What Layoffs and Burnout Are Doing to People's Mental Health

I've been practicing in the Bay Area for years, and I've always worked with a lot of clients from high-pressure fields — tech, finance, academia, mental health. This post was inspired by what I've been seeing in tech specifically, because the volume of clients coming to me from that world in the last couple of years has been striking. But the patterns I'm describing are not unique to tech — I see them across industries, and if you work in a high-pressure environment and any of this resonates, it's meant for you too. Across all of these fields, something has shifted in recent years. More and more people are coming to me not just stressed or overworked — they're coming in a state of hyperarousal, caught between burnout and the constant fear of being laid off or pushed out. The two things are feeding each other, and the toll it's taking is significant.

The impact that these mass layoffs and constant industry upheaval have had on employee mental health has been tremendous, and I've been seeing it more and more in my practice. Many of my clients who have been in their fields for ten, fifteen, even twenty years tell me they used to love the culture, love the work, love the people. And now it's the opposite. The work that once gave them meaning is stealing their joy — and it's spilling into every other part of their lives.

What it actually looks like

What I see in my office looks like this: constant worry that won't turn off. Hypervigilance around Slack or messaging channels — checking, refreshing, bracing for the next announcement. Feeling unmotivated at work, and then noticing that the motivation is gone from hobbies and personal life too. Fatigue that sleep doesn't fix. Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. Social withdrawal. A flatness where there used to be energy and curiosity. Difficulty comprehending what they're reading — things that used to be easy to absorb just aren't going in. Vision that feels blurry or off. Frequent headaches or dizziness. Stomach and GI issues that don't have a clear cause. The body has a way of communicating what the mind is trying to push through.

Many people who were once high performers — people who built careers they were proud of — now describe feeling demoralized. Like they've lost all sense of passion for what they do. That's not laziness. That's not weakness. That's what prolonged stress and fear do to a nervous system and a sense of self over time.

What's striking is that a lot of these clients are coming to me before things have fully fallen apart. They're still showing up. They're still getting decent performance reviews. But they know they can't keep skating by, and they know they can't maintain what they're currently producing. They can feel things are about to implode — and they're desperate to get help before that happens. That level of self-awareness is something I deeply respect. It takes courage to ask for support before you've hit a wall.

They might seem like they're keeping it together on paper, but people have started to notice. Coworkers or managers have expressed concerns. There are signs at work — but a lot of the time, things are really falling apart at home first. People have personal lives that get sacrificed before work does. Relationships suffer. Parenting suffers. Self-care goes out the window. Work is the last thing to show the cracks, because it's the thing people feel the most pressure to hold onto right now. But should it be?

Why people wait so long to ask for help

One of the hardest things I witness is how long people wait before they reach out. They're not asking for support because they want a break. They're asking because things have gotten to the point where they genuinely need medical intervention — and even then, they often come in with a lot of guilt and fear about whether it's a "good enough" reason to stop.

I want to say something clearly. If you haven't been sleeping — really sleeping — in weeks. If you're not eating, or eating in ways that don't feel like you. If you're losing weight without trying to. If you're in constant pain from headaches that won't go away. If your stomach is a mess and your GI system is telling you every day that something is wrong. If you're breaking out in rashes. If you used to read easily and now you sit down with a paragraph and the words just don't make sense — you read it once, twice, three times and it's not going in, and that has never happened to you before. If you try to do a task you've done a million times and something that used to take you five minutes now seems impossible to even start, let alone finish. If you feel dizzy just going through your day — that is a medical reason to stop and get help. These are real, measurable, physiological symptoms. They are not signs of weakness or an inability to handle pressure. They are signs that your body is under serious strain. It's not always any one of these things in isolation — it's when they start presenting together, stacking up, that it can be really indicative of a medical reason to take leave. That's something that should be properly evaluated by someone with the authority and competence to assess it. But please don't dismiss what you're experiencing just because you can't point to a single visible thing that's wrong.

You are bleeding. You're just not bleeding blood. You're bleeding in every other way — but because it's not visible, it doesn't feel like a good enough reason to stop. I want to tell you that it is. It more than is.

The truth is that many people in tech feel they cannot say they need help. The culture doesn't always make it safe to do so. And so they push through until they can't anymore, and only then — when they're already in crisis — do they feel like they have "permission" to stop. It's one of the saddest patterns I see, and it doesn't have to be that way.

On taking medical leave

I know there are people who wonder whether employees are trying to take advantage of medical leave. That has not been my experience. Every person I've seen in this situation has been in genuine distress — and genuinely motivated to get better. In fact, many of my clients in this state want to be seen more than once a week when they start — and if it's clinically appropriate, I'm happy to do that with them — in the hopes that they can get a jump start on getting better. They are not looking for an escape. They are looking for a way back to themselves.

If you are struggling and considering taking leave, please know: you do not have to be completely falling apart to deserve support. You are allowed to ask for help before you hit rock bottom. And if you're already there — that is more than enough reason.