My Corporate Success Ran on Dysregulation
Corporate America did not just shape my paycheck. It rewired my nervous system over time. When I used to talk about the economy, I did not experience charts or earnings calls. My body experienced it as a daily psychological environment at work. I knew the 7 PM inbox ping labeled “quick ask,” and my heart rate climbed for hours, even after I logged off at night alone. When stress was called part of the job, I heard the subtext that dysregulation had been normalized. By dysregulation, I meant shallow sleep, racing thoughts, irritability, and a nervous system that rarely reset.
In the corporate roles I held, the hidden requirement was not competence alone. It was endurance, which meant constant availability despite what my body signaled. Output was rewarded more reliably than stability, and responsiveness beat sustainability. High capacity sounded like praise even when it meant skipped meals, sacrificed sleep, and constant urgency. I kept a mask on because being unbreakable earned approval and promotions. When strain surfaced as mistakes, conflict, or collapse, the failure was treated as personal and surprising. The tempo that trained my behavior escaped scrutiny, and I could not name it while I was still inside it.
I reached my conclusions from range across work worlds over many years, not ideology. From 2007 to 2013, I worked nonprofit and public sector roles with tight resources and strong missions. The pace felt human for me, and recovery still stayed possible. From 2014 to 2018, I worked for three small businesses, and I was often at my best. When I turned 26 and aged out of my parents’ plan, insurance became urgent. The trade off was thinner benefits and fewer safeguards, even as balance improved. Corporate employment promised steadier coverage for treatment, and that promise pulled me toward it.
I entered corporate America in 2018 and stayed through 2025, full time. Normal quickly became after hours messaging, shifting priorities, meeting overload, and urgent deadlines by default for me. Incentives stopped feeling abstract and started shaping my body and calendar from day one. Underpaying and undertraining did not just raise turnover, they raised stress and errors under pressure. Permanent understaffing did not feel like efficiency, it felt like chronic urgency. Chronic urgency trained my brain for readiness, and my warning signs faded because the mask paid. I watched evenings shrink, and recovery started to feel like a negotiation I lost.
That pace was packaged as professionalism, even as it drained my stability. As my responsibilities grew, I learned about the Family and Medical Leave Act as a boundary line. When I used it, I used it as designed to stabilize, follow treatment, and return reliably. Accountability for me meant responsibility paired with structure, not exemption from standards. I learned that growth often increased pressure faster than it increased support, clarity, or staffing. Living with an episodic condition, I felt urgency could provoke instability in me. Then the result could be framed as a personal failure, and I carried the weight.
I took data seriously because it reinforced what my body had already learned. I read Gallup’s estimate that employee disengagement cost the global economy eight point eight trillion dollars a year. I noted Gallup’s framing that the figure was nine percent of global GDP. I also read research estimating burnout cost employers 4,000 to 21,000 dollars per employee each year. Those numbers matched my reality, because urgency reduced patience, attention, and judgment. Afterward, the fallout was labeled personal, and I carried shame that should have been shared. When my stability slipped, the costs showed up at work and at home.
I also watched that culture misunderstand creativity, and I felt the cost personally. I felt pressure for creative output without respect for process time. I noticed expectations as if ideas arrived on demand like a spreadsheet refresh. I watched campaigns get rushed into sameness because timelines left no room for testing or revision. For me, creative work reduced rumination, integrated emotion, and restored a sense of agency. It improved my problem solving because I thought better when I was not depleted. When the process was stripped for margins, I did not see excellence, I saw burnout wearing a polished badge.
I imagine a better standard, and I do not imagine a softer one. I imagine workplaces that measure sustained capacity instead of peak heroics. I imagine staffing and training built before crises, not after. I imagine real time off protected rather than quietly punished, and after hours messaging treated as rare. I imagine accommodations handled with steadiness, and calendars built for deep work instead of constant interruption. I imagine mental health support treated as infrastructure, because the work depends on regulated humans. I choose that standard now, and I keep rebuilding my life around stability that lasts day by day.
To learn more about my journey and the lessons I’ve gained along the way, I invite you to explore the rest of my writing and follow the ongoing work I share to support mental health, healing, and rehabilitation with hope. These lessons can be found on my Pillar Posts page.
The room is calm, but the signals are not. An “80 MILES” warning glows on a logistics map as soil spills across the desk, herbs decay, and a suit smolders without a body. Burnout is shown here not as emotion, but as a system under strain.