Not too hot.
With the increased work hours and my weekly schedule being booked, I worry I will burn out again. I am admittingly a perfectionist and I have a horrible habit of putting a huge amount of pressure on myself when it comes to people's expectations. Suggestions from others (primarily in the jobcenter and therapists) become orders even if I don't think they are good ideas and I can be incredibly hard on myself. I'd like to perform and become someone productive to society.
I think this leads to my worries at the moment. That and my bad habit of overthinking.
Power level time.
Bach in 2021, around a year before I joined the farms actually, I went through a nervous breakdown to the point where I spent a month in the loony bin. It's been years since then but I still deal with the after effects and with my laundry list of broken brain isms, I am a bit fragile so to say. It was a horrible time. I never wanna go back to that fucking place.
My greatest worry is that I will pressure myself so much that it will happen again and the jobcenter (fuck that place) will make shit worse.
Friends of mine in increasing numbers have retired early due to their bullshit. Part me thinks I'm at that point because I'm a bit fucked in the head. Part of me thinks I need to try harder and I might be fucked but not fucked enough and I can do stuff.
Are you working with a therapist? Either way, the things in your first paragraph are definitely things to practice really, really hard at getting better at. Because that will help you find the balance as you gradually or continue to become less fragile and more resilient. You already know your thought patterns tend not to be helpful to you - so 1) don't criticize yourself for it, but also 2) work everyday at reducing and getting free of it. For that you've got to replace those defeating thoughts with something else. At first it might just be - "OK, I see what I'm doing here; stop.". And if you have to force your brain to go blank about anything emotional, practice it. I've thought of a white wall at times. As you get stronger and have positive experiences to look at to replace the anxiety or whatever are your habitual and reflexive emotional reactions. At the same time, you can be developing and practicing better actions at work, like asking artful questions if you disagree with something, maybe making a suggestion, just unhooking from your automatic "someone's wish is my order" thinking that brings you tension and fear. Or practicing creating boundaries - in small ways at first, so you can see how that benefits you and makes the work experience more enjoyable. The more you create better experiences and outcomes (both on the job and in your mind), the more control you will have over those unhelpful emotional responses, and you'll be able to spot and re-route them earlier when your pattern is triggered.
Based on what you've said, you're right to be aware you're fragile, so you need both to protect yourself but also to strengthen yourself. Which seems to mean managing your reactive emotions and strengthening your core sense of self.
Fwiw, I have found that practicing meditation - even the most basic, even for seconds at a time at first, makes shutting off runaway thoughts easier in general (being able to blank your mind to stop rumination or fear-based panic or negativity/doubt). And I also, depending on your learning style and where you are in recovering, have recommended two books when needing to rebuild from the ground up:
Set Boundaries, Find Peace, by Nedra Glover Tawwab; and
The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, by Nathaniel Branden. In that order. And if you read either one, or others, read slowly, a few pages at a time, take notes, reflect. And if you want the most from the Branden book, the exercises he recommends, though seemingly tedious, are good. It takes months to work through the book that way, but I found it bolt-of-thunder helpful, a gamechanger.
All that said, if you have a suspicious or cynical approach - about life, yourself, or the job center or whatever programs you are in, then I'm not sure that any advice or recommendations will be that useful. Because severe change and rebuilding requires a lot of humility - and yes, I mean another dollop of it even after you've probably had enough for a lifetime in the last 5 years. I understand that. But in my observation and experience, people winding up in a breakdown or just a really bad place often have maybe entirely innocent and well-meant self-conceptions, but those conceptions are just wrong and have to be let go of. And that can be scary, even if you already know that your internal workings (like what you describe in your first paragraph) are not helpful; it's still scary to let them go, maybe even scarier is the deep-down fear that we can't. So I encourage you to keep a very open and forward-facing mind as you continue to come back to life.
