Thanks, it was alright, actually it was a good distraction from my own thoughts and the stress wasn't too bad. I'm only there for a couple more weeks before I go on vacation too. In the mean time I am going back over the chain of events in my head to see where this slide may have started. Not sure if that's a useful exercise or not. The benefit could be that I learn something from this experience and don't let it happen again. The cost is that it would take a decent amount of time, and in my current state the chance of reaching false conclusions is higher. Will probably work through it by journalling more as my therapist recommended.

Just a thought: would this be a good place to start that exploration?

"Denial of what was going on inside me is what got me into a crisis state in the first place."

Is that an attribute of your workplace, that you feel forced into denial, or is it an attribute of the emotional place where you were at the time?

It may be a wrong guess; that sentence just struck me when I read it.

Well it's both. I have a job with a weird culture where nobody outright admits things are wrong, they just try to subtly undercut ideas or individuals that disagree with the herd mentality. In mgt school this is called "Groupthink" and my corporate culture is very heavy on that. Additionally I grew up with sufficient denial going on both in my family and just inside myself that it's fairly ingrained into my personality.

You need a new herd. :-)

I know you've tried a lot of things, but does journaling do anything for you? Maybe if you made yourself a promise of having a place where there's no denial, that could grow into something. It would probably have to be completely private, especially at first, but maybe that would be a way.

My father, who was born illegitimate, as they say, loved the pseudo-Latin phrase, "Non illegitimus carborundum", which he translated as "Don't let the bastards grind you down." Words he lived by, with all the consequences, positive and negative. I'm just thinking that you can make a point not to let your corporate culture become your internal culture, or not let it synergize too much with your internal culture.

Also worth considering is your choice of surroundings, whether your internal style made you more willing to accept the job's external style. I know that I wouldn't have spent nearly as long with the ex if I hadn't already been telling myself the same sh*t that she did. I just couldn't understand why it sounded so familiar. ;-)

That is interesting, journaling is the most recent recommendation from my therapist as well. She also asked what I do for relaxation, and I could only come up with meditation. I don't do anything on a regular basis that people would consider "fun" and this is likely causing me to build up stress until I explode as happened 2 weeks ago.

I am working on the career piece. I want to gain some more experience there and rack up some good accomplishments to prepare me for a move to a different company. I used to love my job, and I do love my job description, but unfortunately the job has turned so political that I don't much care for it anymore.