First time posting here, hoping to get some support!
There's a lot of backstory to be had here, so I apologize for the wall of text below. The short of it is this:
I would love/need the reminder that quitting my job isn't the end of the world, that I shouldn't be making myself sick with fear because I've been conditioned to prioritize the feelings of my bosses over my own well being. That I shouldn't be making myself feel immense guilt that I'm being ramped up on projects I'm going to dump back on them soon, if I can bring myself to do the right thing and quit.
For the backstory as to what's going on and the juicy details of why jobs are garbage, see below:
Essentially, I've been at this job for only 4, going on 5 months. They expect me to BILL 8 hours a DAY and of course I'm required to attend non billable meetings and activities. Plus, there's switching gears, getting organized, checking emails, etc. It all works out to about 10+ hour work days every day without ANY breaks (not even lunch) to accomplish my billable goals in the hopes of reserving my evening time to myself to work on my real passion (art).
None of this was communicated to me during the interview or onboarding process, and my asks about hours requirements in the early phases did NOT translate to this nonsense. Plus, when I got this job, I was sorta in a desperate situation and maybe didn't think to ask all the right things.
As one can imagine, I'm already burnt out, and super over it. My life is working and sleeping and nothing else. Can't bring myself to be social, work on my art, or do anything fun because my brain is just COOKED at the end of every day.
But here's where all this neuroticism regarding quitting stems from:
I want to leave, and I'm in the interview process with other places at the moment to continue making money while I work on getting to a place where I can financially do what I ACTUALLY want to do. However, my last quitting experience was an anxious person's (me) worst nightmare. My last CEO was above and beyond toxic. They were paying me less than 50% of market average, overworking me, parading me around to talk about the fact that I'm transgender and traumatized from childhood for company brownie points, etc.
When I gave my ONE MONTH notice, they lost it.
They ambushed me on unrecorded calls with my coworkers to cry and air grievances about how I'm ruining everything, made me sit through hours of emotional abuse in front of my friends, etc. and was constantly texting me nasty things during the process.
Two days of this and I finally lost it. Told them I wasn't putting up with it anymore, and walked out (extra back story: whole reason why I was quitting was because my FIL's health was failing and we needed to move to be close to him for 'the end times', and wasn't being paid enough to afford the move — all which was communicated to the CEO, They replied: “we're your family too, and you made the wrong choice”).
The end result of me standing up for myself was having everything outright deleted (making me unable to get my tax/health info), harassment via text message, and my friends and husband were fired, to which they outright told me was my fault.
I was so glad to be gone.
Now, to the meat of my issue: Now that I'm going through the interview process at other places, I've come to find that I'm absolutely TERRIFIED of quitting. To the point where I'm having massive panic attacks whenever I take a further step in the interviewing process with interested companies.
The idea of telling my manager (who is the only person I truly adore at this job) that i'm done, having to do an exit interview — it's making me absolutely spiral and I've been having pretty bad anxiety/panic attacks every day this last week and a half. Including a few DURING interviews which is a monumental effort to hide and keep talking through.
I know it's a fear response from my last quitting experience, and I guess the point of this whole post is that I would just… love the reminder that it isn't the end of the world, that I shouldn't be making myself sick with fear because I've been conditioned to prioritize the feelings of my bosses over my own well being. Because I feel immense guilt that they're ramping me up on projects I'm going to dump back on them. My friends and husband won't be in the crossfire this time, but I just can't stop worrying about what will happen when I quit.
Thanks to anyone who reads/comments.