I can't handle my job anymore

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I'm in s*** up to my eyeballs with projects at work, and it just keeps getting deeper by the day. I didn't do anything productive all day today because I'm too depressed from all the work I have to do. I would quit my job, but it's not that easy considering that it's my dad's business. I lack the executive function to do this work, but I also lack the executive function to quit. This is psychological torture for me. If things don't change for me soon, I'm planning on committing suicide on Sunday night. I'll endure one more day at work for the sake of being able to enjoy my weekend plans, but after that I'm done. If it wasn't for this job, I'd like to live longer, but it looks like life has other plans for me. I guess I've already experienced everything that I've wanted to, and maybe it's time for me to go. I've generally enjoyed my life, and I hope that my friends and family have enjoyed my presence. I've been mentally preparing myself for suicide for years, and I promised myself that I'd die happy. On Sunday night, I plan on taking a nice hot shower, putting on my favorite pajamas, overdosing on Tylenol pm and whatever other pills I can find, and then dying peacefully in the comfort of my own bed, with a smile on my face. Maybe if my family and friends see that I died happy, it'd lessen their sadness. Before Sunday night comes, I'll have to deeply meditate to make more peace with the idea of death. When I empty my mind and observe nature, I feel as though I'm closer to being one with the universe. Silently watching the clouds go by or the wind blowing on the trees, brings me a greater sense of peace and makes me more willing to go into the light.

I quit my job this week because it was making me suicidal. My advice for you is to do the same. If you went ahead with your Sunday night plan, "they" won. But it's not all about them, is it? It's all about you.

Mike1, please reconsider and stick around. I don't mean stick around at the job, I mean don't kill yourself on Sunday.

I know where you're coming from -- a few things are happening in my life that are feeling like the proverbial last straw.

Someone in my building shoved a "poison pen" letter under my door, an anonymous "hate" message. Kind of like they're an internet troll but instead of using Twitter to abuse me, they did it the old fashioned way, with a note. Although it was typed and printed from a computer, not handwritten. Pretty crummy.

It seems like a trivial thing, but it's one of those "last little straw that broke the camel's back" things that make me wonder why the hell I don't just end all the suffering right now. Trust me, it's not just this hate note -- this comes a week after my best friend died, and several more years of bizarre s**t. It's never just the one little thing that tips us over into wanting to finally carry out a suicide plan.

I'm there like you, but I'm trying to stay in the game even though I feel like just walking into a lake at this point in time. I'm so sick and tired of my life and the way it doesn't matter what I do to shape it, get better situations for myself, keep out of people#s way and mind my own business, people pull s**t like this today.

What I'm trying to say is I know how hard it feels to carry on living, when everything's sh***y and people are sh***y and you feel like you've had enough no matter what you've done to improve things. I've been through several "out of the frying pan, into the fire" situations when I genuinely was striving to get away from the bad stuff and the bad people. Life's been really hard for me lately.

I'm thinking suicide on a quietly ongoing basis daily, but I agree with the person above who said "they win" if you do it.

Try to hang in there. I know things suck but please stay in the game. (EDIT -- again, not the job, I mean staying alive : ) )

I don't know you but I felt compelled to say something, as your plans for suicide made me so sad.

(Edited to clarify: quit the job but don't quit living.)

Last edited by BirdInFlight on 08 Aug 2013, 4:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Just quit.

I know there are all sorts of reasons you don't want to do that, but they all boil down to fear of the consequences. But will the consequences be worse than death?

Just quit and see what happens. You can always kill yourself later.

Yes, definitely quit the job -- it's not worth feeling like suicide for. You can always find another job but you can't do the same with your being alive.

Please stay here. I get how difficult it can be to quit, and I don't want to act like it's easy when it's not. I recently had to quit my job for similar reasons, and thankfully I had my employment specialist to help. It is not worth your life.

If you can't work up to quitting right now, could you at least stay home on Monday rather than go through with your plan? Maybe people will be more responsive to your explaination of how the work is overburdening than you think right now. Missing work might be the opening you need to quit for good.

It's one thing to have an escape plan to feel more in control, and I certainly don't want to invalidate the significance of what you are going through, but if you use it you are not in control, your dead. Whatever fears you have about quitting are not worth that. Also, trust me, it is harder than you might think to kill yourself with Tyenol, and if it doesn't work the aftermath is hell. Whatever the consequences of quitting might be you will get through them as long as you stay alive.

I would certainly not go back to work though. Right now all you have to do is get through the day. If other people have a problem with you not comming in, screw them. You are far, far more important than any inconvenience it may cause them, and I'm fairly certain that they wouldn't ask you to come in if they knew it might cost your life. You can get through this if you chose to, nothing lasts forever.

You have our support here on wrong planet. A lot of people have gone through similar things and are willing to listen.

I think you should quit.
You should also tell your Dad that working for him drives you nuts and you can't deal with it.
I know you won't be able to say the words, so write a note and put it somewhere for him that you know he will find it, on his desk, in his car, or in his room.
Make sure you are not abusive or insulting, but let him know that the dynamic of working with him and being in his family is too much and you can't take it, and that it's not personal - even though it feels a bit like it is.
I was in the same situation; I worked for my parents for a few months after I lost a job.
In the end I was almost suicidal.
I ended up having a minor car accident, then said I couldn't face going in to work that day.
Then a few days later I actually quit.
I said I couldn't cope anymore, in the middle of the day, said I was over it and was quitting, then drove home.
My mother sort of understood.
My Dad didn't get it, but never spoke about it.
I think he's on the spectrum too, but in denial, and has never been diagnosed.
I now have no contact with my family, but it took me another 15 years or more after this incident for me to have the courage to break contact.
Sometimes we are not compatible with our family, either to work with, live with, or even interact with, and when that's the case its' a difficult journey, but we have to accept that it's not our fault.

So far as the suicidal thing, check your local directory, most places have a suicide hotline, where you can talk to someone over the phone.
They are specially trained to deal with people in your situation, will listen, and will not judge.
You may also need to see a therapist or counsellor, but that can come later. Talk to the suicide hotline first, then do what I said above.
It's not worth giving your life up, just because your family make you feel obligated to work for them.
You don't owe them workplace loyalty, or even family loyalty if they know the way they make you feel and still treat you like that.

Did you post about this job before? I seem to remember something.
Anyway: could you talk to your dad so you can both figure out how to make work more tolerable for you?
E.g.:
- cutting back hours (for now)
- less responsibility
- more guidance from co-workers
...

Forgive me for focusing on this specifically, but taking a whole bottle of Tylenol PM is not going to kill you. What it will do is make you sick and miserable and probably embarrassed and make it a lot harder to take pills in the future because of the conditioned stimulus of being sick. And your family would probably rather hear about this now instead of in a hospital room. As hard as it is, you should probably quit your job or at least find a way to reduce your responsibility to something more manageable.

The Tylenol PM isn't meant to kill me. It's just meant to knock me out while the other drugs kill me. It'd probably be more pleasant that way.

I'm terrible at my job and I hate it. My brain's not compatible with it at all. I'm there for about 4 hours a day, but I only do about 2 hours of work on average. I leave work each day mentally and emotionally exhausted, and then I nap for an hour. I feel kind of lazy for slacking off a lot, but I have no idea what I'm doing so I don't know what else to do. My procrastination habits, that involve compulsively searching news websites and Wrongplanet, always give me head aches, but it's too painful for me not to use them to distract me from my job, so I do it anyways.

suicide is a permanent solution for a temporary problem.
You need to look at your problem as a temporary issue, and address the issues one at a time in bite sized chunks so you don't feel overwhelmed.
Only when you can do that will you feel in control of the situation, and able to start finding coping strategies that will work.

It sounds like you really need to quit the job. Trust me though, there is a lot of risk with trying to overdose that it won't work, even with mixing pills. Having to deal with the hospital, and the psychologists, and all the people who will use a suicide attempt to invalidate what you say, is really nightmarish. Don't worry about what to do instead of your current job just yet. Obviously the job is causing you serious health problems. You are not lazy for wanting to take care of yourself.

If it's too much to tell your Dad about how this is affecting your health, maybe you could write a note or send an e-mail, at least saying that you won't be coming back in for now. I found that taking some time off and cutting my hours let me recover enough to talk to my employer about leaving the job when I had to quit. It's taken about a month to pull out of the exhaustion, depression, and migraines. Quitting doesn't make you lazy or anything like that, neither would asking for assistance. I don't know what area you are in, but are there any employment agencies that help people with disabilities find jobs with accommodations? A lot of places have e-mails you can contact and will pass on information of other supports that might be available as well. Even if you aren't well enough to jump into job searching immediately, having a better idea of what support might be out there might help you to feel less trapped in your current position. Contacting a crisis hotline might be a good idea too, even if you don't want to talk to them about the depression stuff, they might be aware of other resources in your community to make sure you are supported when you quit your job. You can worry about what to do next once the immediate concern of quitting has been dealt with.

Killing yourself over a job is f*****g stupid. There's no other way to put it.

If you want to quit, here's a few ideas

Send a letter to your dad
Just don't show up.

My dad is a bully and disapprover big time. If you're dad is anything like this, it is a downward spiral working for the guy. And after living on my own for two years during college, and then living on my own all the way from 1985 to 2008, I have been back living with my parents since October 2008. And it has been very difficult. My parents used the fact that I had appendicitis surgery the summer of 2008 to get me to move back to Houston, and then they stopped financial support and my dad thinks he can make me be good at jobs. I'm good at a lot of things, just not conforming to a corporate environment in a task that's dull and I don't believe in. And heck with the executive functioning, a lot of people aren't good at that, and not just artists but people like high-powered cardiologists who are great at the medical side but in shambles on the organizational side and only saved by one or several really competent administrative people in their office.

I saw an internist April 2011 and told him that I was struggling with depression and some thoughts of suicide. He says it constituents a medical emergency if a person has a definite plan regarding suicide. He also said at least several studies have shown that depressed people are actually more realistic than nondepressed persons, almost as if we humans need an optimism bias to keep trying long odd activities.

I've generally had unhelpful experiences with so-called mental health 'professionals.' Not all of them are bad, but at times, it sure seems that way. And where greyjay says they will use a suicide attempt to invalidate everything a person says, that's so wrong . . . but I can see that happening. Too many psychologists are ideologues and 'be righters,' as if they're more committed to a theory than to the human being right in front of them, and they probably are.

Okay, so one option is to see a regular doctor like an internist or a family practitioner. Or if you find yourself driving in the direction of an emergency room, keep going, go in there, tell them you are planning to commit suicide this Sunday night, and if they take it anything less than seriously, they're idiots. They'll probably call the psychiatric consult. And that's okay. At this point, better than nothing. And you don't need to believe everything they say.

Another option, you like nature, maybe get in the car and drive up to Montana and see if you can see some grizzly bears. Probably be a little bit lonely, but if you're up there, you might be able to find an organized hike of some sort. Or drive to Miami, enjoy the Cuban culture, maybe see if there are casinos, play a series of poker tournaments.

Please stay alive and please stay with us. If you look up autism activism (or maybe even Spectrum activism) on youtube, you might find some stuff. I really think in time (most) people will become as familiar and comfortable with a person being Aspie or Spectrum as (most) people are now familiar and comfortable with a person being lesbian and gay. Will the world be open enough? Maybe it will. Now, we may not often be able to be friends here on WP, just doesn't often work out, just like most blind dates don't work out. But we can be good and decent colleagues and that's something.

I have gotten into political activism, and peace activism, on the political left which I think pro-person and not pro-institution. Or if you're on the conservative side, that's fine, might be able to find some stuff to sink your teeth into.

PS I was more helped talking with a speech therapist back in the 1990s rather than doggone psychologists.

I'm sure there are other jobs that I'd be good at, but I'm not a very assertive or social person. I'm very good at math. I'm excellent with computers. I took 4 years of Electronics at my technical high school and I was very successful at it. I was at the top of my Chemistry class in my senior year. Now that I'm in college, I'm at the top of my Spanish class. I have a strong memory, that I used last week to memorize the names and locations of every country in the world, all 83 Russian territories, all 22 Chinese provinces, all 31 Mexican states, and all 26 Brazilian states, because I was bored and thought it'd be cool to know. It's painfully ironic that I'm stuck doing this job, just like most of my other problems in life. College doesn't start up again for me until a few weeks from now. Until then, I'm stuck here. I've been working as a mechanical engineer at my dad's shop for about 6 years, and I'm terrible at it. It requires an ability to assume a lot of things in order to be able to do this job. It's not logical enough for me. I know I could be very successful in the right work environment, but I don't know how to get there. It's also kind of depressing being so socially isolated. I don't like how the only ways that I can find to amuse myself involve media. I'd like to have more stuff to do in real life, apart from my computer, video games, and TV. I spend my whole workday on my work computer and then I go home and use my home computer. It's maddening spending every day like this.

So you just have to make it through a few weeks, which is still a pretty long time, but not so long as to be hopeless.



It looks like everything you're doing is about your brain. As much as I enjoy learning things and consuming media, this would drive me crazy too. If you can't bring yourself to go out and socialize, why not try doing something that makes good use of your hands?