1999/2000 Toronto, height of the dot com, new grad in a "senior dev" role with no real experience. Our CTO was a paranoid chronic pot smoker who lectured me regularly on knowing the difference between "sharks" vs. "dolphins", our manager, a sweet Hungarian man who excelled in his prior career managing major infrastructure projects, was pulled out of retirement to lead the team and the experience almost killed him... Our ORM mapping product had fatal flaws and only I and our CTO knew it... The CTO was pushed out, I was put in charge briefly... Sleeping at work 4 nights a week, 14 hour days, living off diet coke and veal sandwiches, gained 40 pounds... Experienced my first panic attack prior to a meeting with key investors... One of whom was wanted by the RCMP for fraud. Good times... The thought of experiencing 1/5 of that stress and chaos again still gives me anxiety... 20 years later. After that experience , my tolerance for continued stress is very low without encountering anxiety... I empathize with what you are experiencing.
I now live in a 150 sqft tiny house in the woods, shower under the stars, poop in a bucket, grow food, fall asleep to the sound of frogs and owls... And it's the happiest I've ever been.
Look, what I'm going to say here is not even close to the same, but it really needs be said.
I have that same kind of visceral reaction to any thoughts of certain employers that I've had "that" kind of relationship with. I don't think it's "startup PTSD" so much as "dysfunctional employment (or other relationship) PTSD"
I can easily mark the exact moment where my ability to deal with the situation I was in went so far gone that my brain's instinctive response was to just flee.
I've seen this with familial relations as well, which clearly pushes it well into "just normal PTSD" if you can accept that ANY form of PTSD is "normal" (which I refuse, for the record...)
I'm just glad you got out before you actually ended up with permanent psychological damage. This shit isn't a joke.
I now live in a 150 sqft tiny house in the woods, shower under the stars, poop in a bucket, grow food, fall asleep to the sound of frogs and owls... And it's the happiest I've ever been.