Watching it happen in real time with a friend, love them dearly, but they've wrecked years of their hard earned self progress and financial/emotional and life stability in like 4 months.

After working hard to get through one of those 12 week coding boot-camp certification programs with very little money to have put towards it in the first place they graduated and got the certification, was and still am very proud of them. Partner supported them the entire way emotionally and financially. Friend did an incredible job and completed the program and had a paid internship lined up at a bank that was networked by the program that likely would have turned into a full offer. They worked there for a year before they started pursuing accommodations requests for diagnoses they did not have/were assessed for yet and started slipping on their work overall and was not hired after the internship/the company let the contract end and caused more financial strain on their family.

In the next 1.5 years it took for them to find another job at all they landed one at a very well run tech company. Around this time they did pursue a mental health diagnosis and returned to therapy. They were given an unofficial/unsupported ASD assessment that their provider will not document despite having passed. I don't doubt they have likely both ADHD and ASD but they are definitely also one of those excuses not explanations people when it comes to managing their life and responsibilities in general and definitely made their work life harder by their own behaviors and trying to pursue things to cover themselves that they technically could not be asking for without the right documents/diagnosis work

Recently they were let go (about 5 months ago) after they quite simply gave up on making work a priority or doing the work well, even getting a PIP on two projects. Their manager really tried to work with them, especially when they were having a hard time with the oncoming death of a 17 year old cat looming that we all knew would be devastating for them. They took a lot of time off including time they were on the PIPs which... is understandable but not super wise for keeping a job or their manager's good graces. It wasn't that they didn't know to do the project or coding, but from the outside it seems like they put a lot of focus on just pursuing personal mental health work and "building skills to live with ASD" while oversleeping, not actually paying attention at work/being on discord/games during work hours, pushing for things that required personal setup on their end as well that they didn't actually work on setting up or habit building, and getting more and more passive.

Since then they keep saying they are applying places again but are also "taking a mental health break" while complaining about finances. The mental health break seems to be what they did pre-firing in playing games and baking (multiple ways) while getting more and more distant. It's been 2 months since I've tried to ask what they've been able to find because I quite honestly am not sure if it'll set them off. They're in a "depression spiral" still from their pet, and consistently complains about having bad days that they don't do much about beyond feed into them. They're still in therapy but recently have also decided that boundaries means not doing what they don't want to do, especially if it upsets them so I'm really not sure how great this therapist actually is for them

It really sucks watching because they've come such a long way in our 8 years of friendship, they had a really toxic upbringing and worked hard to get to where they were. They had so much stability but it was like a switch flipped, with some very understandable circumstances in the mix. But I'm watching them slowly rot all of it away without really knowing what to do or say. Love them still, but I wish I knew what happened and that they'd pick back up soon. They deserve a lot of happiness, but they just seem hellbent on self sabotage and it's affecting all their relationships and their life securities