Understanding and Addressing Burnout

Burnout.

Just the word gives me a heavy, tired feeling. It brings with it memories of feeling stressed, anxious, overwhelmed and exhausted – all of the time - of feeling what little energy there is draining away like someone just pulled the plug.

Burnout can leave you feeling useless, like you can’t cope, like you’re weak or in some way flawed and that you are letting people down. It saps your confidence, your self-esteem, your sense of who you are and leaves you feeling not just tired and overwhelmed but depressed as well. But why? Why do you get to that state? And how?

Here’s what I think.

For one reason or another, somewhere along the way, you have learnt that your value comes from making other people happy, from looking after people and making sure they feel comfortable and cared for. In short, you have learnt to put other people’s needs ahead of your own even to the point of moulding yourself into what you think they want you to be. You’ve been told you are a good person: so caring, so generous, so selfless, so cheerful – and maybe it made you feel good to hear that, so you did it some more. You also perhaps started to believe that if you don’t work hard to please others then you are a bad person: uncaring, mean and selfish.

It’s not true of course but, all in all, this belief has become so entrenched that you can’t see any other way of being (even if you recognise the pattern and the harm it is doing to you). The trouble is that everyone’s needs are different, everyone wants you to be a slightly different version of who you are – and sometimes these versions are downright contradictory. So you end up spending your life trying to make everyone else happy, trying to anticipate their needs, trying to be who they want you to be so that they’ll like you and want to be around you (because you are nice to them), or they’ll want to employ you (because you always go above and beyond) – there are many variations but you get idea.

The trouble is that now you are exhausted. Burnt out from taking care of everyone else and letting your own needs take a back seat, from trying to fulfil an image of yourself that doesn’t even come from you. You feel lost in the woods - without a map. But how do you figure how you got lost in the first place. Never mind find yourself again?

Let’s think about it as a walk in the woods.

The woods are your inner landscape, your internal world. Some areas you know well, some you rarely visit while there are other areas that are thick untouched undergrowth. There are familiar landmarks and places where there is nothing you immediately recognise.

Some of the terrain is already mapped with paths laid out and trodden in, some of it is thick with undergrowth and as yet uncharted.

As you learn more about your private wooded world, you might start to notice things – paths that lead back to the same place, paths that connect to one another, landmarks that are significant but as yet unnoticed, great swathes of land you are reluctant to venture into, areas that are completely passed by unseen. Are you ready to step off the well-worn paths and into the undergrowth to see what you might find? Are you brave enough to lift that stone or peer into the cleft of that tree you keep circling to see what creepy crawlies are concealed there?

If you feel ready but need the encouragement and support of a guide I can help. Invite me to join you in your inner landscape and, at your pace, gently and with curiosity, we will explore it together, mapping more and more of it, creating new paths, getting comfortable with the paths that feel daunting, getting to know what’s there – intimately, making new connections and new discoveries. Maybe we’ll find a path that takes us deeper into the woods, maybe we’ll find a path out. Either way, we will emerge with a more complete map of the landscape that you can refer whenever you feel lost in the future.

If you’d like to discuss working with me, please get in touch.