I've been talking about it on my weekly gibs.

My job is being a scanner. I don't make heads explode, I digitalize physical paper documents into PDFs taking into account several requirements. It is a simple (not complex) job, but it's a very difficult one as you need to be aware on many things at once and be concentrated on what you're doing all the time. No errors are allowed. You can try and retry as many times as you need, we don't even have time constraints; but we must review our work so we are sure it's 100% error free before handing it to our group managers. If there's any error, you're called to watch what it was, so you're aware where you're maybe doing it with less attention or caring. Our customers rely on that documentation for legal purposes; e.g. we work with many piece precision casting for airplane pieces (specially engines). So if tomorrow a plane crashes, every company involved in the making of the smallest piece of the plane can put on the table their documentation to prove that the piece was measured in 35 places and the unavoidable minimal differences between the "ideal" piece and the actual piece were within working tolerance. They track every person who has handled the piece in any way, even the molten metal batch which it came from; they make christallographic and ultrasound tests, and many others I don't understand. Now imagine the documentation of one piece is missing. Or one page in it is missing, or unreadable because we didn't realize it had a picture that needed to be scanned with a different colour profile. Or that some info at the bottom is cut. Our work must be clean, clear, faithful to the original, complete, digitally signed, etc. Ok that's an extreme case, but we treat all our works with the same importance, that's why we have a good reputation. And price!

The problem is that I have a disability (I'm on what's called "protected job"). And I can't really concentrate much. However I'm a good worker, and while I'm the newest one in the department (10 months already in the job and still the rookie), I'm doing even-more-difficult jobs for important customers that other workers with less experience and much more concentration aren't allowed to touch. Maybe they care less, maybe they don't review their work that well (it's a repetitive work, easy to get distracted with random thinking), even the one working behind me I know he's so confident in his work that he doesn't review it, which makes the department boss pull her hair too often (to his credit, he really commits few errors, but that's enough to consider him a worker not to trust for certain jobs).

The purge has been more mental than physical. E.g. I've been trying to decide whether I should retake the talks with my social worker seeking for gov monetary help to independice myself from where I live now, but I'm not going to move anytime soon, so why add more commitments now? I talked to her about my situation and she agreed it was a good idea to take that worry source out of my mind now. That kind of things. You might think that making 1-2 weekly giveaways is easy and takes just a few minutes, but I've reached thursday too often with 0 energy to even do that to know it. I wanted to keep at least one year. Soon it'll be one year of weekly giveaways and believe it or not, I'm already excited to take that worry/commitment out of my agenda. It'll release pressure I put on myself; I know it's my fault, but since I can't handle it well now, I have to look for myself, thus bye bye weekly gibs. That kind of stuff to leave my mind free for what's important.

About professional help, well, we have good health system here. But the mental health part is almost collapsed. Too many patients, too few professionals. My own shrink is the head of the department and she's overwhelmed with so many new patients coming in but the hospital repeatedly deny her requests for more personnel.

I had a breakdown this spring, and when it reached the peak and I really fell to the bottom, I thought what I was doing wrong. Since my gf died more than 2 years ago, I've been doing huge good steps ahead to enhance my life and mental health; however those improvements lacked a solid ground, deep foundations, so when something serious came and overwhelmed me, namely my job, it all fell down. Thus, the thing was that I didn't really face anything really bad compared to losing my loved one, thus I could keep ahead... Until I smashed myself onto a too thick wall.

My conclusion about what I was doing wrong was that I was doing it alone. I needed guidance. Due to what I explained about our health system, going 30-45 minutes every month to a psichologist wasn't going to do any good, so I headed to the private side. My shrink recommended me one who turned out to be real good. We communicate very well, and I'm doing great advances on understanding myself and my problems so I can acquire the "tools" to handle my limitations and handicaps. The problem? Money. Oh yes, the big bane of our times. I can afford it because I have a job, and it consumes almost one third of my income. It's still a good invested money.

If you can't afford a private one (one hour/week is what I thought I needed), even going to a public one, if you have the chance, might mean a big, big difference than trying to do it all yourself. That's if you think you need one, I'm not sure to what you're facing, but follow these steps.

1. Think if you have a problem.
2. If the answer is yes, think if you need help to solve it, or to learn to live with it.
3. If the answer is yes, think if you are in a situation where you can accept that help (not everyone is, I wasn't for so many years... decades).
4. If the answer is yes... Don't think anymore. Seek that help. Fight to find it. Put all you have into getting it.
5. If the answer is no... Still seek it. Why? Because you are alone and you might be wrong. You need a second opinion, which might tell you that you are right, its not the time, or might make you change your mind.

You can read my opinion in seeking mental health professional help here: https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/r0XGD/demon-turf

I hope you've not fallen asleep, I'm too used to write walls of text.