Burnout is caused by Accumulated Stress

If you look around yourself and wonder WHY you're feeling burned out - this is the episode for you. The dirty little secret of Burnout is that we can experience it when we're NOT EVEN THAT BUSY. And then we feel so guilty about that! But it's not always about how busy and stressed you are right now, it's about the build up. In this week's episode, we take a closer look at accumulated stress and why recognising it can help you recover from Burnout.

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Your Supernova Moment, a podcast about Burnout.

Something that can be really frustrating about Burnout is the total lack of perspective that we have when we’re stuck inside the boiling pot of it all.

It’s so hard to step back and see the bigger picture when we’re spending all our energy just trying to keep our heads above water.

This is why I always tell you to start with rest, and breathing, and all those lovely restorative things, because you NEED that to be able to think clearly enough to start doing anything else.

Today I want to talk about WHY and HOW we Burn Out - because this too can also be quite frustrating! I have one to one sessions with people, who, like I was at the point of Burnout, are kind of like, a shadow of their former selves. They’re just so exhausted and done. But they are sort of letting me in on this awful secret, which is they aren’t even doing that much right now. They don’t technically HAVE loads of stress. So why can’t they seem to do things that they used to do any more? Why can’t they think straight? Why can’t they send an email? Why does the tiniest little thing send them over the edge - or make them burst into tears?

This was me, okay, I have been there. I’ve said this before on the podcast but I’ll say it again. When I burned out, I really didn’t have that much going on. I’d massively reduced my workload - some of that was voluntary and some of it was not, but that’s another story. I had the assistant I’d been desperate for for years. I wasn’t travelling so much. I was leaving work at like seven PM, which was when I was contracted to leave work, and I wasn’t really working in the evenings. On paper, I shouldn’t have been overwhelmed. The things that I needed to do for my job were relatively simple, compared to all the shit I’d been doing for the last four years. But everything seemed impossible. Thinking, was too much. Emails, were terrifying. Meetings, were hell on earth. Phone calls? No chance. Even getting out of bed and putting on clothes and getting out of the door was like, are you asking me to climb mount everest after running a marathon because that’s how completely impossible that feels. 

We don’t necessarily burn out because of our CURRENT stress. Sure, sometimes we do, sometimes it’s relentless for a really really long time and we hit the point of burnout while it’s still relentless, but in my experience and in the experience of a LOT of people I’ve talked to, enough people that I felt like I needed to share this because almost every time it’s shared with me like it’s a dirty little secret, THIS IS HOW IT GOES. 

We don’t burn out because of the situation we’re in right now. We burn out because of the situation we’ve BEEN in, often for years. You might still be in it, you might not. But that doesn’t always make a difference, once the damage has been done.

Unmanaged, Chronic stress is what leads to Burnout. So it’s that CHRONIC thing, the stress has been going on for a loooooong time. You’ve been ON for a long time, hardly ever switching off, hardly ever resetting or resting. And all of that has built up. It’s built and built and built and it’s the accumulation of all of that shit that has gotten you where you are right now.

Maybe you’ve been working in a really stressful job for a really long time, and you’ve been putting all the hours in and burning the candle at both ends, telling yourself that you’ll take a break after this next project but the break never comes, because there’s always another project.

Maybe you’ve been overwhelmed by caring responsibilities over years and years. For kids, for a partner, for parents. All of those years putting your needs last, most likely not taking care of your needs at all.

Maybe you’ve been struggling with anxiety, perhaps exacerbated by the pandemic, never managing to relax or build your energy reserves back up.

It can be one or all of these things, or something else entirely, but it’s not just about what’s happening NOW. It’s about everything that’s happened.

Think of yourself as a car that’s been running for a really long time. Like, this car has been THROUGH IT. I don’t know enough about cars to make this metaphor work really, but I’m imagining this car that has been bumped and battered and scraped for years, maybe the engine’s not had the right kind of fuel in it, maybe someone’s been driving it with the handbrake on without realising. It’s been in ALL the pot holes. Hit all the curbs. All the things you can do to get a car to the point where its just going to conk out. 

Maybe one day you’re driving that car down a nice, quiet road. And you go over one of those tiny little speed bumps and POOF. The car is just done. It wasn’t the speed bump that did it. It was all the stuff that poor car had been through before.

So when you really stop and look backwards, that’s when you can start to understand the healing you need to do to be able to move forwards. That’s not to say you can’t move forward in any way until you’ve processed every traumatic experience of your lifetime, but it helps to at least RECOGNISE that that trauma is there. This is how you realise that you have to give yourself a break, give yourself time, because you’ve been through a LOT.

Again, as usual, we can’t always see this clearly when we’re right in the middle of Burnout. When you’re in the pot, all you can see is the pot. So we start with those foundational things; rest, nervous system, basic needs, all that. And then when we’re able to get out of the pot and step back a bit, then you can look back and see all the stuff that’s led you to this point.

It’s really important and helpful to do! Because it helps you to understand better. It maybe helps you to judge yourself less. It helps you to be less mad at yourself for getting here, and, hopefully, helps you to be able to tap into that all important self compassion. It’s not about: things aren’t that bad, why can’t you handle this? It’s: look at everything you’ve been dealing with, look at how long you’ve been dealing with it for, and look at how high that mountain of shit has grown. It’s a lot. No wonder it’s been hard. And no wonder you feel the way you to now. It’s okay.

It can help you to give yourself permission to take that break and get better.

And it can help open you up to the possibilities that just because this is the way things have been, for however long they’ve been that way, it doesn’t mean you can’t make a decision, step back, set boundaries, make changes, prioritise, and move FORWARD.

It also helps to think of it in terms of balance. If you pile up aaaaaall of that crap on one side of the scales, and you pile a few days of rest on the other, it’s not going to balance out. It helps to remember WHAT you’re balancing out, it’s not just the present stress. It’s all of it. A few days of rest will balance out a difficult week. A reprioritisation of good rest on an ongoing basis will start to even the scales over a good long time.

We don’t burn out because of what’s happening right now.

We burn out because of everything that’s HAPPENED. The weight of it. The way it’s scarred us. The energy it’s drained. The resilience it’s chipped away at.

This is why it isn’t a simple case of getting on top of your current situation, and everything being fine. This is why you can take a week off work and sleep the whole time and then go back and be immediately exhausted all over again. 

It’s about that YOU on the inside. The you that’s there, under all the surface level stuff, all the stress, all the schedules, all the thoughts and fears. The you that has always been there, the you that FEELS on a deep level.

All that time, while the stress, and the impact of that stress, while it was building up, what it was also doing was pushing that YOU down. That you was protesting and crying out for help but it was lost in everything that was going on. Maybe you couldn’t hear it, maybe you ignored it, maybe a bit of both.

Beyond the practical reason of Burnout Recovery taking time, because of the physical, mental and emotional healing that needs to happen, there’s also this deep, existential thing. That you on the inside has not felt safe for a long time, and so they need to know that they really ARE safe, that you’re not going to throw yourself back into stress, that you’re not going to ignore them again, that you’re not going to hurt them, or let anyone else hurt them.

The You on the inside needs to believe that they are safe. And that takes time. So you need to take your time. Take it slow. Your Inner Self is like one of those poor, frightened, rescue puppies that you see in a viral video montage on your facebook feed, whether you want to or not. Sure, it needs to build up its strength, but it also needs to build trust.

I never would have said that I had one of those nervous puppies inside me. Before my Burnout, I was so disconnected from the real, inner me that I had no idea the puppy was there. And then suddenly when I burned out it was super clear and I was made to confront it. I had to look, and see the puppy. And it was not a pretty thing to look at. It was bloody tragic, actually. But I looked, and I took the time, and built the patience, and did the work, and here we are.

It’s not about where you are right now.

It’s about where you’ve been. And everything that happened. And how you’re still holding on to all of that.

Be kind to the puppy. It’s for life, not just for Christmas.

Take it slow. Take your time. Rest more than you think you need to. Balance is a long game.

If you need help finding balance after burnout, come chat with me! I’m opening up coaching slots now for the new year, so if you want to start 2023 with a powerful intention, let it be to take control of your stress and burnout. 

I have free 30 minute appointments most weeks, I’ll be taking a break over Christmas - of course - but I’ve got slots available up until around the 20th of December.

That’s it for another episode of Your Supernova Moment: a Podcast about Burnout. I’ll be back with you in another couple of weeks. 

Bye for now!