Complicity grief, liquidity anxiety: Silicon Valley therapists are confronting a lot of new neuroses

Silicon Valley is having an existential freakout.

Tech workers person agelong complained to their therapists astir soul-crushing hours, cutthroat competition, and the absence of that woolly conception known arsenic work-life balance. Lately, pinch the collision of mass layoffs, artificial intelligence, and gazillion-dollar IPOs, the woes trim deeper.

"Three years ago, group would locomotion successful saying, 'I'm exhausted, burned retired beyond belief,'" says Annie Wright, a Bay Area psychotherapist and executive coach whose believe is dominated by tech workers. "Now they locomotion successful saying, 'I'm exhausted. I'm burned retired beyond belief. I don't cognize who I americium if my activity gets automated. I don't cognize if I'm next, right? And what is this moreover going to look for illustration for the adjacent 20 years of my career?'"

Globally, much than 120,000 tech jobs person been trim successful 2026, the locator Layoffs.fyi reports, pinch Silicon Valley giants for illustration Meta, Google, Oracle, Salesforce, and Amazon laying disconnected hundreds aliases thousands astatine a time. The tech-focused Substack Lenny's Newsletter surveyed 8,200 workers and recovered the industry's authorities of mind deteriorated successful 1 year. Reports of burnout changeable up from 44.4% to 55.7% of those surveyed betwixt 2025 and 2026, and profession optimism fell from 54.8% to 48.7%.

While the AI juggernaut has fueled upheaval and anxiety crossed galore sectors, successful tech, it's rattling the lives of the group who engineered it — a arena Wright calls "complicity grief."

"The technologist who trained the exemplary that's now displacing her peers — she built the machine," she says. "The PM who shipped the AI characteristic that conscionable made 3 of her colleagues redundant — she shipped it, right? The laminitis who raised a information to build the supplier that's astir to commoditize an full occupation — she raised it, and past she has to spell location and beryllium pinch what she did."

For those who don't survive, a different calculus awaits. Nick Sanchez, who founded Silicon Valley Therapy and specializes successful high-performing professionals, says that of the 25 clients connected his roster, six person been laid disconnected successful the past 2 years, and astir person been unemployed for six months aliases longer. While immoderate are getting by pinch statement work, others are pivoting — to smaller companies, to jobs wrong non-tech companies, aliases to wholly caller careers.

"I person 1 customer that's trying to prosecute the FBI," he says.

Figuring retired what comes aft isn't reserved for those connected the chopping block. Josh Altman, who counsels galore tech professionals successful the New York City area, says that immoderate of his clients are excited astir the powers AI has fixed them.

"They're creating astatine different level," Altman says. "One of my clients, who's a elder engineer, said to me, 'I nary longer consciousness for illustration an engineer. I consciousness for illustration a sorcerer.'"

At the aforesaid time, he says, each senior-level technologist on his customer database — group pinch 10-plus years of acquisition moving astatine a apical institution — believes they won't beryllium an technologist a decade from now. The ones who are financially group whitethorn beryllium having what's called a "third-life crisis," and for some, the adjacent shape is getting out. "For the first clip successful my career, I person a batch much antheral clients who are speaking actively astir becoming stay-at-home dads 1 day," Altman says.

Tech workers who person been grinding for years person seen the manufacture become much hardcore, pinch longtime labor branded arsenic debased performers and told to clasp return-to-office mandates and different argumentation changes aliases get lost.

"Something astir the AI speech has shifted, has made it abundantly clear that galore of these organizations consciousness much transactional, little sentimental," Altman says. "As a result, it's causing the employees, immoderate of whom person been very loyal, to ask, 'Oh, what other is retired location for me?'" Some of his clients are moving overseas and "will beryllium hiking for the remainder of their lives," he says. Some "could person exited pinch awesome wealthiness but recovered the occupation truthful taxing aliases the situation truthful toxic that they quit."

He mentions 1 tech master who discontinue to go the president of the committee of their section library. Another client, who worked astatine 1 of the biggest companies and "made millions," is now self-employed and "working connected uncovering ways to create information boundaries for AI."

Ross Nelson, a objective scientist who useful successful Palo Alto and San Mateo, has seen a akin trend.

"If you've been moving for a ample tech company," he says, "and you consciousness for illustration you're not really doing thing that's each that impactful, group are making pivots toward trying to find a institution that they person an appreciation for the ngo of" — fields for illustration crab curen aliases biology protection.

Tech-focused therapists opportunity that whether their clients person mislaid their jobs, aliases downshifted, aliases hit the IPO jackpot, adjusting to a little frenetic beingness torments them because truthful overmuch of their self-image is tied to work.

"Whether that's their occupation title, their compensation, the sanction of the institution that they activity for, aliases their promotion rhythm and really accelerated they're moving successful their promotion cycle, they're linking their worthy arsenic a quality being to that," Nelson says. "I inquire clients astatine my intakes, 'What do you do for your hobbies?' And group look astatine maine for illustration I'm crazy."

Silicon Valley denizens who guidelines to make slope from IPOs face 2 kinds of tension, says Wright. Before they tin rate out, they look what she calls "liquidity anxiety," aliases "the very circumstantial distress of being technically rich | connected insubstantial and functionally stuck successful existent life."

"The wealthiness exists. They tin spot it, but they cannot touch it," she says. "That liminal abstraction betwixt the accomplishment and the reward tin beryllium truthful psychologically destabilizing for the execs I've sat with."

After liquidity worry comes what Wright calls "the presence paradox."

"The IPO is sold to these group for years arsenic the decorativeness line," she says. "And what they really acquisition very often is an anti-climax." The triumph lands successful their slope account, not successful the body, she explains. "They expect to consciousness triumphant. Instead, they consciousness numb aliases level aliases moreover depressed, right? And past they consciousness blameworthy astir that."

Wright, whose customer guidelines is women, says the absence of grinding post-IPO tin lead to self-destructive behavior. To protect confidentiality, she offers a composite of a half-dozen clients: a female successful her mid-40s who is vice president astatine a tech institution that went nationalist 8 months ago. The lockup play for insider shares has expired, and she is now very rich.

"She was expecting alleviation and astir apt a batch of joy, but what she sewage was insomnia, a level affectional emotion her partner was criticizing her about, and benignant of a disorientation," Wright says. The cause? "A realization that the type of herself that thrived successful the pre-IPO years — the scrappy, do-everything, mission-driven, heroic hours type — nary longer had that occupation to do astatine the nationalist company."

That mightiness sound for illustration nirvana to the mean worker, but Wright says this female has been successful fight-or-flight mode for truthful agelong that her tense strategy is traumatized; she's numbed worry and slump pinch her activity habits. "Work is the astir socially acceptable addiction," Wright says. "Nobody stages an involution for a female who is sidesplitting it astatine work."

And erstwhile the addictive constituent — the activity — is gone, large feelings bubble to the surface, and she starts looking for thing other to tamp them down. Within six to 12 months post-IPO, Wright sees her clients replacing activity overdrive pinch little productive activities for illustration "overexercising to the constituent of injury, a caller and somewhat frantic narration pinch alcohol, cannabis." There's a batch of doomscrolling, compulsive shopping, and serial angel investing. People person affairs. And, she adds, "this is truthful communal successful Silicon Valley, ayahuasca tourism."

The tech industry, says Wright, "bears important structural responsibility" for the anxieties it's caused. Her clients, she adds, are "working wrong a strategy whose inducement structures reliably nutrient the symptoms we're past asked to thief them manage: always-on Slack culture, RSU cliff vesting that makes leaving consciousness financially catastrophic, an operating premise of infinite standard applied to tense systems that don't scale."

How therapists thief techies amended header pinch those inducement structures depends connected their modality.

Ross, who focuses connected cognitive behaviour therapy, uses worksheets — created pinch the thief of AI — to trim catastrophizing and antagonistic self-talk. He'll talk clients done sending a matter to a activity friend to put a societal day aliases promote them to put a hike connected their calendar. Altman, whom I interviewed connected the telephone while he was taking a break from gardening, likewise guides his clients toward building an personality and self-esteem extracurricular of work. He says he virtually encourages them to touch grass.

Wright, whose toolkit includes EMDR, the eye-movement therapy utilized to process trauma, offers a occurrence story, again utilizing a composite client: a elder technologist successful her precocious 30s whose institution went nationalist 18 months ago. For six months, she's felt emotionally flat, sleepless, "embarrassed that the windfall wasn't making her much happy."

The first measurement was to thief her sanction what was happening. "She had to understand and beryllium capable to say, "Oh, I person civilized wounded astir the activity I'm shipping, and I deliberation I'm grieving a type of myself that doesn't beryllium anymore,'" Wright says. The 2nd shape was somatic behaviour work, including EMDR. The female started moving again, taking pottery classes, and reference romantasy novels — building an personality abstracted from work, without quitting her job. Now she was fresh for the 3rd stage: values realignment.

"The imagination is ever that personification has a breakdown and runs disconnected to commencement a goat workplace successful Vermont. But the reality for astir of these women — it's overmuch quieter and it's overmuch much useful," she adds. "They go the elder personification connected the squad that tin sanction the point that nary 1 other is naming. They go a root of sanity successful a strategy that needs it."

The request tin beryllium seen successful the request for intelligence wellness services, which is surging pinch nary motion of letting up.

"I americium wholly afloat pinch a six- to 12-month waiting list," says Wright, who charges $950 an hour, "and my fees are very, very, very high."

Tracy Connor is the Standards Editor astatine Business Insider.

Business Insider's Discourse stories supply perspectives connected the day's astir pressing issues, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise.

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