Am I burned out, depressed, or just in the wrong career?
I’m 28 and work in financial compliance/supervision at a brokerage firm. The job is very high volume, repetitive, reactive, and pressure-heavy. Lately I feel like I’ve completely hit a wall mentally.
Over the last 3–4 months, I’ve become extremely disengaged at work. My boss had a serious conversation with me today because my productivity numbers are way behind the rest of the team. Other people are knocking out hundreds or thousands of alerts/reviews, and I’ve barely completed anything lately because I feel mentally frozen half the time.
The weird thing is I’m not lazy and I do care. I think that’s what’s making this harder. I feel overwhelmed to the point where even asking questions feels impossible because my brain immediately goes to “I have 100 questions and I don’t even know where to start.”
Outside of work, I also:
- Have a Series 10 exam in 2 weeks (failed it twice already)
- Have barely studied lately because I feel mentally drained
- Am in the middle of applying/interviewing for other jobs
- Am starting to plan a wedding with my girlfriend
- Feel like my entire future is uncertain all at once
My relationship is actually great, so that’s not the issue. But mentally I feel exhausted, anxious, disconnected, depressed, and honestly scared sometimes by how overwhelmed I feel.
I don’t want to hurt myself, but I do sometimes fantasize about escaping everything, quitting, disappearing from responsibilities, or just not having to deal with the pressure anymore. I think it’s more about wanting relief than actually wanting to die, but it still scares me.
I guess I’m posting because I genuinely don’t know if:
- I’m severely burned out
- I’m in the wrong role/career
- I’m depressed
- Or if this is just what happens when too many major life stressors pile up at once
Has anyone else gone through something similar where you just mentally shut down from overload? How did you recover or regain clarity?