If you feel deeply unhappy at work right now, you’re not alone.There’s a new term to describe the heightened sense of ennui workers are going through right now: “quiet cracking.” “Quiet cracking” is what happens when you feel backed up against the wall with no other options but to work at an unsatisfying job. In a recent TalentLMS survey of 1,000 employees, over half of them said they experienced the symptoms of “quiet cracking,” or a persistent feeling of workplace unhappiness that led to disengagement, poor performance and a strong desire to quit. To understand why Americans feel so trapped and disillusioned, simply look at what’s happening with the job economy. “Since 2020, work has felt like this really big revolving door of uncertainty, of change, of constant transitions,” Nadia De Ala, founder of Real You Leadership, told HuffPost.And many of these changes are not benefiting workers. Because of a stagnant labor market and record mass layoffs, many workers are clinging to the jobs they have, no matter how much they dread going to the office each day. Americans also have fewer opportunities to work from home. President Donald Trump ordered federal workers back to the office five days a week this year, and many private employers have followed suit. A quarter of Fortune 500 employees now require full-time attendance at an office in the second quarter of 2025, according to Flex Index data that tracks in-office requirements. And these workers cannot even bring their full selves to work as diversity, equity and inclusion efforts continue to be erased and minimized by the current administration.“When an employee of color doesn’t feel valued, doesn’t feel seen, doesn’t feel supported, that’s a whole other level of not just disengagement, but feeling a lack of value,” said Jasmine Escalera, a career expert for MyPerfectResume, a website that provides career resources to job-seekers. It’s no wonder then that so many people can relate to “quiet cracking.” It isn’t a failure if you feel this way, but these feelings are signals to stop ignoring. Here are the feelings of discontent you need to pay attention to –– and how to get help.‘Quiet Cracking’ Is Unhappiness Due To Helplessness Licensed clinical psychologist Tanisha Ranger said quiet cracking is an experience she deals with “pretty frequently” with clients, and the silent suffering is often due to a fear of consequences.“If layoffs are happening or promotions feel scarce, silence becomes self-preservation,” Ranger explained. “There’s a sort of learned helplessness in it –– What would even be the point of speaking up?”A 2025 survey from MyPerfectResume of 1,000 U.S. workers found that 79% of employees feel detached from their jobs due to low pay, high workloads, lack of career growth, and poor management. “We have a group of individuals who are disengaged, burnt out, uncertain about where their job is going or whether they’re even going to have one, or how AI is going to take over,” Escalera said about the survey. For Ranger, one of the first red flags of quiet cracking is emotional numbness: “You’re not angry, you’re not inspired, you just ... exist,” she explained. “If you used to take pride in your work but you’re now indifferent, that might be a sign.“Quiet cracking is also chronic burnout in disguise, she said. “Post-2020, many workers never fully recovered from the emotional depletion. With return-to-office debates, economic pressure and fewer development opportunities, there’s this undercurrent of despair,” she said. Illustration: Kelly Caminero/HuffPost; Photo: Getty Images"Quiet cracking" is more than just one bad day, it's a persistent feeling of overwhelming dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Dorothy, a U.S.-based nonprofit professional who asked to not share her full name for privacy, recently went through the experience of “quiet cracking” at her last job. Even though she talked to her managers about feeling overwhelmed, she kept being piled with more work and feeling underappreciated. It all added up to a deeper feeling of discontent. “I would wake up and not even want to open my laptop,” Dorothy recalled. “I remember one time I had to go to an in-person event and my manager was there, and I avoided them ... I physically could not be around them.“And Dorothy doesn’t think she’s alone in this feeling of workplace unhappiness. “I personally know so many people who are still in their roles, because they just are like...‘I’m miserable here, and I’m just trying to survive,’” she said. “It feels like a collective experience.”If You Are ‘Quietly Cracking’ Inside Right Now, Here’s How To Address It. You don’t have to suffer in silence. There are strategies that can help you cope with feeling stuck and disengaged with your career right now: Accept that you’re feeling bad. Dorothy’s advice to fellow professionals who are quietly cracking is to stop minimizing your experience. “Don’t gaslight yourself if you feel like something is deeply wrong ... Really sit and listen to that feeling rather than maybe constantly giving people the benefit of the doubt or trying to write it off as ‘This wasn’t so bad,’” she said. Talk about it to others. Suffering festers without an outlet, so start by giving it a name. “Labeling the emotional experience –– disillusionment, numbness, dread –– helps reduce shame and opens the door to change,” Ranger said. If you feel safe enough to talk about your unhappiness with your boss, find the overlap between what your manager cares about and what you need for your situation to improve, such as rest, support or clarity, in order to have the best chance that your request will be heard by your boss. “Whether it’s a trusted co-worker, mentor or therapist, sharing your experience can make it feel more manageable and less isolating. Silence keeps people stuck,” Ranger said. Keep yourself engaged outside of work. Lean into the joys of your tactile hobbies, like cooking or running.“We often need two things to feel good about ourselves: mastery competence and pleasure,” said Alicia Velez, a licensed clinical social worker. “If there is no hope that your job is providing either, it may be time to look elsewhere.”Set boundaries during work.If you know you cannot leave this no-good job anytime soon, at least set boundaries that protect your energy, because you need to preserve as much as you can to make it through this tough time.Doing this will restore your sense of control, Ranger said. “Research in industrial organizational psychology has long indicated that even small amounts of perceived control helped alleviate disgruntlement,” she noted. Setting a boundary could look like asking for the autonomy to work from home one day a week, or going for a walk outside during your lunch break. Quiet quit. Instead of quietly cracking, try quietly quitting your job so that your employers only get the job performance they need, in order for you to stay employed.The advantage of reframing your disengagement as a choice that you’re making until you find better options is that it gives you agency. While quiet cracking can be an unintentional funk workers get trapped in, quiet quitting, meanwhile, is “strategic, it’s intentional. Sometimes it’s done joyfully and happily,” De Ala said. Leave your job. “We start to feel disconnected when things are not aligned with our values,” Velez noted. “If none of their values align with this job anymore it may be time to leave.“That’s what happened to Dorothy. She left her job this summer without another job lined up after experiencing regular panic attacks: “It was kind of like a wake-up call for me, because I was like, ‘I am actually getting sick from working here.’”“Every day, I was waking up and I was asking myself, ‘What’s more important to me, like, the paycheck or my literal health?’ And at some point I just had to make that decision,” Dorothy said.