going to survive in this world without family support. It just happened to be COVID that showed this, but any other adversity that came my way would have likely done the same. I have also been delving deeper into my psyche and discovered I fit various diagnoses for things like autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, body dysmorphia, highly sensitive personality, and so on. I don’t know how much of these are nature vs nurture given my extensive trauma, but to answer your question, yes, I’ve lost my marbles and I don’t know if I’ll ever find them given the absolute clusterfuck I’m in.
  • racktash 4y ago
    You definitely aren't alone in feeling like this. For what little it's worth, hang tight and I hope things pick up for you. Life's a bit of a chaotic rollercoaster at times, and these last few years that has been dialled up to 11, but we are stronger than we think we are.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Y_Y 4y ago
  You may find this book interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_... Not only is it a good book anyway, but your story really reminded me of it.
  • projektfu 4y ago
    Hmm, yes, but Pirsig had a psychotic break and that may or may not be what happened to OP. Psychosis also doesn't lend itself well to reflection. Pirsig describes the former self as no longer existing, as though that timeline was stopped and the current person now occupies his space. I've noticed that people's memories of their delusions are persistent and feel as real as any other. A friend of mine, for example, saw it as a coincidence that the people who were trying to make him kill himself stopped after he went to the hospital and started meds. It was still true to him then, the memory very real.
• cykros 4y ago
  Just, whatever you do, when you find yourself in such a situation, don't watch "The Shining." Even if the message "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" may be worth learning.
  • altdataseller 4y ago
    Go crazy? Don't mind if I do!
• fromtheabyss 4y ago
  I didn't have a psychotic break but I had what could be considered a nervous breakdown. I couldn't comprehend anything I read. I could barely think. I didn't have the motivation to do anything but the bare minimum each day. I learned how to fake my condition with my family, but when alone I may as well have been typing "all work and no play..." on a typewriter all day because I was long gone.
• StopHammoTime 4y ago
  Not like that, but I worked at a startup that was on its fifth (or so) pivot. Worked many 12 hour days, heaps of crunch. I’m still on the BP medicine because it stressed me out so much.
• jwr 4y ago
  Nothing like this happened to me, but I did have to deal with depression. This taught me to treat mental health like physical health: something to be taken care of, dealt with and also talked about without stigma. Mental health is important, we all have to take care of ourselves, and nobody should ever be stigmatized for being sick.
• GenericPoster 4y ago
  I'm not going to add more 'noise' with my story but I would like to share some insights that I've come across intentionally and unintentionally. A lot of this isn't good advice. But if you're feeling incredibly overwhelmed and under a lot of pressure then the advice is good enough. The goal is to immediately remove yourself from any stressful or negative situations and to prevent you from saying or doing something harmful. 1. If you're okay with burning bridges with your coworkers. It's fine to just ghost them for a few weeks to a month. This immediately removes you from the source of stress and can give you the time to decompress. You'll either be fired or you'll have to quit (don't give a notice) after you feel a bit better. In either case reach out to your manager on your personal email or text. Apologize and give a short message that you are dealing with personal issues. 2. It's okay to withdraw from personal responsibilities. Obviously you can't ignore your friends and family like you can your coworkers but cancelling events or withdrawing from things you used to do is a perfectly valid strategy. 3. Engaging in escapism is a perfectly valid way to handle these negative emotions. Anything is fine as long as it takes your mind of off this issue. 4. Avoid mentally strenuous activities. You want to do things that are passive and low effort. If it's easy and it can give you a self esteem boost then it's worth it. 5. Find an easy job with laid back coworkers and a good work life balance. There's nothing wrong with being a big fish in a small pond. Find fulfillment outside of work. 6. Try your best to avoid coping with drugs or alcohol but if it helps in the short term then go ahead. Indulge yourself. Just make sure that you avoid getting addicted. Set rules for yourself no matter how arbitrary and stick with them. Obviously try asking for help, therapy, medication, medical leave, meditating, getting new hobbies and other perfectly reasonable things first. It's harder to do but it also gives the most benefits. However, if like me, you felt truly trapped. If the thought of talking to someone (therapist, manager, family, friends, acquaintances) is incredibly daunting and makes you sick to your stomach. If the thought of leaving it all behind sounds appealing, try the advice posted above. Then, once you're ready, you can take the actually good advice and build yourself up.
• Shryyyk 4y ago
  Yes - I think I'm currently going through it. Throughout my career I've constantly felt like I've failed upwards. I'm now 1 rung down from CTO and frankly if it wasn't for my anxiety I could probably fill that role, but lately i've found myself saying repeatedly to my wife "I just want to be a small cog again". I left enterprise IT 5 years ago for reasons I can no longer quite remember - I think most of it was because I felt like I had nowhere to go and I couldn't engage with the work I was doing. In retrospect, maybe I didn't try hard enough to find fulfilling work within that company? I loved my colleagues and it turns out the corporate structure actually worked for me - I like the relative safety of 25 levels of beaurocracy and middle management as long as I get left to do some problem-solving. Now I work in startups, It feels like I'm constantly about to collapse from the anxiety of the unknown. As a grown-ass adult, I've had awful experiences of people shouting in my face because some unimportant task has not been completed, which is not something I should have to tolerate. I keep telling myself that "they need you, you don't need them" and looking for ways out, but my anxiety around stability for my family means I can't just bin it off and go for something else in this current job market. I've done CBT but it doesn't really work for me. I need to engage direct therapy at this point I think. I also try to find hobbies that are completely detached from what I do for a day job.
  • balex 4y ago
    It's okay, it's totally legitimate to feel overwhelmed. You're right, no one should be shouting at you. And you're also right that you can find another job. It's also fine to go ahead and work for an enterprise if you feel it could ease the tension for you or you just feel like it. I often miss being an IC as well - it's so much simpler and the mental barriers are comforting. Do try psychotherapy. At the very least, talking about things you're going through can bring you relief and possibly actionable insights. I strongly recommend some kind of sport as a hobby. There's something powerful about routinely choosing to be uncomfortable (to a tolerable level) and seeing your body and mind transform as a result. Not to mention it becomes really (oddly?) fun at some point.
• Mmrnmhrm 4y ago
  I did. And when I went open with it, I did find out that plenty of people whom I know had breakdowns too. The hardest thing was to admit I needed help (used to be a high performer: I solve my own problems!). It was very late, and by then it took a couple years, therapy and medication to recover. My doctor was very optimistic though. These sort of breakdowns happens to be very typical, and he was convinced that I would do a full recovery. I was skeptical. He was right. The second hardest thing for me was to understand that it wasn't my fault. Athletes break their muscles often due to overwork. Brains can also break. In both cases recovery requires time, and often some treatment. Don't be hard on yourself. I wish you the best!
• brmgb 4y ago
  I have not experienced that as strongly but unless they are lucky I think most people will have gone through hardship at some point in their life. Some years ago I found myself working at a job I felt trapped in, under an abusive boss feeling like a failure and slowly getting more and depressed. Meanwhile, my long term relationship ended. After that I was somewhat out of commission for a full year, just going with the flow. So yeah, I don’t know if it helps but I think having some kind of break down when things go south is not at all abnormal.
• maCDzP 4y ago
  Yes, a panic attack while abroad. Maybe triggered by anti Malaria pills, I don't know. It was really scary, I thought I had gone crazy. Lost my grip on reality. It passed after a couple of days thank god. I started therapy six months after that, it has helped me a lot. I am pretty open about it with my friends, my boss at work knows about it.
  • kqr2 4y ago
    Just curious, which anti-malaria pills?
    • tehCorner 4y ago
      I would bet all my money on malarone
      • maCDzP 4y ago
        Bingo!
      • n4r9 4y ago
        Mefloquine seems much more notable for adverse neuropsychological side effects. This was a big worry for me around ten years ago, when travelling to Africa while suffering from an anxiety/panic disorder. I was desperate to avoid taking anything that could make it worse. Doxycycline seemed like the safest choice at the time (and the cheapest!)
        • kqr2 4y ago
          I was going to guess that drug too: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/some-us-troops-haunted-by-anti-malaria-drugs-side-effects/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/some-us-troops-haunted-by-anti-... https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/mefloquine-oral-route/side-effects/drg-20067686 https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/mefloquine-oral... I thought malarone was safer... https://www.drugs.com/sfx/malarone-side-effects.html https://www.drugs.com/sfx/malarone-side-effects.html
• mtremsal 4y ago
  Not my own personal experience obviously, but “Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind” by Andy Dunn talks about the kind of mental breakdown you’re describing. It’s a surprisingly engaging and self-aware book about manic depression and how common it is in the startup world.
  • agotterer 4y ago
    I would also recommend this book. Andy tells the raw truth about what it’s like to have a manic depression and how it manifested in destructive behavior inside and outside of work.
• tonnydourado 4y ago
  I wouldn't call it loosing my marbles, but I was in pretty bad shape between the second half of 2020 and pretty much the whole of 2021. The isolation from the pandemic, combined with being a recent immigrant in a country whose language I didn't speak, and seasonal depression from shorter days and colder weather than I had ever experienced before, hit me like a ton of bricks. I was deeply depressed, it impacted my job, which sent my anxiety through the roof, making the depression worse, in a feedback cycle from hell. I tried medication and therapy. The medication was honestly useless, and the therapy only helped in perhaps preventing things getting worse. What really worked was changing what I could. The pandemic was getting better already, so I worked on the rest. I moved to a country where I spoke the native language, with longer days on winter, and a hybrid job, so I'd be around people at least some of the time. I'm still sad, and lonely, and often ansious. But it's all back to a level with which I can deal, so life goes on. I still had to dance around the last job only lasting 6 months, when I was interviewing for this one, though. Mumbling some bullshit about "things not working out" seemed to do the trick.
• clnq 4y ago
  I fell into depression for half a decade and withdrew myself from society. Eventually I found my way into 6 months of therapy and went back to tech. No one in my daily life cares or knows about it. I don't think people want to know about these things, so it would definitely make for a horrible water cooler conversation. Tech is full of people's bad coping mechanisms - cynicism, denial, escapism, self-medication, maladaptive humour, dissociation, procrastination, rumination, anxious avoidance, etc. I think that many people are one life event from losing their marbles, especially in ambitious and stressful roles. And many probably have stories about mental health crises they will never share.
• riialist 4y ago
  Yes sure, but I don't categorise these episodes as losing the plot. Per my perception I've gone "missing in action" for some months or even a few years during my life. Did not check any inboxes or report to anyone. For me, these episodes have been valuable, but yes, I am guilty of neglecting my family and friends during these periods. Summa summarum I think in some situations it is the only rational option.
• riialist 4y ago
  Yes sure, but I don't categorise these episodes as losing the plot. Per my perception I've gone "missing in action" for some months or even a few years during my life. Did not check any inboxes or report to anyone. For me, these episodes have been valuable, but yes, I am guilty of neglecting my family and friends during these periods. Summa summarum I think in some situations it is the only rational option. As Bertrand Russell said in The Conquest of Happiness "One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."
  • throoowwawaayy 4y ago
    Thank you, and what a great quote that is
• luxuryballs 4y ago
  “eventually saw petrified sea creatures everywhere” everywhere like on walls and blankets and carpets and breakfast foods? anything with texture? makes me think of HPPD https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perc...
• isthisthingon99 4y ago
  [dead]
• dtx1 4y ago
  I have had that happen to friends of mine. Please consider talking to a doctor there may be medical reasons (micro stroke, tumor, early onset dementia) or environmental reasons (accidental poisoning, someone spiked your drink with LSD, you ate ergot infested bread etc.)
• mavu 4y ago
  > But nobody else will ever know that. I’m functional and back in the industry, but it’s not the sort of thing people discuss at the water cooler. I think it's part of the problem than this is the case. It would probably even benefit you now, and certainly would have back then if you had talked about these things with more people.
• newmac 4y ago
  I have a friend who is going through something eerily similar. To be honest I had to do a double take because a fossil fixation was a part of their breakdown too. It sounds like you are aware of the impact it had on your family, I would just encourage you to very actively try to demonstrate to them that you understand it and want to make sure their life improves as yours does. In my friend's case, I think pride has kept them from fully acknowledging just how shitty they made the lives of those around them. Everyone stuck by them because we love them. Their spouse in particular feels like they put up with hell and now that the person is healthy again they don't want to spend time making up for "the past". It's not easy, but if you have the capacity for it, I encourage it. Other than that, congratulations on getting through and getting back. A lot of folks come out of a break like that and do not reenter work or past hobbies in any meaningful way.
• ProllyInfamous 4y ago
  My recent "career life" had been on quite the upswing, until about a week ago when god decided that I shouldn't continue living where I have been for years: five-year-ongoing landslide recently picked back up; septic system stopped working and flooded house, $5800 dollar later "it works"; less than 24 hours later HVAC central unit impeller blows out (almost burning down entire house); then the "fixed" septic backs up again, three days later. Currently soulless, beyond numb. $16-20,000 for a new system, just for the landslide to take me? Strategizing exit plans, to get on with a new life elsewhere. Maybe this is what I'm supposed to have learnt?
• jongjong 4y ago
  I had a really messed up couple of years from 2019 to 2021. At the end of 2019, the company I had spent 2 years at as a software dev (blockchain sector) turned out not to be what I thought. The direction started not to make any sense and so I quit (in quite a dramatic way). It was weird. Looking back, a lot of things didn't make any sense. Then thanks to a lot of luck, I was able to secure some passive income which allowed me to just sustain myself for the next 3 years through the COVID19 pandemic. It was exactly what I needed to sustain myself down to the dollar. I could probably write a book about what happened to me over the past 5 years or so but I still can't quite make sense of things... Basically, many people from the blockchain community I was a member of turned against me for no good reason, then COVID19 happened and the government response to it fed into a sense of increasing paranoia. Once you know that a small/medium group of people are conspiring against you (e.g. actively working together to see you fail), it doesn't take much to start believing that maybe a larger group... Maybe the government is also working against you or people like you (though at least with lockdowns and vax mandates I didn't feel like a lone target). Once you've worked in blockchain sector, all those crazy conspiracy theories about government agencies manipulating people and politicians through psyops don't seem so far fetched. I guess it makes sense. Cryptocurrencies are kind of like foreign states in a way... The sector is probably overrun with government agents. It's good I distanced myself, it was a real brainf***.
• P_I_Staker 4y ago
  Any chance you have ADHD. I don't work in SV, but am currently dying from this disorder, and the medical system will only do things that are incredibly harmful.
• gsyubbfyt 4y ago
  Do you take any drugs regularly? Prescription or not? Cutting out alcohol and other recreational drugs, and working with a therapist to reduce my prescription drugs (SSRIs) helped with this a lot. You might have ADHD, OCD, chronic depression or other disorders as well. Worth talking to a therapist (and not some stranger on the internet).
• burnoutaway21 4y ago
  Mine wasn't very public but also not very secret. I've lost 2 or 3 of the last 6 years to my mental health. I'm now on the other side of it and struggling to convince anyone I can do work. It all feels impossible right now.
• ReactiveJelly 4y ago
  Yeah. Years ago, right at the beginning of my career, I had some kind of neurotic breakdown. It was diagnosed as schizophrenia at the time (since I had delusions of reference), but I haven't relapsed or had any long-term symptoms. I think maybe it was caused by stress. I had never lived on my own as an adult before that, and never had a real job either. It was too much change at once, and I didn't know how to push back or set boundaries. It's not the only time I overexerted myself because my brain wasn't giving me clear "slow down" signals. I recovered from that and only a couple of the oldest employees remember it.
• neontomo 4y ago
  I did, for about two years. Drug induced psychosis made me completely lose touch with reality. With time and effort I found my way back, and surprisingly it was a bit of detachment that helped me overcome it. I was wound so tight and trying to control everything that I eventually spiralled when I couldn’t sustain it. I’ve written a book about it and have a few YT video about my experiences. If you’re interested, you can find it in my profile. I wish you health, friend.
• dorkwood 4y ago
  This only happened once to me as a kid, and only for a few hours. I can still remember being in tears, inconsolable, trying to explain to my father that “the train” was missing an important part, and that if I didn’t find the part, the train wouldn’t be able to go. I don’t remember what the part was supposed to do. I only remember that it was shaped like a cube. I looked through my bedroom for it, convinced that it was on one of my shelves somewhere. When it didn’t turn up, I had another breakdown. I still wonder from time to time whether that episode was an indicator of something wrong with my brain that will only reveal itself later in life.
  • rubin55 4y ago
    Interesting, this actually sounds a lot like one of those typical dreams where you have to do something specific, and a lot depends on it, and for various reasons, it can't happen or goes haywire..
• marbleless 4y ago
  It sounds similar to my sibling - middle-aged, professional, homeowner, married, child. All signs pointed to a successful normal life. Psychosis out of nowhere (from our perspective at least) and was missing for almost 2 years. Living on the streets, fighting mental battles no one else can understand. Back now but the PTSD is strong. So much shame, grief, pain... they can barely function. Thank you for sharing your story. I think stories like yours are probably much more common than any of us realize. If we allow the stigma to hold us back from talking about things like this openly, we will never make progress.
• wnolens 4y ago
  Yes. "crying for no reason" hits home for me. Also back in the industry. Still feel on the edge of a break at times, but I hold on now rather than throw my hands up and quit because having SOME external constant is very useful to me.
• throw_away909 4y ago
  You probably are an outlier. Most people haven't experienced a complete detachment from reality. However, you are not alone. I lost my marbles in 2020. Covid isolation, lack of separation between remote work and personal life and a having a 2-year at home at all times without family help led me to two consecutive visits to a mental hospital. I had never experienced any signs of mental illness other than some mild depression and anxiety. I was well into my 30s. However, with my mental break, I was fully gone for about a month and half. It wasn't fossils for me, At various points, I believed that: - I was dead - Water is the only thing needed to sustain human life and we're all being poisoned - My daughter was dead - I was in hell - I was abducted by aliens - I was in a real life version of the Simpsons (where I was Bart Simpson and the other mental hospital patients were other characters) - I had perfect pitch and could harmonize better than Brian Wilson - I was a genius - My mom and dad were trying to kill me - I was the spiritual successor to Daniel Johnston - I could travel through time I had to go through 14+ ECT procedures to come back to reality and the transition back reality was the most difficult experience of my life as I felt broken was deeply, deeply depressed and suicidal and that I was failure to my family. It was and has been very isolating to not have an outlet to talk about this experience with anyone. This is a throwaway account, but I have an email if in my profile if you (or anyone else) wants to discuss mental health issues honestly and not feel so alone or judged.
  • muzani 4y ago
    Not my situation, but I think I have several friends going through this. Any suggestions you would have in getting someone in that situation to seek help, and what the right kind of help looks like?
    • throw_away909 4y ago
      For me, I did not enter into the hospital by getting encouragement from a friend. It was kind of a clean break from reality overnight where I was driving around aimlessly looking for a police station to report a "crime" (just one of my delusions). Once I found an officer, I couldn't really conjure coherent sentences and he took me to the hospital at my request. I think the best thing to do for friends experiencing an episode is to do what you can to help them get near their closest family and friends and be supportive and encouraging of them in seeking mental help from professionals.
• dangwhy 4y ago
  Ugh I dislike these kind of responses that show up these threads 1. Its burnout 2. Its depression 3. Its midlife crisis None of these are defined or have a 'cure' . So whats the point of these diagnosis.
  • ROTMetro 4y ago
    That the person isn't alone, that it isn't just them but common. That they fit in on the island of misfit toys where we are all a little broken and don't belong in the trash.
• swat535 4y ago
  I was like you, held a great paying job, worked with ambitious people and was happily in a long term relationship. However I had a breakdown which was triggered before COVID started and lasted for about two years. I lost my job because the company closed, then my relationship fell apart after 10 years, I somehow managed to find another job but then this company _also_ shutdown, then immediately after COVID hit and during that extreme period of anxiety and loneliness I found out my dad is gravely ill.. I eventually manage to dig myself out but it required a lot of hard work and mental discipline. There was a Church near my house which remained opened during COVID due to it being empty 90% of the time. One day I was driving and passed by it and for some reason decided to go in (I always considered myself a rational Atheist) and just sitting there looking at the Altar gave me peace. After a while of doing this, I noticed a shift in my mentality. I started reading and researching things I had never interest in: religious texts, philosophy, history and art. This helped me expand my mind, I realized that instead of licking my wounds, I could focus on my neighbors and those in need and that people in history had gone though harsher times and survived for me to be here, so I owe it to them to keep going. I finally I made a decision to start exercising, eating healthy, sleeping, setting a routine and slowly recover. As a side note, I eventually ended up converting to Catholicism but that is unrelated to above, in fact my conversion didn't even start until a year after and it took a lot of effort and convincing. If you are reading this and are struggling, know that you are not alone. My heart beats for you as a stranger and if anything, I need you to keep going because our survival depends on each other.
• deleted 4y ago
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• wonderwonder 4y ago
  While I never experienced as major a break as you did, I have been completely burned out before. I would spend hours sitting at my desk looking at the screen and really only deliver 15 - 20 minutes of work. This went on for a year. I was just unable to focus on my job. Eventually I started getting debilitating migraines before or during work. Those lasted for months. Sitting at my desk everyday felt like strapping on a backpack filled with a ten ton weight made out of depression. Im still not 100% recovered but 90% of the way. I just really don't like working in tech but have some how risen to a very high level and the golden handcuffs prevent me from leaving. How did I get passed this? I don't recommend this. I was lying in bed with a migraine. I smoked a bunch of pot, told myself I was done with this nonsense and it was all in my head. Things were not that bad. Forced myself out of bed and to move around. Said no more. I have not had a migraine in over a year. I essentially patched myself in a moment of drug induced clarity. I think the reason is I am trading hours of my life for money doing work I really don't like. It's essentially an existential crisis.
• alvivanco 4y ago
  You're not an outlier. This happens to everyone at some point in their lives. Without periods like these, one would not be able to appreciate the good times. We are constantly evolving and finding ourselves. Keep your head up!
  • kazinator 4y ago
    > This happens to everyone at some point in their lives. I understand that you mean kindly, but hallucinating objects such as seeing fish fossils everywhere does not happen to everyone, or even the rhetorical "everyone".
    • alvivanco 4y ago
      I thought that was being said as some kind of metaphor/reference I did not understand. My bad.
• trashface 4y ago
  Well OP is back at it at least. Some of us are still off in the weeds. Its the sad part of all those recent layoffs. Some of those people are gonna get fucked up and never worked again. Maybe up to 1%. Hundreds or thousands of people.
• CM30 4y ago
  I've had... a few breakdowns over the last few years or so. Was suicidally depressed for a few months in 2021 or so, and have been in a similar situation earlier this year too. Also experienced a lot of burn out, with a complete lack of motivation to do anything and a feeling of hopelessness in general. Sometimes I even question if I'm awake or that this is reality at all. As for why this sort of thing happens? Not sure. Maybe because of the feeling that I should be more successful than I am at the moment, and the fear I've wasted time that could have been more productive. Or maybe the isolation from a company that doesn't offer much support and a lengthy pandemic.
• rchaud 4y ago
  You are not alone. A close friend of mine has bipolar disorder, but was able to keep it from friends and colleagues due to a combination of a happy life, strong family support and great personal charisma. No one knew, or even suspected it. During Covid lockdowns, his business went under, and his marriage began to suffer. Pretty soon he was experiencing manic episodes brought on by the grief/stress of losing his livelhood, and he wasn't taking any treatment because it was in his manic phase that he was coming up with ideas for a new business. He'd be up all hours of the night and completely worn out and depressed during the days. His marriage ended, he moved out into a working farm which he bought, changed his phone number, and I haven't seen or heard anything about him since.
• deleted 4y ago
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• rshaban 4y ago
  Hi, if you want to chat, please send me a dm or email. I dn't think you're an outlier but rather perhaps an activated human who hasn't received the kind of support they might need to make use of their "abilities" and is perhaps an overwhelmed "empath" to use a modern jargon. If you've interest in sharing what your internal experience was – outside of the judgment/shame filter that "I'm not like everybody else" then I'd be happy to hear it – with love,
• giantg2 4y ago
  I have stopped trying at work and it's hard to concentrate on work stuff. I think this is rational given their past treatment of me. No actual breakdown though.
• paulrpotts 4y ago
  I have not had a breakdown quite like that - I never had hallucinations/delusions. But in my 32 year career I have gone through stages where I became: - Extremely depressed and anxious. (Still able to function at a pretty high level at work, but outside of work, spent all my time sleeping or crying, was very lonely, etc.) I eventually came out of this after a long series of antidepressant medications and counseling but ultimately I think a lot of the improvement came from adding traditional fats back into my diet. I had been on low-fat food for so long I think I was starving my brain of necessary fats. My mom had followed the food advice of the time which was to reduce butter, eggs, etc. I kept up with that through my twenties and it did not serve me well. - Extremely stressed. I have worked for some very demanding bosses in startup environments. I'd wind up sleeping badly, grinding my teeth producing TMJ pain, reflux - wound up in the ER for a suspected heart attack in my early 30s (after tests it seemed like there was no actual heart problem, just very bad reflux due to stress). - "Lost it" at a co-worker due to a COVID gaslighting/minimizing boss and co-worker. Due to a daughter who was high risk due to Down Syndrome/congenital heart disorder, I took COVID very seriously and my supervisor... did not. In fact he made a mockery of both CDC and company safety guidelines; he'd wear his mask on his chin, pull it up over his nose briefly when he rolled his chair to within 6 feet of me, then pull it down again as he rolled away; he got the whole team in a room for a Christmas party and proceeded to give a speech with his mask off. Co-worker who worked next to me was monkey see, monkey do. I was already stressed, putting in a lot of long hours, and was constantly asking him to please comply with the mask rule. One evening after a week of way too little sleep and asking him the third time that day to please keep his mask on, I lost it and really blew up at him. I was fired "for cause," the first time that ever happened to me. It meant I was not able to collect unemployment. I regret the last one; I should have been able to walk away and take it up with HR. The thing is, by the time a work situation gets to the point where you have to involve HR, that job situation has likely gone irredeemably sour. I had no growth path in that job after almost 7 years; the software development efforts were being migrated to a new division in China run by a nepotism hire. Really, I should have left the job earlier. I have a tendency to really, really want to complete projects I have put years of work into, even when the company does not treat me properly, and I enjoyed the work I did there. It's sometimes bad to love your work, especially when combined with an excessive work ethic that was beaten into me as a child. It has taken me years to be forced into healthier a work/life balance so if I had any advice, it would be to seek that balance earlier than I did.
• faangiq 4y ago
  Wandering the forest seeing things doesn’t “just happen” bro.
• gilterthrowaway 4y ago
  I lost my marbles too. I don't think it's anything to be ashamed about. My coworkers started talking about me behind my back. I shared a wall with my boss's office and she would just constantly talk about me and I could hear our best engineer through the vents critiquing every little commit I made. I blew up on them and was fired and became completely isolated. Then I slowly discovered that my neighbors had started listening in to me talking to myself. They installed cameras in my house and a speaker and microphone on my dog's collar so they could talk to me while I was walking him. Every little thing I did they talked about. They started streaming me and it was like I was on a TV show and everybody thought I was in on it and having fun. But I wasn't. I started pulling out my hair to show the audience I was not happy with the situation because the audience knew how much I loved my hair. Then I started cutting and they just kept thinking it was all part of the show. I was absolutely desperate why would they not just leave me alone? I downed a bottle of benadryl and tylenol to get them to come and show themselves because I was serious. I woke up a day later with my 70lb dog lying on top of me trying to wake me up and in a very groggy moment of clarity realized what had happened and called my mom to pick me up immediately. This was 8 years ago and I haven't had another real break.
• nebopolis 4y ago
  I've been in pretty bad shape off and on for the past five years now. Never to the point of psychosis, but to the point of hospitalization for chest pains caused by panic attacks, persistent hemipelegic migraine, essential tremors, gastrointestinal issues, rapid fluctuations of weight - my whole body was shutting down and giving up. It started with a really traumatic work assignment in 2018 that I'd describe as pushing on a string - the harder I worked on it the more resources got pulled from the project such that my efforts had zero positive impact. I basically worked myself off the cliff trying to chase down an impossible target. It only took 6 months to reach the point of complete breakdown. I was working on slowly recovering from that when the pandemic hit, and that kind of just shattered the final bit of strength I had. Since then it has been a long and halting process of recovery, and I don't think I'll ever be quite as capable as I was before my episode. I've definitely noticed that things which came effortlessly before are still a struggle even now. Very slowly I have started to be more able to go beyond the bare minimum of purely reactive survival. This is the longest time I've been "lucid" since 2018, but it still feels extremely fragile and tenuous. Medications helped a bit, lifestyle changes helped a bit, therapy wasn't super helpful for me (but I know that it can be very helpful for some people, I don't want to discourage anyone from giving it a shot). Eventually just enough time and distance have started to allow healing. The hardest thing for me is that I have essentially lost a half decade of my life. My memory of the past several years is extremely patchy, my career progression has been zilch, I've lost track of friends and missed out on relationships. I feel like I'm still in my 20s but I am in my mid 30s now. In a lot of ways I regard who I was over those years as kind of a totally different person, like I was in and out of a coma and I've just started to wake up over the past several months. I'm grateful for whatever part of me held my life together through those years, but they're a kind of stranger to me. Whole years of my life I can maybe remember where I was for a handful of holidays, and that only because there are pictures of me and that helps track down the threads of memory that remain.
• nitwit005 4y ago
  It sounds like you were somewhat young, which is normal for Schizophrenia. It generally appears in the late teens to early twenties for men, and late twenties to early thirties for women. It rather frequently derails University or early career. People do recover, so I assume you have a decent amount of company.
• rendx 4y ago
  "Step One. Assume that whatever distress you might be experiencing has been triggered and is related to the childhood past. Step Two. Connect that distress to its roots in the traumatic past by fast-forwarding through your childhood history and noticing where the feelings and body sensations you notice right now best fit. [“Fast-forward” means no more than 20–30 seconds! Focusing on or thinking about the past for more than that short time risks activating the trauma responses.] Step Three. Identify the internalized old belief that developed as a result of that experience. [Ask yourself: “What would any human being come to believe about themselves in that situation?” Or think about the negative beliefs that most trouble you day to day and identify them as related to the past, not to you personally.] Step Four. Find a way to challenge that old belief so that you can begin to develop new beliefs that better fit your life today. [You are already challenging those beliefs the moment you label them as “old.” That is the first sub-step. The next sub-step is to create a new possible belief, such as “I had to believe this in order to survive” or “This belief helped me to survive because it made me more ________.”] It is not necessary to come up with a new positive belief or to expect yourself to believe it. It is only necessary to challenge the old beliefs. Without repeated practice of new reactions and new beliefs, the same responses that helped you survive will continue to be triggered over and over again. It appears that the brain and body are slower to let go of responses associated with survival under threat, and the only way to combat that phenomenon is to keep practicing the new responses until they become increasingly automatic." -- Janina Fisher: Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma
• OOPMan 4y ago
  OP should get checked for schizophrenia.
• Uptrenda 4y ago
  I see plenty of mental health symptoms in founders and tech workers. The one thing I keep seeing is insomnia. Probably people are too stressed, too caffeinated, overworked, and depressed. Part of it is the demands of the modern world but I also think the life style is to blame, too. You really do need to work hard to get anything done in this industry and the cost can be being unable to wind down properly at night. I think mental health problems are common in tech but go massively under reported. I say this because autism in engineers is higher than the general population and things like ADHD and depression commonly occur alongside it. It seems to me that some of the reasons that make people so successful in tech might also make them more vulnerable to mental health issues. Now combine that with a culture that seems to under value caring for yourself and prioritise peak performance to a fault ... and you've got a problem.
• anon_tech 4y ago
  I am currently in a similar situation after a messy breakup (relationship of 8 years). I am unable to concentrate or to get my sh*t together. I just hope to get back on my feet soon enough. I had my side project running and I was a respected SWE in my field. Now I can barely survive the day. I think for me working out is doing the magic and avoiding being alone for too long.