{"id":357149,"date":"2026-03-31T17:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T17:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/357149\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T17:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T17:36:09","slug":"a-33-year-old-thought-they-were-depressed-after-feeling-flat-for-8-months-and-went-to-a-therapist-it-turned-out-they-just-hated-their-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/357149\/","title":{"rendered":"A 33-Year-Old Thought They Were Depressed After Feeling ‘Flat’ For 8 Months And Went To A Therapist. It Turned Out They Just Hated Their Job"},"content":{"rendered":"

For eight months, a 33-year-old marketing manager felt something was off. Not overwhelming sadness, not burnout that forced him to stop working; just a constant emotional dullness. He described it on Reddit\u2019s r\/work<\/a> as feeling \u201cflat,\u201d going through the motions at work and coming home with no energy or interest in doing anything.<\/p>\n

At first, he thought it might be depression. His boyfriend suggested therapy, and after six sessions, he got an answer he didn’t expect.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy therapist told me I\u2019m not depressed,\u201d he said. \u201cI just hate my job<\/a> and now I don\u2019t know what to do with that information.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The distinction was important. He wasn’t struggling across all areas of life. Weekends felt fine. Holidays felt normal. He stayed engaged with friends and hobbies and slept well. The problem showed up almost exclusively during work.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour brain isn\u2019t broken,\u201d his therapist told him. \u201cYour situation is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man earns about $94,000 working in marketing for an insurance company and has nearly a decade of experience in the field. But something shifted in the past two years. Work that once felt engaging now felt meaningless. \u201cEverything I do feels like I\u2019m just going through motions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The real issue now was figuring out which part of the job was causing it. Was it the company? The industry? Marketing itself? Or simply doing the same type of work for too long?<\/p>\n

He worried that quitting without answers would result in the same outcome somewhere else and \u201cdoing the same thing in a different building.\u201d<\/p>\n

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What People Who Have Been There Say<\/p>\n

The responses showed that his situation is more common than it seems.<\/p>\n

Many said the therapist had already done the hardest part by narrowing the issue down. \u201cMost people spend years thinking they\u2019re depressed when it\u2019s actually situational,\u201d one commenter wrote.<\/p>\n

Others pointed to burnout<\/a> as a likely factor. The numb, disengaged feeling he described, where nothing at work seems to matter, is a common sign, especially in roles that become repetitive or lack growth.<\/p>\n

Instead of rushing to quit, several people suggested breaking the job down into smaller pieces to find the real source of the problem.<\/p>\n

One person said they tracked their workdays for two weeks, writing down what they did, who they worked with, and how they felt. After that, they started noticing patterns they hadn’t picked up on before.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of a sudden I could see all sorts of patterns,\u201d they wrote. \u201cThose patterns highlighted that I could stay where I was \u2014 the people and industry were okay but I was bored. I missed learning and growing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That insight helped them make a more deliberate career move later instead of reacting impulsively.<\/p>\n

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The Difference Between A Bad Job And A Broken System<\/p>\n

A recurring theme was that the issue often isn’t work itself, but the specific conditions around it.<\/p>\n

A lot of people said the problem usually comes down to things like feeling your work has no purpose, dealing with office politics<\/a>, doing the same tasks over and over, and spending too much time in meetings and reports that don’t feel important.<\/p>\n

\u201cMajority of my stress and depressions comes from my job,\u201d one said. \u201cOffice politics is no joke. Feels like high school all over again. Only solution is to find a better work environment, which is hard these days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFinding a new job changed my life,\u201d another added. \u201cIt feels like a weight has been lifted off me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Image: Shutterstock<\/p>\n

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This article A 33-Year-Old Thought They Were Depressed After Feeling ‘Flat’ For 8 Months And Went To A Therapist. It Turned Out They Just Hated Their Job<\/a> originally appeared on Benzinga.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2026 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For eight months, a 33-year-old marketing manager felt something was off. Not overwhelming sadness, not burnout that forced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[188713,134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-357149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-going-through-the-motions","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-mentalhealth","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}