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Julie Answers: What do I do when I hate my job and can’t quit?
Alison asked: What can I do when I no longer feel in control of my life? I want to quit my job. My work no longer brings me any joy, and my lack of passion is affecting my productivity and my coworkers. Every day I put in the minimum effort and spend more time crying and shutting down. I try to look for other jobs, but I have no focus. I am at the point where I want to pull the emergency brake and just stop working until I can pull myself together again.
I’ve expressed my frustration to my spouse, and he doesn’t want me to quit, saying that we can’t afford it. He also says I don’t know what I want to do in my career, and not working won’t change that. But I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. I want to take some time to figure that out. If I can’t, the only way I cope is by repeating to myself “what I want doesn’t matter” and try to perform my tasks automatically. I feel like I am losing what makes me a person.
Dear Alison,
The experience of being stuck in a job you hate can be extremely demoralizing. And it tends to be a spiral that goes down and down — you feel miserable at work, and so you lose motivation and your performance suffers. That impacts your relationships with your co-workers, making you feel less supported and more alienated, and all of that combined leads to…
