TL;DR - I just submitted a month long FMLA claim for my diagnosed Mental Health issues that are effecting the quality of my work and my ability to devote my full time, but I feel guilty for doing it. How can I get past this?
I am an IT consultant who is regularly staffed as a project manager on projects of varying requirements. My current project was to assist a large, multi-national business across multiple different countries. The client loved us and I built some strong relationships with them throughout the course of the project.
However, we have another team from my company also on this project whose whole purpose is to assist the client with Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) related functions, and ensure transition-related timelines are met.
My IT team is amazing, but the M&A team are just ‘good idea fairies’ that sit around all day thinking about how to make the project ‘better’. I know what right looks like, and what we should be working on in terms of priorities, but the M&A team keeps coming up with ‘issues’ and ‘risks’ that aren’t that at all. Additionally, they keep hitting me and my entire team up with ‘important EOD tasks’…. But the issue is that between all the meetings we have each day with the client (~5hrs each day) there’s little time to actually get our larger, priority tasks done.
I talked directly with the M&A team to let them know this level of micromanaging is not helping anyone and needs to be controlled… nothing changed. It’s now been 4 months since that talk and my mental health has started to take a toll because I feel like I can never get ahead and my anxiety is eating me alive. So much so that I’m starting to feel depressed and hopeless in terms of being a successful employee at my firm.
I previously stopped taking my medication for about 2.5 years since I was feeling really good! But this has made me realize I need to seek help again. So I went to a walk in appt. (my provider is booked until mid-May) to hopefully start my medication again and submit a FMLA claim to take some time off while restarting my medication, as my current anxiety and depression is seriously impacting my willingness to work and ability to focus on tasks.
I’ve formally submitted my FMLA claim, but I can’t help but feel guilty for just up and leaving for a month while my IT team continues to be berated by the M&A group. Additionally, I feel like I’m a quitter even though I’m not quitting.
I’m curious to see if there’s anyone else out there who has been in a similar situation and what they’ve done to manage their thoughts/feelings.