Trying to get back to full-time work whilst recovering from depression

There is a particular kind of silence that follows depression; it’s the absence left behind when your old life no longer fits and the new one hasn’t quite formed yet. That’s why I often compare depression with the state of metamorphosis.

For me, that silence showed up most loudly and clearly when I tried to return to full-time work.

On paper, recovery often looks deceptively simple. You are “better.” You are no longer in crisis. You can get out of bed. You can answer emails. You want to take a shower again. You can even feel moments of interest again, even if they are brief. From the outside, this seems like the natural point to resume normal life. [nor-mal-life?] From the inside, it feels more like learning to walk on a spread ankle that hasn’t fully healed. It’s all deceptive, like the Tardis itself.

Depression doesn’t just take time away from your life, time you will never get back; depression changes your relationship with Time itself. During my worst periods, days blurred into each other. There is a feeling of being lost when you wake at 4 and can’t tell or remember if it’s the morning or afternoon. It all feels the same. Productivity lost its meaning. The idea of planning months ahead, something I once did instinctively, sometimes even with excitement, felt abstract, even absurd. So, when the question arose, When are you going back to full-time work?, it landed with unexpected weight. It assumed a straight line: illness, recovery, return. My reality was far less linear.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how fragile confidence becomes after depression. I didn’t recognise myself. I didn’t just doubt my energy levels which were extremely, painfully low; I doubted my judgment, my resilience, my ability to cope with pressure, my ability to cope with life itself. Tasks I once handled without thought now, suddenly, carried a quiet panic. It was not because I couldn’t or were able to do them; it was because I no longer trusted myself to withstand the consequences of doing them badly, slowly, or imperfectly. And so the panic attacks developed, perhaps as a mechanism of defense. That, followed by anguish, a feeling only pacified by going back to sleep.

Work culture rarely has language for this stage of recovery. We talk about burnout, sick leave, and resilience, but not about the in-between space, the liminal period where you are functional but not fully restored. Where a full workday feels like a marathon, and the cost of pushing too hard isn’t immediate failure but relapse.

Trying to return to full-time work forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth: recovery is absolutely not about getting back to who you were before. That person lived under different internal conditions. Different reserves. Different assumptions about energy being infinite if you were healthy and stress being somehow manageable if you just tried harder or avoided certain situations and people. Depression dismantled those illusions.

There is also grief in this process. Grief for the version of yourself who could sprint through deadlines, juggle multiple projects, and thrive on urgency. Grief for the ease with which the work you loved once anchored your identity. Grief for the person you once were and no longer exists. When depression strips that away, rebuilding a relationship with work becomes highly emotional.

One of the hardest lessons was learning that rest does not automatically mean laziness, and caution does not equal weakness. Returning slowly felt like failure at first, like I was settling for less than I was capable of. But over time, I began to understand that pacing myself was not a lack of ambition in any way; it was rather a form of self-preservation.

Depression also recalibrated my values. Work still matters to me deeply; I care about ideas, innovation, impact, contribution, and of course the much needed financial compensation. However, it no longer gets to be the sole measure of my worth. That shift was survival rather than philosophical. When your mind has turned against you once, you learn to be protective of the conditions that keep you well. You learn how to keep a distance from what or who pushes you down rather than up.

What surprised me most was how invisible this whole struggle is. And I go back to the Tardis comparison; from the outside, returning to work looks like progress. Inside, it can feel like negotiating with an unpredictable nervous system every single day. Can I handle this meeting? This deadline? This pressure? This person? The answer changes daily, sometimes hourly.

I am still navigating this terrain that feels both familiar and yet unpredictable. I don’t have a neat ending or a triumphant return-to-normality (whatever that means). What I do have is a quieter, more honest relationship with work and most importantly, with myself, one that allows for flexibility, boundaries, and the possibility that healing continues even after you appear “back.”

If there is anything I wish were better understood, it is this: going back to full-time work after depression is not and should never be about proving strength. I’m not here to prove anything to anyone. It is about practicing attentiveness to your own limits, your internal and continuous changes, those that you can’t control, your need for gentleness and understanding in a world that seemingly rewards endurance above all. Because, sometimes the strength is simply not there, it has been damaged by a force greater than your will power, and that is the greatest and most debilitating force of depression.

Recovery does not mean erasing what happened. Instead, it does mean learning how to live and work and exist with the knowledge that your mind is something to care for, not conquer, especially during the most vulnerable times.

And sometimes, showing up at all is already an act of courage.

- Susan [Thu 8th Jan, 2026, 11:40pm]

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