Quitting my stressful job to protect my stability

This is a composite story, drawn from common experiences shared in the schizophrenia community. It does not depict a real individual.

I am 36 years old, a man, and I live in a small condo in Austin. For seven years I worked in enterprise software sales. I was good at it. I made over six figures. I also went into the hospital twice in two years, lost most of my friendships, and spent most of my evenings crying in my car in the parking garage. Eight months ago I quit. I want to write about how I made that decision and what has happened since.

What the job did to me

Sales is structured around quarters. Every twelve weeks the entire emotional weather of my life would reset based on a number I did or did not hit. Quotas climbed every year. The hours were long, with a lot of late-night calls to teams in other time zones. I travelled enough that my sleep schedule was never the same two weeks in a row.

I have schizophrenia. I was diagnosed at 24, when my first episode interrupted a graduate program. I had been stable on aripiprazole and CBT for years before the sales job. The job did not give me schizophrenia. The job, slowly, made my schizophrenia harder to manage.

Here is what I noticed in retrospect:

• My sleep, which is the single biggest predictor of my stability, was destroyed by travel and end-of-quarter pushes.
• The chronic stress meant I was at a higher arousal baseline all the time, which made my voices, when they returned, feel louder.
• I was drinking three or four drinks at every dinner with clients. I knew this was a bad idea on antipsychotics. I did it anyway.
• I did not have time for therapy. I did not have time for exercise. I did not have time for the small daily things that had kept me well in the years before.

The two hospitalisations came in the back half of two consecutive fiscal years. Both times I was discharged within a week, took a few days off, and returned to work pretending I had had "a bad flu."

The day I started to consider quitting

It was a Tuesday in October. I was in a hotel in Chicago, on a trip I did not need to be on. I had not slept well in three nights. I caught myself, mid-call with a customer, hearing a faint voice I had not heard in two years. I muted the call, went to the bathroom, and washed my face.

I sat on the bed afterwards and did some math. Not financial math — health math. I had been hospitalised twice in 24 months. That was four times the rate of my previous decade. My voices had returned. My weight was up 25 pounds. My therapist appointments had dropped from weekly to roughly every six weeks. By every metric I had tracked since my diagnosis, I was getting worse.

I called my psychiatrist the next morning. She had been gentle about my job for years. That morning she said, more directly than she had ever said anything, "I think this job is going to send you back to the hospital, and the next time may be longer."

The decision and the spreadsheet

I am not a romantic person. I made a spreadsheet. On one side I put the financial cost of leaving — savings drawdown, change in lifestyle, loss of bonus, COBRA premiums for health insurance, lost retirement contributions. On the other side I put the financial cost of staying — projected hospitalisations every 12–18 months, FMLA leave that would not pay full salary, eventual disability if my trajectory continued, loss of the relationships I needed to recover when sick.

The numbers were not actually close. The job was paying me a lot in the short term and costing me a future. I gave notice three weeks later.

What I did instead

I did not quit into nothing. I had spent four months before quitting talking to a career counsellor at my local clubhouse model program, which I had been quietly attending on Saturday mornings. We mapped out lower-stress jobs that would still use my skills. I ended up taking a 40% pay cut to work as a customer success manager at a smaller company — same industry, same skill set, half the travel, no quarterly quota.

I downsized. I sold my second car. I moved from a two-bedroom apartment to a one-bedroom condo. I cancelled the streaming services I was not using. I built a budget that worked on the new salary plus a small buffer.

I asked for accommodations at the new job through HR — primarily a no-travel arrangement and a flexible start time so I could keep my morning sleep regular. NAMI's workplace resources and the Job Accommodation Network were useful for understanding what to ask for. I did not disclose my diagnosis specifically; I disclosed a "chronic medical condition" with documentation from my psychiatrist.

Eight months in

I sleep seven to eight hours every night. I have not had a hospital admission since. I have not heard a voice since the first month. I see my therapist weekly again. I exercise four times a week. I cook most of my own dinners. I have re-friended two people I had drifted from. I travel for pleasure roughly once a quarter, on my own schedule.

I miss the salary. I do not miss any other part of the job.

What I would tell someone in a similar bind

• Track the metrics that matter — hospitalisations, sleep, therapy attendance, weight, social contact. Numbers cut through the story you tell yourself about "managing fine."
• Talk to your psychiatrist directly. Ask them, plainly: do you think this job is making me worse? Their answer will likely surprise you with how clear it is.
• Build the bridge before you cross it. Career counselling, savings, a downsizing plan, a target job category — none of this has to happen in a panic.
• The accommodations conversation at the new job is easier than you think. You do not have to disclose a diagnosis to ask for a no-travel role and consistent hours.
• Lower pay is not lower life. The first month I felt poorer. By month four I felt richer in the ways that actually keep me well.

For more on the work side of this, see work and schizophrenia and quiet quitting and mental health.

This article is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified mental health professional. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 in the US, or your local emergency number.