A lot of the time, we have a lot of our identity kit tied into our work. Sometimes that also means to specific jobs/employers.

Losing that for any reason can be anything from a mild annoyance to fully traumatic. And unexpected job loss not only affects one’s self view and sense of purpose, it’s a threat to stability and survival.

So, yeah, it can take years to move past.

It’s a form of grief, though that isn’t always easy to understand, and how intense that grief is is variable even for one person in specific. But it’s not at all unusual for someone quitting a job, in a planned way, to experience loss emotionally. When the loss is involuntary, that stack, then it being unexpected stacks higher. A long job hunt after adds more to the pile.

With anxiety already part of your existence, that grief is prone to hitting harder as well as deeper.

It looks like your grief has turned into depression as well. That drained, empty feeling is your brain and mind saying it/they have hit a limit to how much they can process.

I’m going to echo the suggestion that some talk therapy would be beneficial. Processing such events in life can be difficult to do alone because it’s so hard to see things culturally clearly from the inside.

Don’t think you’re alone in what you’re experiencing. It’s a very common thing to go through.