And here I was again in the ER waiting room, wearing a yellow wristband.
Ok, I need to be honest, I’m feeling really self-conscious talking about this topic. As you might have noticed, I’ve burned out so many times, it almost became a lifestyle. Work, burnout, take time off (often forced due to exhaustion), get a new job, rinse, repeat. Sometimes there was no time off in between, it was just me trying to get a new job with hopes it would be better.
Then I remembered that the best teachers are often those who struggle so much with a specific area that they need to learn all the nitty gritty to move forward. Hopefully, this is where I am now.
I want to note I am not an expert in psychology or medicine, this is what is working for me. I’m happy to share my learnings through my particular perspective, but for proper diagnosis and treatment, I encourage you to find specific practitioners.
Another thing, it doesn’t matter if you’re burned out, or how burned out you are, if at all — we’re exploring what’s behind this whole concept.
Burnout is mainstream at the moment. The danger of this is when it’s portrayed superficially.
Burnout is a serious condition, but because we can’t diagnose it with a blood test, it lives in that blurry area where people are never sure if they have it or not — and when they do, if they have fully healed from it. And the most pervasive part of burnout is that, unlike a broken arm that we know we can’t move until is fully healed, we keep on doing the same things that hurt us over and over again.
Let’s distill burnout into its simplest form:
Burnout is a mismatch between resources and demands.
(This is a psychology model, focused on work — thank you Catarina.)
And it is the perfect starting point. From here we can get clear on the resources we have. And do the same for the demands. Then we need to match them. Rinse, repeat. Way better than the burnout cycle.
The challenge here is having clarity on where we are with our resources and demands. This is because we experience ourselves and life all at once, we’re in the middle of it.
We need to create moments of reflection where we can take a step back and see ourselves and what surrounds us. And allow others to support us with it (such as therapists, coaches, friends and coworkers — pick them wisely).
Let’s talk about resources:
They can be innate, like our intellectual and emotional maturity and capacity; something we acquire like knowledge, skills or money; and finally, things that are external to us that we can outsource things from, such as people we can count on, a service we can hire, takeout food,…
Demands are everywhere:
Personal, professional, social, environmental… The thing is, do we need to respond to all of them? Are they even legitimate demands? And what about those questionable work “ethics”… We need to be mindful of beliefs that do not serve us anymore or unrealistic expectations from society. The worst are those we don’t see or don’t question — and they keep draining us…
Both resources and demands are not static. This means that it is helpful to create regular checkpoints to assess where we are on each. And then act accordingly:
- If you have more demands than the resources you have, then you’ll feel overwhelmed.
- More resources than demands might be pleasant and even necessary for someone recovering from burnout, but this state is usually the source of boredom.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re working on something you love. If the demands outweigh the resources you have, you’re setting yourself up for failure. In Dr. Sherry Walling’s words, sometimes “burnout is repeated stress damage in the brain’s circuitry”.
The journey might be long, but if I can, I’d love to leave here some shortcuts — they might be useful, even if you can’t fully grasp their impact at the moment:
- Be kind to yourself and learn to be even kinder. As you level up your kindness game, you realise how hard you’ve been on yourself. It’s only with kindness (and resourcefulness) that you’ll be able to expand your resources. Sometimes being kind means forcing yourself to eat healthy, other times it might mean eating a bag of chips. Other times it might mean doing the thing you dread. Other times, it is allowing yourself to rest or watch a standup comedy show.
- Community care is the precursor to self-care, especially when we have so many demands that we can’t handle anything else. Accept and ask for help. You might be more used to helping than receiving help, allow yourself to grow in that direction (if possible). Be prepared to “assemble” a dream team to help you get out of this — family members, friends, colleagues, and even a therapist, coach, doctor, Yoga teacher or assistant. We’re outsourcing resources here. The opposite is true — you may find that there are people you need to get away from if you want to recover.
- Be mindful of how burnout is programming your mindset and ways of functioning. After one is unable to do specific tasks that were so easy to them, one might start believing that they can’t do them or that they don’t like doing them anymore. And that thing might be that lifelong professional passion. When we’re burned out, we’re not ourselves. You need to redo those things again, bit by bit, as you take better care of yourself so that you can feel the joy of doing them again.
- Your determination, even when you don’t feel like it, is key to making the decisions you need to make to get those demands within realistic expectations. Please remember that your 100% today might be 30% of a healthy and energised you. Adjust. It is a phase. You’ll feel better soon.
- Grief is your friend. Grieve that thing that is bothering you. Grieve the trauma under your people-pleasing reactions or any other ways you end up giving more than you can. Grieve your old you that you miss so much. Without grief, we continue day after day, almost hyped up, dissociated with ourselves and the behaviours that add up to the state where we are. Grief is necessary to truly see yourself and where you’re at. Find people who allow you space to grieve — they’re rare, but they exist. This is one of the most solid foundations for a new you.
You matter. Your well-being matters.
Wishing you a kind weekend.
