Admitting to Myself that I’m Burnt Out

The past couple of months… have been difficult. 

My productivity is a shot in the dark these days. I’ve constantly been hitting brick walls throughout the day where my energy is drained and I find it hard to focus for long periods of time. 

The worst thing is I’ve been entering these depressive states. Sometimes, it feels as if I’ve reverted back to a child again, throwing tantrums for my unmet needs. The same sense of powerlessness we experience while we’re young, it tends to be amplified when we’re mentally vulnerable.

The real world hasn’t been easy. We’re about to enter a large recession, there are stories of layoffs from massive companies every day, and the US Court passed a bill that would allow state abortion bans. There hasn’t been a shortage of negative stories, but quite frankly, I’m too consumed by my own negative narrative to make any sense of what’s going on around me.

Rest is hard for me. I’ve realized that. But I also realize that trying to chase a train that has no destination, or at least feeling that way, is not sustainable. My body desperately wants a break, from thinking, really. The past couple of months has been a lot of thinking, a lot of pivoting, and decisions. I’m emotionally and mentally exhausted.

Many people, including myself, have the conception that burnout is a result of overworking and pushing hard for success. However, recently I’ve been acknowledging that there are other contributions to this constant feeling of drain. According to Inc., there are actually three types of burnout according to psychologists.

Overload burnout: This one is the one most people are familiar with. It results from the constant “frantic” type of work produced by people who are chasing success and are willing to compromise their health and relationships for it.

The second one is, under-challenge burnout: This results from not feeling appreciated, boredom, and lack of learning opportunities. When people don’t find passion or purpose in their work, it leads them to stray from it. They’re more likely to develop a sense of cynicism, neglect responsibilities, or disengage regularly.

The third type is neglect burnout. This is a subtype of burnout that arises from the feeling of helplessness at work. This derives from people feeling incompetent and unable to keep up with the demands of their jobs.

The Shame in Burnout

I don’t know when it started, but I carry a lot of guilt around complete rest. Maybe because I’ve grown up around a family who had to work all the time to survive. Thus, I’ve slowly conditioned myself over time to feel as if I’m not producing output, I’m going to fall behind. Working weekends was a regular occurrence because of full-time courses, so I carried that habit into my work life now.

Here is a hard pill to swallow. Just because you think you’re always busy—doesn’t mean you’re actually being productive. When you can leverage your time wisely to get the important stuff done with less amount of time; that is true effectiveness.

With more time (aka not seeping into your evening), you gain back extra hours to spend with your loved ones and engage in hobbies that replenish you. If you’re like me and have zero hobbies, and are used to sitting in front of your computer till late, you can either get used to this cycle, or you’ll burn out. Plus, if you’re constantly doing ‘busywork’ that’s not truly contributing to a purpose that matters to you, you may feel begin to experience some of the common symptoms of burnout: lack of motivation, fatigue, and meaningless.

I go through the day thinking I haven’t done enough and that I should work harder. But when is it ever enough? I don’t feel as if I deserve to be burned out, because I haven’t worked hard enough to be. 

And that’s something I have to work on myself despite the constant messaging in society that revolves around working around the clock for some type of cause. “Busy-ness” is held in high regard—connotated with being hardworking, ambitious, and going further ahead in life. Where relaxation and fun— is perceived adversely as a hindrance to our “higher priorities”.

I used to think of the human body like machine .Input = output, so in order to excel it makes sense that you just have to put the highest quality input (nutrition, knowledge..etc) and you’ll have perfect products.

Except, humans aren’t robots. We have emotions, deep biological needs to care, socialize and bond with others. We have a knack for this thing called self-actualization. All these attributes cannot be simply broken down into some Hobbian machine.

If you don’t make yourself (needs, values, physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing) a priority, it’s never going to be a truly fulfilling life. Even if you’ve garnered significant financial success, or career success; if you don’t take care and nourish the other parts of yourself—you’ll always feel like something is missing. And you might try to fill that gap with other things (relationships, food, sex, alcohol, drugs) but the deep rooted pain is still there, just covered up with something else temporarily.

How I’m Navigating This – Babysteps

So the first step is admitting I am burned out. Maybe not from actual work, but from emotions resulted from overburden of my own expectations. I anticipated I would be doing work that I loved, but instead, I failed to rectify some sort of end goal or higher purpose.

The next step is coming up with solutions to this, so I can lead a productive, happy and purposeful life.

First, a break. Yes, I’m taking a complete break from work that requires too much logic, and financial planning— aka exerting energy to make money. Creative flows, reading, those things I get to keep because they genuinely make me feel happy and restful.

The break will be a week-long. It will be the first ‘break’ I’ve taken in 10 months (since my solo trip), and I don’t count my last vacation (because I was sneaking work in almost every day).

At first, the thought of taking an entire week off (keep in mind it’s hard for me to take a complete day off) was nerve-wracking— but now I can proudly say I’m so excited about it!

I think this rest time will not only be a great way to recharge but reorganize my priorities and do some long-term planning / vision building.

When we’re so caught up putting out mini crises and meeting deadlines in our day to day, unfortunately, we can lose perspective on the bigger vision. Not only that, we’re constantly stressed. Over time, this can lead to burnout which one of the most dominant symptoms is the lack of motivation and sometimes so intense you feel like quitting altogether.

It’s not that all of a sudden, you don’t have ambition or drive anymore, it’s just that your fuse is so short that there’s no energy to push forward, and have room for the creativity you usually use to solve critical problems—big or small.

I am looking forward to this recovery period and reconnecting with my higher purpose.

Catching up on Personal Development

Resting certainly doesn’t mean I’m going to sleep all day. But doing things I would normally restrict myself from doing ie. if it’s a beautiful day all I want to do is go to the beach, but my work brain may prevent me from doing so until I’ve accomplished certain things off my list.

This time is really a time to let myself honor my needs and desires. If I want to spend mid-morning having a picnic by myself with a bottle of chardonnay and cheese, I’m going to do it if it feels right for me. If I just want to read the whole afternoon, catch up on podcasts on long walks, or have friends over for dinner— I’m going to do that.

If I just want to laze around one day and watch movies, I’m going to do that.

Ugh this sounds more exciting by the minute.

Although I might not be on a physical vacation, to me, this mental vacation is probably just what I need the most.

With physical vacations, there’s always a time pressure to plan activities, and although the temporary escape can be a great remedy at the moment, you may still come back to all this unresolved rubble.

I need to peel away and clean up this rubble that has accumulated deep within my soul.

Bon Voyage

Genuinely, I need you to wish me luck haha!

My hope is that I come back with more optimism, creative capacity, logic, and plans! I want to feel motivated to dive into some exciting projects coming up.

For those that might feel the same way; you’re tired all the time, you kind of hate life and your job, your cat, whatever it is. I urge you to read more literature on burnout. It’s not always work-related, but sometimes can be a result of a self-inflicted cycle. Left untreated, it can become deadly.

This is a reminder to take some space for yourself, and not to feel ashamed. Your worth is more than the number of things on your plate really dig deep into the factors that are making you unhappy and try to find the root cause of it all. From there, it’s easier to build up a proper solution.