QA, shift-Left, and the struggles of cognitive load from a software tester approaching 50

Howdy fellow QAs, QEs, and software peeps. Apologies for the wall of text below.

TL;DR: shift left has placed a huge cognitive load on me and I'm wondering how to handle it or should I just find another career.

Within the past month or so, and with increasing pressure, my company has really started to push the shift-left mentality on our small development team after many years of holding the testing duties towards the end of the development cycle. It's been something we've been discussing as a company for about a year so we all knew this was coming, but it's become a huge priority suddenly and I am struggling with the process. I've had this position for about 20 years and this sudden change has completely thrown my entire career into question as I don't feel like I can keep up with this pace. Due to the nature of our software and our company, we've been kind of in our own little world set apart from "industry standards" as far as software development is concerned, and have always kind of worked out methods that work for us in our particular roles. Most of us have been here for 5+ years and I'm one of the long haulers. Yes, we had quality escapes, some severe, as all software companies do, and we worked through them as a team and as quickly as we could.

It feels like our QA team has had our workload doubled. While we still are not expected to create or read code (thankfully, as our QA team has no coding experience or desire to learn it), we now have to start working with the product managers and developers at the very beginning and all the way through the process, while still performing a large amount of testing. The amount of documentation that we have to maintain has increased as well as we have to document every step of the way.

We're also expected to have our test cases prepared and ready before the sprint even starts, and the ask is that our test cases migrate away from happy/sad path and functionality and more toward risk mitigation. We are supposed to be developing test plans, risk analysis, documentation reviews and feedback, design reviews for the next sprint while also maintaining our thought processes for the current work and providing indicators that we are remaining "engaged" by adding comments, etc...and working with the developers to ensure they are creating automated tests wherever possible and are keeping a quality mindset. I'm finding the constant task switching to be overwhelming.

I understand the concept behind shift left and I see value in it (despite being so tired of seeing that phrase), and I realize all of these processes are just standard for the industry at the moment, but it seems, to me, that it has placed a huge cognitive load on our QA team. I'm having extreme difficulty with conceptualizing all of the testing scenarios that I would ordinarily think of while I have the product in front of me. I don't have anything concrete that I can see, poke, and prod and develop a test case from, apart from the acceptance criteria in the work ticket.

I have addressed my concerns with my manager, who does empathize, but basically indicated that this is how it is now. I've been given permission to make myself unavailable when I need to focus, but I'm still struggling when my brain goes into shutdown mode when presented with a list of dated expectations and deadlines for upcoming work. I don't know how I'm going to fit it all in and feel like I just won't have any sort of down time or cool-off between tasks. Lately at the end of the day I have been so exhausted I've neglected housekeeping duties, hobbies, and socialization because I am mentally and physically worn out.

Does anybody else struggle with this and have you found a solution or at least something to alleviate the cognitive load? Have you been through the experience of going from testing everything at the end to providing all of your testing feedback at the beginning and during? I would love to hear some different perspectives, especially from my more neuro-spicy fellows in the development world. I am a late-life diagnosed adult with adhd and I'm still learning about my strengths and weaknesses.

Worst case scenario - is it time for a career change? I'm experiencing a lot of self-doubt and have been struggling with the nagging feeling that I am just not cut out for this type of work anymore. Thank you for reading if you've gotten this far and I welcome all feedback - I'm not looking for hand holding, just perspective and maybe a little commiseration.