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> Somehow, those joyful feeling of engineering no longer feels like the blue sky. I think its still blue, but for an eye washed in silvers, everything looks gray. Beautifully said. I'm glad to hear that you feel hope for rekindling this feeling. It sounds like you've already figured this out, but I want to highlight that this a symptom of burnout, and that people who resonate with this should take it seriously. I rem…
Thank you. Now that you mentioned it. Maybe it was a burnout. If you don't mind sharing, what did you do to improve your mental health?
Part of it was that I had a breakdown. That was unpleasant. But ultimately it was part of the process. (Not to say this is necessarily true of everyone!) This forced me to quit my job. I have a one track mind, so I couldn't really do the work on myself I needed while I was working. I hope this isn't necessary for you or anyone else though.
When I was breaking down, I lashed out at the people in my life. I made things very hard for them. But they forgave me and supported me. Sometimes I have a mad instinct to smash everything and start over. But they didn't let me push them away.
Reading the Zhuangzi helped me to conceptualize why I allowed myself to be burned out and didn't do anything about it until I was a wreck. In particular, there's a refrain about people who are useful being ground down by being put to use. I realized that I invested my identity in being useful to others, and my team especially, because I didn't respect myself enough to be useless. I didn't value myself outside of being valuable to others. That attitude will inevitably burn you out.
Studying Zen and Taoism and meditating has helped a lot. Partly it's just a very different perspective from what I'm normally exposed to, so it broadens my horizons and helps me take things less seriously. The Zen notion of "practicing" with a problem is a perspective I find really valuable.
I started therapy and I started taking an antidepressant. This was a mixed bag, my therapist ended up moving away and I think I need to change my medication, but I think it was an important step. Something I struggled with was that I didn't understand the mechanism of action behind therapy and I didn't really see any benefit in any particular session. But I've also had to accept that I just don't understand what I need in my life, I think I do but I'm constantly proven wrong, so not being able to see why something is helping doesn't actually mean it isn't.
Similarly, my medication doesn't seem to do anything. But there have been a few times I've had a really hard day, and then when I'm taking my meds in the evening, I realize I had forgotten yesterday. I also think the lows haven't been as low.
About a year and a half after my breakdown, I had a profound spiritual experience I'm not entirely comfortable discussing, you might call it a breakthrough. None of these things caused it. But I think they were all preconditions. I'm not "fixed," and in the intervening time I've had depressive episodes and panic attacks on occasion. But I was "fixed" for ten glorious days, and it proved to me that, regardless of whether such a thing can be permanent, it is possible.