The 'Drip Drip' Journey To Burnout

Slow-to-build-up burnout and breakdown can be an incredibly cruel conclusion to someone’s attempts at surviving multiple stresses. 

These types of breakdowns can be categorised two ways, I believe. 

Firstly it is where there is a long history of different types of manageable stressors. 

This may take the form of bereavement, redundancy, financial problems and then something that forces through the person’s resources once and for all, causing a rupture in their coping mechanisms and overwhelming them, prompting a collapse. 

The person might find it’s hard to pinpoint one thing that they feel justifies the magnitude of their breakdown. 

It can be terribly upsetting and un-dignifying to feel as though they have no 'real' reason, or no ‘acceptable’ reason, to warrant the complete and utter desolation they are now experiencing. 

It is crucial they are helped to understand that they have not knowingly brought this upon themselves, and they are NOT weak!

Secondly, the other avenue to slow-to-build-up breakdown can be where someone has been emotionally and psychologically injured within childhood, or early adulthood. 

This basically means that they have, for many years, been functioning with a skill set that was never allowed to be fully develop.

Early emotional and psychological injuries can affect a person’s ability to develop into the people they truly were born to be and want to be - and to have the lives they dream of. 

It can even affect that person’s ability to dream and have a vision at all. 

We are all at the mercy of our early experiences, and prolonged stress can make us unable to manage them

People with trauma templates (difficult early life experiences) are at the mercy of something that has the ability to cause debilitation many years after childhood. 

In my experience, adulthood traumas, including burnout trauma? can reignite early childhood trauma templates. 

With support, this can be seen as an opportunity for the person to develop themselves in the direction that they desire in order to be free of something that might be privately shaking them, and for them to release their creativity and new dreams. 

Slow-to-build-up burnout can take longer to recover from; that can simply be because of the length of time we have adapted to much earlier experience, and it might take a while for us to find our pathway through to recovery. 

Characteristics of slow-to-build-up burnout and breakdown tend to be the astonishing ability to live with and not to pay attention to emotional pain.

For these people in recovery, it is important to illuminate that no emotion lasts forever. 

If emotions are permitted - in other words, felt and moved through - they simply go through us or wash over us; they do not last. 

It’s only when we cleverly label a feeling with judgements and attach meaning to feelings that they last and become ‘sticky’ & cause us stress from the inside. 

On an energetic level, this can mean that we have an internal juggling of emotion that we are trying to avoid.  This makes managing external stressors even harder.

What a precarious and dangerous place for us to reside! 

If we reside in such a difficult emotional place we suffer energetically and we cannot focus on the things that are good for us. 

Instead, we learn the ‘click off’ to the intolerable turmoil and numb it…

I am absolutely passionate about being part of a culture and society that supports people to recover, heal and move through burnout when their hearts feel broken, their lives ripped to shreds, and they can see nothing but darkness and agony. 

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More from Anna.

If you or your company would like more information on burnout prevention and recovery, here is a list of resources...

• The Book - “Smile Again - Your recovery from burnout, breakdown, and overwhelming stress” is the best selling book by Anna Pinkerton. It’s the perfect resource for people who are experiencing the symptoms of burnout. Available here on amazon
• The Hub - Online Training in Burnout Awareness, Prevention, and Recovery for small, medium and large companies. Find more information here.
• The Online Burnout Recovery Course - ‘Reboot Yourself’ is the ‘at home’ recovery course for individuals recovering from Burnout. Find more information here.
• The Burnout Prevention Quiz? - An online self-assessment tool for individuals and companies to assess the risk and likelihood of burnout. Take the quiz here.