I hate my job but I can't leave

What this looks like

You’ve been about to quit your job for years. You count the vacation days at your desk. You drafted the resignation email and you haven’t sent it. You haven’t deleted it because you might still need it. You haven’t sent it because of the mortgage, the benefits, the kids, the visa, and the waiting for the right moment.

You hate the job and you can’t leave. The two facts have been holding each other up.

What you’ve already tried

• Updated your resume and didn’t apply anywhere
• Applied to a few things half-heartedly
• A side project meant to be the bridge
• Quitting and being talked back by the counter-offer
• Setting a deadline that you let pass
• Telling yourself it’s better than the unknown
• Reading about career changes and not making one

You hated Monday again.

What are your real reasons for staying?

Why imagining quitting hasn’t led to quitting

You very likely came out of childhood with a relationship to risk that doesn’t allow for clean leaving. You may have grown up watching adults stay in jobs they hated for decades and absorbed the lesson that staying was responsibility. You may have decided as a young person that financial stability mattered more than satisfaction. You may have built a life that depends on the income from this job and you can’t see how to dismantle that without dismantling everything else.

You imagine quitting because imagining does a job for you. It releases pressure. It substitutes for the actual decision. As long as you can imagine quitting, you don’t have to actually quit. The job stays manageable because you’re letting the fantasy do the unbearable part.

If you’re afraid to quit specifically, see I’m afraid to quit . If you don’t know what you’d do instead, see I don’t know what to do with my life .

You’re using the fantasy of leaving to make the staying possible. We work on what would let you actually decide.

How we work with it

Strategic therapy interrupts the imagining-quitting loop, since that loop has been making the staying tolerable. As long as the fantasy releases enough pressure each week, you never reach the point of actual decision. We close the relief valve, and you find out which way you’re going.

You’ll know whether you’re staying or leaving. You’ll do it.