Applying my oxygen mask: a burnout recovery

I thought 2024 would be the year of delegating: of stepping back, of turning my overflowing to-do list into opportunities for others to grow and tackle new challenges. While this resolution did come true, I hardly expected my burnout to be the biggest catalyst and accelerator of it.

Running on empty

Everybody had seen my burnout coming. I had seen it coming, but I always had other priorities to focus on. I felt as if I “could just continue on a little further”, I would definitely make some time next week to remove some of the workload on my plate.

It wasn’t just the well-intended advice from others, including some from experts by experience in the field of burnout, that I was brushing off. There were ample physical, cognitive and emotional symptoms I was willingly ignoring like vertigo, migraines, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, reduced emotional buffer and brain fog. This particularly showed when trying to articulate a concept I was thinking of or when switching between languages, things I prided myself on being good at. Yet I didn’t want to face reality. I didn’t want to link the symptoms to the obvious burnout. I didn’t want to prioritise myself because there were others who needed me, and I didn’t want to let down.

But then it became something I couldn’t ignore anymore. Events at the beginning of the year had pulverised what little emotional buffer I had left: losing my grandmother, dealing with my own grief as well as that of grandfather, caring for an incredibly sweet, yet very old and needy dog, to name a few.

One day I just couldn’t anymore. My husband called our doctor and while in her office, through the tears in my eyes, I heard her tell me that I had a burnout and would need to take some time to disconnect and heal. Her orders were strict - no work for at least a month, that includes chores at home - and her prognosis was clear: if I didn’t take this time to rest, I would just be delaying my recovery.

Face the facts

The first two weeks were horrible. Every good day was filled with guilt of not being spent more usefully. “I don’t have a burnout, I can go on for a bit longer”. Every bad day was filled with guilt of needing help. “I’m such an energy drain to those around me”.?

It took me a while to accept that I actually had a burnout, to admit it to myself first and others afterwards.

Throughout this experience, I have learned that acceptance is key. Accepting I had a burnout, accepting that relaxing activities don’t have to be useful, accepting that getting better would take time, accepting that I would have setbacks on the road to recovery and - most importantly - accepting that I cannot change everything and protect everyone, especially if I'm not protecting myself. This does not mean that I didn’t falter along the way. Acceptance is a constant process, not a single milestone.

Without coming to terms with the reality of my burnout, I would not have been able to get better. After trying to be the one to help others, I did what I felt most uncomfortable with: I asked others for help. The kindness, understanding and non judgemental openness with which my inner friendship circle approached my burnout were instrumental in me accepting their help, and allowing myself to accept that my burnout was real.

It was time to listen to the safety brief most of us have heard many times over: “apply the oxygen mask to yourself first before helping others” aka you can’t help others if you don’t help yourself.

Taking care of business

Knowing what I am dealing with is usually my first approach to any problem, so before looking inward I looked on Google to better understand what a burnout is, what causes it and how people get better. While I encountered a ton of interesting information, one of the things that stuck with me was “tired but wired” because it described exactly how I was feeling most of the time: exhausted yet unable to turn my mind off and actually disconnect and rest up. Reading about other people’s experience with burnout was an odd experience. Some stories felt relatable, others did not match what I was experiencing, but they all had one thing in common. They all ended with the person coming out stronger on the other end, with a better understanding of their limits and warning signs.

Wanting to get better, I used one of the services offered by my company to get professional help, because - while I might have read stories of how others got better - I had no clue where to start. Through talking with a psychologist, I learned to recognise and take the necessary steps towards recovery. A critical step in this is working on myself, to understand my pitfalls, and get the tools to avoid making the same mistakes. To my surprise, I discovered that working on yourself is hard. I completely underestimated it! If it wasn’t so darn unhelpful I’d prefer wallowing in sadness and bingeing Jane Austenesque shows any day to working on myself. However, I wanted to get better so I had to get on with it.

Let’s get emotional

Embracing emotions was an important hurdle to cross. I had always tried to not be too emotional. Being emotional had always seemed a weakness - pointed out by others to undermine someone’s opinion or argument, to cast aside someone’s expertise or knowledge, to prove that someone was incapable or irrational. Claiming someone to be emotional had often been the weapon of choice when trying to push down women and disregard their worth. And I would not be pushed down. So I pushed down or hid my emotions instead. They became a problem to be solved for myself and others. Because I still felt them. I felt them most when others around them felt them, but they were an enigma to me.

Try as I might to solve the problem of emotions, they would not be resolved so easily. Emotions don’t disappear once the problem that caused them is resolved. Emotions need time to dissolve, have to be acknowledged before they ebb away, however, it took time, courage and vulnerability to accept this.

One step at a time

Therapy has given me the space to be vulnerable and the time to build up the courage to be just that. Therapy has also given me the tools to start to read my warning signs and create the right environment to break the downward spiral, to recognise energy consuming and energy producing activities, to generally know myself better and set and align my goals to my values and ambitions. Therapy has taught me to get up and continue on when I fall down.

Getting better is not a straightforward path to recovery. It’s a rollercoaster because that’s what life is. Life doesn’t stop because you’re having trouble keeping up.

A few weeks into my burnout I had to say goodbye to my lovely dog, Rocky. Two weeks after that a kind family friend, Luc, who had been like an uncle to me passed away unexpectedly. Sometimes when it rains, it pours. Living through so much loss so close together in a time when my emotional buffer was nonexistent was rough. Being emotional during this time was inevitable and yet people understood. No amount of problem solving skills would solve the emotions, only time and patience.

Grow the change you want to see in the world

I’m sure many people reading this will assume my burnout was the result of my professional environment. But it wasn’t. Not solely. My burnout did not have a single cause. It was created by my need to help others regardless of how I felt and manifested itself in all domains of my life, professional and personal. Managers and colleagues were amongst the loudest voices trying to get me to slow down, but it fell on deaf ears.

Throughout my life I have looked at people I admired and at the impact they made, the lives they changed for the better. I want to do that. I want to “be the change you want to see in the world”. This meant I had to do it all. Try to help everybody, right every wrong, be the one to take charge and push things forth. Of course, this is unsustainable. When people say there is no such thing as too much of a good thing, they are wrong. Too much of anything is harmful even if that thing is enthusiasm or idealism.

Being lucky and privileged to be surrounded by some incredibly amazing people, a wise friend told me to “grow the change you want to see in the world” instead. She is right of course. By acknowledging my limits, I can create opportunities for others. By being open and vulnerable, I hope I can help grow a community, a world, which embraces vulnerability. So many people approached me during my burnout with their own burnout stories or those of their close friends. Some did not have a burnout yet, they were only flirting with one. If being open about my burnout helps even one person to reflect on their situation and take action, I will count myself successful.

We live in a world where being busy is a status symbol. I don’t want to live in one where burnout becomes the new status symbol, the manifestation of how busy you actually are. It took me a burnout to step out of the mindset of having to be busy, having to be doing something useful at any moment, and having to be firing on all cylinders. I thoroughly hope by sharing my experience, others can act on the warning signs earlier and we - as a community - are more open in discussing burnout and in doing so can do away with the taboo surrounding the burnout topic.