At its root, I don’t think this question is really about the logistics of taking a sabbatical.

Something I didn’t fully recognize when I was burnt out: burnout is a personal emotional issue. At that time I (mistakenly) considered emotions a bug and not a feature.

So whatever direction you decide to go on the sabbatical, I highly recommend endeavoring to discover some emotional support and growth.

Online talk therapy has helped me greatly, but mostly the book I wish I had back then is “The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living”

https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Trap-Struggling-Start-Livin...

This might help https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Trap-Struggling-Start-Livin...

I'm sorry you have to go through this. The human psyche is truly marvelous at generating unhappiness. If you are don't have anything and haven't reached your potential you are unhappy because you feel like a loser. If you are on the upswing and growing you might feel unhappy because you didn't make it yet. And when you made it, well, that's when you are unhappy because you are past your zenith. Why is it like this? Who knows, but the Buddhist have some good ideas about it, I find.

From personal experience (I used to lie on the couch wishing I'd die every day for weeks) I can recommend the following three things:

* Move your body in sunlight. I'm not talking about becoming ripped or doing and Ironman or something crazy, I am simply talking about doing an amount and intensity of exercise you can sustain a couple of times a week every week outside when the sun is out. Once I did this for three weeks or so I found that this dreadful feeling of emptiness faded and that I hardly felt discontent anymore. These feelings return when I stop doing that which usually is my trigger to start again.

* Read & follow the book "The Happiness Trap" <https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Trap-Struggling-Start-Livin...> I'd credit this book with the single biggest impact on my life. I remember crying from relief after doing one of the exercises.

* When you got yourself together somewhat I'd recommend having a child. It's the most fun and satisfaction I ever had in my whole life and it makes everything else so much better.

I hope this is useful to you and that you get better soon.

This is the sort of thread that hits me right in the wallet.

Here are some books I've given as gifts recently:

* The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm, Lewis Dartnell[1]

* The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb[2]

* Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse[3]

* The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris and Steven Hayes[4]

* Code, Charles Petzold[5]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Rebuild-Civilization-Afterm...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Frag...

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Siddhartha-Hermann-Hesse/dp/161382378...

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Trap-Struggling-Start-Livin...

[5] https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...

I've found it helpful to learn not to fuel thought trains. ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)[1] is helpful for that: It's basically about developing an understanding that thoughts and feelings are not real, and that they are not dangerous. A thought is the voice in your head, feelings are sensations in the body. Nothing more. It also has techniques that makes it easier to detect them.

By the way: Gut flora may play a role in anxiety[2], at least for some. It seems to play a role in many different mental, as well as physical, illnesses.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Happiness-Trap-Struggling-Living/d...

[2] http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/09/gut-feeling.aspx

One thing is for sure: Reading stuff like that won't help me sleep any better.

I have no problems falling asleep, but I keep waking up after five and a half hours. For periods, I can easily go back to sleep, but when I worry about waking up, I often can not got back to sleep.

I've just started reading "The Happiness Trap"[1]. It's about accepting the ups and downs of life as normal, but at the same time it tells how to handle negative thoughts and feelings better (without getting rid of them). A former Buddhist monk recommended it to me, and my girlfriend (who is a psychologist) also liked it. The title kinda sucks though. Let's see if it helps.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Happiness-Trap-Struggling-Living/d...

Assuming there's no organic cause, why not try looking at self-help books? I found the following useful:

http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Trap-Struggling-Start-Living...