How Employment Broke My Brain

A meditation on the invisible cost of modern work — and the quiet science of reclaiming the mind.

It started subtly.

Misplacing my phone. Forgetting why I walked into a room. Losing words mid-sentence. A dull exhaustion that never lifted, no matter how much I slept.

I brushed it off. Work was demanding—wasn’t this just part of the game? Everyone I knew was running on empty, fuelled by caffeine, deadlines, and the vague hope that one day, all the effort would be worth it.

Then I read the research.

Chronic stress doesn’t just wear you down—it rewires your brain.

Dr. Robert Sapolsky’s studies on stress and neuroscience revealed something chilling:

Your hippocampus (memory + learning centre) shrinks, making it harder to focus, recall details, and process information.

Your amygdala (fear and anxiety centre) strengthens, keeping you in a state of constant tension and overreaction.

Dopamine production plummets, robbing you of motivation, joy, and creativity.

I wasn’t just tired. I was changing.

The scariest part? It doesn’t go away when the stress stops.

When you push your brain into survival mode for too long, it forgets how to function without chaos. That’s why people who finally “make it” still feel anxious, restless, and unfulfilled. They’ve rewired themselves for burnout.

I saw it everywhere—executives with dead eyes, professionals who sacrificed decades only to arrive at the finish line depleted, drained, and disconnected from themselves.

I refused to become one of them.

So I made a decision. Not just a career move, but a neurological intervention.

I stepped away—not just from a job, but from a system designed to erode my health.

The first morning after I left, I remember standing by the window. The world was silent—no alarms, no inbox, no performance metrics. Just birdsong and sunlight spilling across the floor. My body didn’t know how to relax yet. It trembled, like an engine still running with no destination.

Days later, something shifted. The noise in my head began to thin. I could think again—not in bullet points, but in sentences. I could feel again—not stress, but presence. It wasn’t instant healing; it was reprogramming. The slow, patient art of remembering who I was before productivity became identity.

The brain fog lifted. My focus sharpened. My motivation returned—not the kind driven by KPIs and performance reviews, but the kind I owned. The kind that made me feel alive again.

This wasn’t just about income. It was about recovery.

That’s why I chose Shuang Hor. 

Not just because it offered financial freedom, but because it aligned with something far more valuable—vitality, clarity, and self-preservation.

This is a business where stress isn’t the price of success. Where my brain, my body, and my time belong to me—not a system designed to drain them.

Because at the end of the day, a paycheck isn’t worth losing yourself.

And now, every morning, I wake up with something I haven’t felt in years.
Not just energy. Not just purpose. But peace—the kind that hums quietly in the bones. The kind that comes when the mind, the body, and the soul finally remember they were never meant to serve a machine.




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