From Dream Job to Burnout: Swimming with Sharks and Drowning in Stress

I thought once I moved, the uncertainty would dissipate. And to an extent, it did, if only for a while.

The rash disappeared for one - turns out, it was stress... Yay?

I filled my little blue car with the contents of my childhood bedroom and headed 500 miles south. I got my room into shape, just in time to start work two days after I arrived.

I was a researcher for a show about sharks. And, yes, it was as cool as it sounds. 

My job was to find stories, research shark behaviour, and speak to people across the globe who were on the frontline of shark protection initiatives.

Side note — many of our top shark species are on the brink of extinction, which is like, a massive problem for the health of our oceans. Removing apex predators from an ecosystem is catastrophic. Imagine going to Africa and killing all the lions. Zebra and wildebeest would run riot, the grasslands would be destroyed, and the entire ecosystem would collapse. The same thing happens in the ocean when sharks disappear.

Anyway, I'll maybe save that one for another day.

My new flat had been moulded out of a large-end terrace Victorian house. My flatmate and I occupied the middle-floor flat. The ceilings were thin. Our upstairs neighbour kept me up with her late-night baths that drained into a pipe directly outside my room, and I could frequently hear our downstairs neighbour yell at her daughter in French. It was freezing in the winter and too hot to sleep during the summertime. And there were some really magical times, particularly in the summer.

My flatmate and I would sit on the garden wall and share a bottle of wine while hot air balloons glided through the sky above.

In the beginning, I remember feeling genuinely optimistic about the promise Bristol held. I'd been welcomed into a job at a company founded by a woman whose work I deeply respect. I knew the team I was working with were some of the most talented, experienced people in the industry.

I knew the workload was going to be enormous, but I was determined to throw myself into it headfirst. At the time, that meant 8 to 9 hours a day at the desk in my bedroom. I was convinced that time at my desk was directly proportional to success. It was tough, but I didn't mind at first; things were new and exciting. I was challenged and often found that any task I was given, I conquered or could lean on someone else to point me in the right direction.

I was expanding my network, learning new skills and receiving frequent praise from my colleagues.

But there was an underlying desperation to prove myself now that I’d finally been given the chance. I was chasing the goal of becoming the perfect colleague. An unachievable goal that no amount of feedback or praise could satisfy for long. I lingered in Perfectionism's shadow until I didn't even notice the sunlight was gone.

And, in the darkness came the thoughts. A vicious voice told me I was an outsider - that I didn’t deserve to be there. That I was only working in TV because I’d copied my friends, or because I’d bought myself a degree. I’d paid my way into a role. It told me anything it could to make me feel shit.

Ah, yes, we love a healthy dose of imposter syndrome.

Then, the evidence began to pile up. The facts that reinforced the belief I was an outsider. Because once you believe something to be true about yourself, your brain will find proof to back it up. And that’s amazing if you believe you’re the happiest person in the world—your brain will collect reasons to reinforce that, finding things that make you smile all the time. But if, as I did, you believe something negative about yourself—like 'I don’t belong here' or 'I’m not good enough'—your brain will do the same thing, searching for evidence that only deepens the feeling. Rationality be damned! In psychology, this is called confirmation bias.

It manifested in strange ways. For example, if I sent an email to a team member and didn’t get a reply, I was convinced I’d done something wrong. When I saw other team members in meetings without me, my brain told me it was because they didn’t like me or it sent me down 'What If Avenue'.

What if they think I don’t know what I’m doing and then they find out I’m a fraud? 

What if they think I’m not good enough for this role?

I could never entertain that maybe they were just busy, dealing with their shit, or talking about something that didn’t concern me. Nope—confirmation bias was in full swing, and my brain was only interested in gathering ‘proof’ that I didn’t belong.

To prove the doubt wrong, I took on more. (What do you mean that's never going to work?)

I frequently stayed late at my desk until I felt everything was done or at least in a good place to take on the next day. My mind was consumed by my to-do list and everything else became irrelevant. Waking up at 3 am with a racing mind and crying at my desk became the norm. 

Whenever I considered telling someone I was at capacity, the voice in my head shut me down quickly.

Who are you to voice your struggles?

Everyone’s in the same boat here, you’re not special.

So, I kept going. I answered emails while curled up in bed at 11 pm on Friday nights while my flatmate was out having a life. Boundaries didn’t exist. I needed people to think I was capable of anything and how could they if I dared to say “no”?

It didn't take long for the self-deprecating way I felt about my work life to seep into every other part of my life. I didn't feel like I belonged in my flat, no matter how much my flatmate told me to contribute to the artwork on the walls or the growing plant collection. I was determined to feel like an outsider there too. It made it easier to I didn't belong in Bristol on the whole.

It manifested as avoidance as well. Even when lockdown lifted, I never made any attempt to meet new people, choosing to drink alcohol alone in the flat instead. From my place on the couch, I became trapped in a cycle of downloading dating apps to try to mitigate my loneliness, having a quick swipe through and then deleting it again because I didn't feel good enough. I couldn't see what I had to offer a potential partner. My confidence was in the gutter.

I became easily irritated and emotionally reactive.

Six months after I'd moved, my best friends from Scotland came to visit. We went to a bar that specialised in ice cream cocktails but I ended up being mean to both of them before we'd taken our seats. I started sobbing at the table once I saw the looks of concern flash across their faces. They weren't angry, they were worried. I was unrecognisable.

Even though I was desperately lonely, my solution was to push people away, especially the girls I’d grown up with. If they got too close, they’d see I was drowning in shark-infested waters.

I couldn't see that the only dangerous sharks in my life were my thoughts.

The most harrowing part was that I honestly thought this was all normal. I thought this was how adulthood worked—filled with relentless pressure, internal criticism, and constant hustle. I didn’t know everything - the imposter syndrome, avoidance, and desperation to be perfect - were all manifestations of the same thing - anxiety.

I didn’t understand that the way I felt was connected to everything I'd suppressed in the past either —that all that self-doubt, the feeling of not being good enough, was bubbling up inside me in this new separate environment - and all of that was compounded by the bin fire of the world around me at the time.

Yes, of course, it's obvious to see now. But at the time, I’d lost my place in the world, and it was confusing and painful.

Certainty - in myself, my abilities, the world around me - the one thing that had always come so easily to me in childhood was gone. And now, I was lost, floating around in this adult world like a jellyfish in the deep blue sea.

So, at the end of my first year in Bristol, burnt out and with one clear purpose, I got into my little blue car and drove 500 miles north, back to Scotland.