Perspectives: Prioritizing mental health
When to leave a job.
This week's Perspectives is an interview with Meredith Kucherov. Meredith is a senior content strategist and writer, currently working as a freelancer. Meredith and I met at a marketing agency a few years ago and have been friends since. We've even met in person!
Meredith has always talked very openly about mental health and burnout, which is why I asked if she would be willing to share her work experiences with me.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Anna Burgess Yang: Tell me when you first started experiencing burnout, and did you recognize it was burnout at the time?
Meredith Kucherov: I didn't realize that I was experiencing burnout until I was past the point of no return. I was a team lead, and had been promoted a few times. I thought I was on top of the world. Things were hard, but I thought they were going to get better, because that's what management kept promising. I thought I was going to be part of that. The thing that was most important to me was to support my team and set them up for success.
And then I realized that I couldn't do that; it was outside of my control. I'd been overcompensating for very unsustainable practices at the company through my own force of will, and tried to shield my employees from that. It was emotionally draining. People told me to just look out for myself, and that it was all about hitting the numbers — and that doesn't align with my values. I had a choice of screwing people over and feeling complicit in that, or taking myself out of the equation.
ABY: At what point did you realize that it was starting to take a toll on you?
MK: I had some of the classic signs of burnout, like being short-tempered and emotionally volatile. Every little thing felt like a huge thing. I was working all the time and wasn't taking care of myself. This was in 2021, so it was still Covid era. I thought maybe I was just dealing with the trauma of the time.
But it really kind of hit me all at once. I was visiting my parents, still in "I'm on top of the world" mode. I was working from their place, and they were telling me, "Meredith, you seem worn down. I can see this is taking a toll on you." And I thought, "No, I've totally got this." About a month later, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I decided to take leave under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to figure out what was going on with me, and to reflect on what was going on. I encourage anyone to take FMLA, if you can afford to. It's unpaid, but your job is secure for any kind of issue, including depression or burnout.
ABY: What did you decide to do after that?
MK: I decided to look for another role. This was during The Great Resignation, so the job market was popping. I landed an in-house role at a startup. I was still recovering from burnout, but this was a much healthier environment where I was able to do good work while maintaining some balance. Unfortunately, after about a year, I was hit with a layoff, which definitely feels like a tech rite of passage at this point.
While I was job hunting again, I started focusing on fitness and committed to making the changes in my life that I could control. I did a lot of work during that time on my mental health with my therapist and my psychiatrist. By the time I started working again, I wasn't burned out anymore.
ABY: You then had another job later that also impacted your mental health. What was that like?
MK: The problems in the first situation were very institutional. At this later job, it was my manager. We started out having a good relationship, and at some point, I don't know exactly why, things changed for her.
Nine months into this job, I worked on a very big project. It was eight weeks of round-the-clock working, trying to compensate for other people's shortcomings and working within a very hierarchical organization. I hit the burnout fuse after that insanity. I took three weeks off and used all of my sick days. But I was still really trying to make things work. I got a lot of positive feedback from people at the organization.
But a few months later, things really soured with my boss. I think she was under a lot of pressure, and I was the scapegoat. She'd tell me to address something, and then tell me to deprioritize the project. Then later ask me, "Why haven't you done this already?" I expressed that I did not understand what the expectations for me were, because I felt like I had been doing what I was told to do. But it felt like everything I did was not what she wanted.
ABY: How did you eventually decide that you couldn't take it anymore?
MK: HR got involved in the dynamic between my boss and me. There was a meeting with me, my boss, and HR. I was asking, "What is this going to be about?" and the response was "We're just touching base, nothing to worry about." And then they hit me with, "You're not meeting the expectations of your role." It caught me off guard, especially because I had only ever received positive feedback before. I asked them to explain where I needed to improve, but I never got a real answer.
While going through this, I decided to pursue getting a disability accommodation. I have anxiety and major depressive disorder (MDD). I've been in treatment since my 20s, and I'm very open about it. People who have worked with me have felt like my openness was helpful and contributed to a positive culture.
But at this company, I definitely experienced the other side of that coin, where it can bite you in the ass. I felt like disclosing negatively impacted how people perceived me — before any of the issues with my boss surfaced. They assumed I was overly emotional or saw any emotional expression as a weakness. When I started pursuing an accommodation, that's when I felt like HR went from trying to help me as much as they could to just doing the minimum of what they're required to do by law.
HR suggested that I take short-term disability, and I decided to do that so I could reset. A big plus for short-term disability, as compared to FMLA, is that it’s paid. There is a bit more paperwork involved, and you need a letter from your doctor, but it was manageable.
While on leave, I tried to get accommodations put in place. Simple things, like having my boss tell me in writing if she wants to talk about something versus dropping a meeting on my calendar with no context. But when I got back from leave, I felt like they weren’t trying to make things work. It felt like they were either going to fire me or were trying to get me to quit. So I quit. It’s the first time I’ve ever voluntarily left a job without something else lined up. I was fortunate enough, because of my spouse's income, to have the flexibility to do that, but I know that's not an option for many people, especially in the current job market.
ABY: What impact did that experience have on you?
MK: That whole experience shook my confidence. Some people at the company called me a rock star, though my boss obviously did not in those last few months. It made me second-guess myself, the quality of my work, and my judgment. I've seen that show up in the freelance work I'm taking on as well. And I’ve had to rebuild that confidence. On one of my first freelance assignments, I was in knots about getting it right. I was afraid I wasn’t good enough. But it was actually a big success, and it got me more work and more clients. So I try to remind myself of that when the doubt creeps back in.
I've learned that I can't always be transparent about my mental health and my disability, because it could backfire or be held against me. When freelancing, I can't say, "Hey, I've been burned in this particular way before, and here's how we can work together around that.” It's all just business. Right now, having those boundaries is a positive thing — especially because I am more in control of my work and the people I choose to work with.
ABY: What would you say to other people who are working a job and struggling with mental health?
MK: Try to identify safe people, whether that's a peer or your manager. But maybe be a bit more circumspect than I was.
And I would say that if you're dealing with something or you're burned out and you want to take leave, like FMLA or short-term disability, use those benefits (if they're available to you). Get disability accommodations if you need them.
HR will help you and give you resources, but they can't fix a bad boss. Or a bad situation. Or a bad dynamic. And sometimes asking for some of those things or disclosing too much can backfire, where people then underestimate you. There's bias, and some companies are better than others at reckoning with that. But that doesn’t mean that HR is the bad guy. More often than not, I think people in HR want to do what’s best for people, but there’s a lot that’s beyond their control.
I think that your health is more important than a job. And I feel torn about saying this, especially in this economy. No job is worth your mental health, but people also have to live. Don't stay in a job that's actively harming you. Whether you start actively looking for another job, or get out and find part-time work doing retail or something completely different. Try to find the little things to get you through it. And take care of yourself first.
Most issues of this publication are free because I love sharing ideas and connecting with others about the future of work. If you want to support me as a writer, you can buy me a coffee.
If you love this newsletter and look forward to reading it every week, please consider forwarding it to a friend or becoming a subscriber.
Have a work story you’d like to share? Please reach out using this form. I can retell your story while protecting your identity, share a guest post, or conduct an interview.
This hit home. I felt like I was reading my personal story. In India, a lot of things are not even acknowledged. Burnout as a concept is literally alien in the corporate world. That’s why until I read this piece, I couldn’t even tell what was wrong. Thank you for sharing this.