My name is Elsie and I’m recovering from burnout.
If you don’t know what burnout is, then you’re lucky. If you don’t know what burnout is, it’s feeling like you’re drowning and burning up at the same time. If you don’t know what burnout is, the doctors identify it as having three components: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a low sense of professional effectiveness.
According to the book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, the term “burnout” was coined by Herbert Freudenberger in 1975. He defined emotional exhaustion as “the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long.” Depersonalization is “the depletion of empathy, caring, and compassion.” And last, when you experience a low sense of professional effectiveness, you feel “an unconquerable sense of futility: the feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.”
That’s burnout.
And more than likely, you’re not lucky. More than likely, sadly, you know exactly what I’m talking about. This is why so many of us have quit or are thinking about quitting our jobs.
We’re all burning out, burning up, drowning, suffocating, whatever you want to describe it. It’s the silent pandemic.
I quit my job in late March. There were many things that factored into my decision about quitting. You can read more about it here.
I was happy to quit. I also felt defeated to some extent. I had let my miserable job take over my life.
I started that job in January 2020. I was bright-eyed, exciting to learn about the legal field, to work under a woman of color who proclaimed to be self-made. I was new to the field and bright days were ahead of me.
I was so wrong.
By early March 2020, I wanted to quit. I put in a few applications at other companies. But then the pandemic hit, and I halted all plans of leaving my job. The world seemed to be ending and I was grateful I had a job to pay my bills until the end of days.
But after going through a pandemic and a toxic workplace, the girl I was at the beginning of 2020 was nowhere to be found. I used to be strong-minded, strong-willed, excited for life and my future. I was ready to take on the world.
By the time of my last day on March 31, 2021, I had become a shell of a person. I was defeated. I was nervous all the time, having panic attacks all the time, crying all the time, angry all the time, fighting all the time. I got mad at the smallest of issues, both with people I knew and with complete strangers. I got mad at the person who cut me off on the freeway, at the person who shoved me in the grocery line, at the way those teenagers giggled at the park, at the way someone glanced my way, at the way someone near me was breathing.
I was losing it. I was a monster and I hated myself. I still hate myself.
I knew I needed to do something. My life couldn’t go on like that. I couldn’t become a menace to myself and to society.
The first step I took was to quit my job. I left that toxic work-environment that contributed to most of my panic attacks and anger.
Immediately, I felt better. It was like I was finally able to lift the boulder that was crushing me. But the damage had been done. Without the boulder, I was just numb. I didn’t have any energy. I didn’t have any drive. I didn’t have anything that was pushing me forward. I became stagnant. Frozen in place where the boulder had crushed my soul and my body. I lived in that deep hole for several weeks after I quit.
Slowly, I was able to move. I’m not sure that I am out of the hole, but I do know that I am no longer numb.
But how do I go back to my old self? How do I go back to the girl I forgot? How do I go back to the girl I fear I abandoned? How do I go back to being myself when I’ve estranged myself to her? How does she forgive me? Am I even able to go back? The scars are still here. They have been carved into my soul, my body, my mind.
Sometimes I get sad out of nowhere. It feels like a part of my mind shuts down my entire body and fills it up with dread. Darkness. Sadness. It feels like the ghost of that boulder. It crushes through my soul to haunt me at different times. I may be feeling okay one moment but then I blink. I’m no longer okay. I am suddenly crushed.
These are the moments that are both a mystery and, oddly and unfortunately, a comfort. It was the way I’ve felt for the past almost two years. My body and mind are used to feeling this way. It hasn’t forgotten the person I was two years ago. But every time it remembers her, things get worse. I get worse. I long for her. I miss her. And I become even more crushed when I realize that she’s gone. She’s just gone. I’m just gone.
So here I am now. Confused. Depressed. Angry.
But also, hopeful. Cautiously optimistic. Cautiously happy.
I am at the brink of a new me.
The person I am today is not the same person I was before I quit my job. The ghost of the boulder leaves me alone long enough and I can feel the sunshine again.
I still don’t know how to find myself.
Does anyone ever?
I think it’s interesting how there are books and movies and TV shows about the main character finding themselves or coming of age. These stories can take place at different part of the characters’ life. Some are seventeen. Some are sixty-five and newly retired. They find themselves at cross-roads, at a moment in their lives where they are lost. But they make it seem like it’s just once in a lifetime thing. Like there’s only ever one moment in your life when you find yourself at the brink of change. When in reality, at least for me, you find yourself at that point constantly.
Change is inevitable. Obviously, there’s good change and bad change. I won’t sit here and tell you that it’s up to you to make the bad change into a good one. Because I’m not one for relentless optimism. And it’s hard to do, especially when you don’t even feel like getting out of bed sometimes.
I wish I could say what’s the definite cure for burnout. But it’s different for everyone. As disappointing as that answer might be, it’s the truth.
If you’re anything like me, you will try to focus on making your life “perfect.” You will find that YouTube video of people waking up at 5am, journaling, working out, eating healthy, and overall having a picture-perfect life.
That’s the life we all aspire to.
After all, you and I ended up in this burnout hole because we tried to be perfect in the first place.
Please don’t make the same mistake twice.
Forget about waking up at 5am and following a rigid schedule of productivity.
We’re not wired to be like that.
Focus on your needs. What do you truly need to recover?
Burnout is as much as a physical condition as it is mental. You need to listen to your body first. It’s begging you to listen to it.
If you need to lounge around doing nothing, do it. If you need to cry, do it. If you need to hug someone, do it. If you need to eat a cookie, do it.
That’s what I did. For days, if not weeks after I quit, I did absolutely nothing except watch TV and read books. I watched movies and shows I had been wanting to watch and I ate my favorite comfort foods.
I started feeling better. My body was recharging.
Then I started going on walks, working out, eating better. I started being a little productive. I started writing again. I started thinking and planning about my future and career, something that would give me a panic attack when I first quit my job.
Don’t get me wrong, I still eat junk food. I still only exercise occasionally. I still haven’t written a novel. Some days are better than others.
But I’m making progress.
And you will too.
The process doesn’t have to perfect. You don’t have to be perfect.
I believe in going through the motions. There’s no other way around it. You have to experience what you’re living through, whether it’s pleasant or dreadful. We are humans and we are feeling machines.
Be happy. Be sad.
Be human first, and eventually, you’ll be yourself.
Leave a Reply