u/BaconBears

I really just need to vent and see if anyone else relates to this, because I am feeling incredibly defeated.

I’ve been job hunting, and whenever I land an interview, I go all in. I spend days leading up to it studying, researching the company, practicing my answers, and making sure I know my stuff inside and out. I literally over-prepare.

But the second the interview actually starts, my anxiety and panic take over. The stress gets so high that my mind just goes completely blank. I forget everything I spent days reviewing. Because I stumble and freeze up, I end up coming off as totally unprepared or even uneducated, which is the exact opposite of the truth.

It is so frustrating to know exactly what you’re doing behind a keyboard, but failing to prove it because of interview anxiety. Navigating unemployment is already soul-crushing, but doing it while managing depression, anxiety, and panic disorder is a special kind of hell.

Has anyone else dealt with this? How do you cope with the panic in the moment so you can actually show what you know?

​Is anyone else losing their mind over how broken this job market is?

I apply to multiple jobs every single day. I’ve spent hours tailoring my master resume. I even had career counselors review it, and they told me my resume looks great. I am doing literally everything you are supposed to do.

The result? Exactly one interview in almost three months.

I’m on my third layoff, and this is by far the worst job market I’ve ever seen. It feels like throwing my resume into a black hole. If one more person cheerfully tells me to "just network" or "make sure you're using the right keywords," I think my brain is going to short-circuit.

How are you guys surviving the sheer soul crushing repetition of getting ghosted every single day?

Boy, do I LOVE the constant power outages we get up here in Cold Springs. It seriously feels like we lose power every few weeks at this point.

Instead of NV Energy selling out and prioritizing power for all these massive data centers, how about they actually fix our existing, crumbling infrastructure first?

Is anyone else up north dealing with regular outages, or are we just the chosen ones?

I’m stuck in a loop and I don’t know how to get out. For the third time now, I’ve been laid off after only a year or two at a job. Every single time this happens, it takes a full year of soul crushing searching to find something else. I’m back at zero again, and the tank is empty.

I’ve sent out hundreds of applications. Not a single word back. My resume has been looked at by career and unemployment counselors who tell me it’s "good," yet here I am. It feels like AI has turned the job market into a black hole where effort goes to die. It’s the silence that kills me. I spend hours tailoring an application, hitting "submit," and then nothing. If I'm lucky I get an automated rejection. It’s hard not to feel like the world has moved on without me.

My professional failure has bled into everything else. I don't leave my bed or the couch anymore. I’ve stopped caring about my hygiene, and the lack of care has become a physical weight. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I don't even recognize the person looking back. I feel fat, ugly, and completely worthless. The things I used to love mean nothing now. I’m just a shell filled with stress, numbness, and daily panic attacks.

I’m terrified I’m going to lose everything I’ve spent my life working for. The only thing currently keeping my head above water is my fiancé, but that brings its own kind of pain. I feel like a burden, dragging him down into the mud with me. He deserve a partner who can actually function, and instead, he has... this.

I have no hope left for myself. How do you keep applying when you already feel nothing inside?

TL;DR: Third layoff in a row, a year of unemployment ahead of me (again), and I’ve completely let myself go. Stuck in bed, numb, and feeling like a burden to my fiancé. Just need to know I’m not the only one drowning in this void.