Burnout: What Is It and Where Did it Come From?

The term “burnout” has gained popularity in the last few years. We hear warnings about it, and symptoms like it’s a contagious disease. 

But it’s not, it’s just a disconnect between your daily actions and your soul’s purpose. 

There’s an unbearable level of exhaustion that comes from living life by the limiting rules that society has constructed for us. Have you ever gotten up and felt like someone hit the repeat button on your life? “Is it Tuesday or Wednesday?” you ask yourself, but you can’t tell because every day is the exact same experience. 

Running on this never ending hamster wheel can be tiring, but sometimes we can’t see it until we crash. Whether it’s an existential crisis, a reckless night that leads to self sabotage, or a physical illness, life will show us that we can’t continue this way.

If you hate your job or where you’re at in life, you may not know what to do. The only thing that is clear is that you need a change.

If you love what you do, that’s great, so do I! But I’ve learned that the passion I’ve had for my career left me blind to the fact that there is more to life than just that, there is an unlimited amount of experiences to be had. You can love something, enjoy it, and then move on to another.

So, burn out. What does it feel like?

Dread. Like your body feels so heavy that you drag your feet to get to work and are too drained to do anything afterwards. It’s leaving for lunch and fantasizing about driving as far as your car will take you. It’s being excited about a flat tire because hmm…. I just might not make it in today.

Okay, those are pretty extreme. It can also be feelings of anxiety, nervousness, and fatigue. It may appear to you in a plethora of ways, we are all different in how we feel discontent.

So how do we wind up burnt out when we pursue the career we always wanted? I had my first feelings of burn out in the first year of my career, and I wondered how I’d gotten there so fast. The truth is that I’d been working for years to get to where I was. My life decisions to this point were rooted in my attachment to his outcome: to a job, a position, a title. I had glorified it, and it fell short of all my unrealistic expectations.

I invested time, money, and energy into learning a skill that I thought would bring me value. Yet all it lead to was work, to a position on the hamster wheel. There I was working for someone else, for hours that I couldn’t dictate, with little to no benefits. I had strived to work in a system that didn’t allow me to move.

Have you ever worked with someone who just gets up one day, loses it, and walks out? This is an obvious consequence to working in a space that is out of alignment. The dangers of burnout that we don't see, however, is the self doubt that can creep up, the poor decision making, the mind fog, anxiety that doesn’t leave when the day is over, depression, poor quality of work, and decreased creativity and learning.

Bring an awareness to your feelings throughout the day to see if you’re experiencing burn out in your career choice. Are you excited for your day, are you seeking expansion in your role? Do you have the passion you did on your first day in the office? Or are you tired and working from a place of obligation?

I found that writing down my feelings in the moment allowed me to look back on my daily experiences and gauge whether or not those were aligned with the life I am striving to create. Acknowledging where I am has led me to take action towards where I want to be.

What Talk Therapy Did and Didn't Do For Me

For some people, it takes dramatic hardships and steep lows to seek out therapy. How many couples come in when their marriage is about to break? How many young professionals roll in mid burn out, or in the throws of some existential crisis? 

I’m sure it’s more than we’d hope. I was one of those people. 

Talk therapy has become popular now, and accepted as a normal “self care” practice. It’s in all our favorite movies and shows, and it’s become a norm in a generation inspired to seek self fulfillment and joy. We’re also living in a time of intense trauma, both on a personal and global level, where everyone needs to talk to someone.

Here’s what therapy did for me, what it lacked, and what I learned:

1. Therapy made space for me to be human.

In therapy I could share my feelings about anything and everything. I could have a pity party over the coworker who annoys me, and vent about the man who didn’t give me the attention I wanted, because that was what I was there for. It was a space for me to unload without severing a personal relationship, and to let out all of my emotions in the most raw, child like form without social repercussions. It was a wonderful release.

2. Therapy validated my feelings when I didn’t know how to.

Sometimes, the weight of the world can be sitting on our shoulders, but we are still okay. We experience things through life and move on, perhaps we're suffering but still functional. You’re friends see it, your family knows it. You’re strong, you’ll be fine. Sometimes all we need is for an outsider to confirm that, “that must have been hard,”  or “that was a lot.” Simple, short words can let you unravel at the seams and acknowledge that sometimes it’s okay to not be okay. For me this validation was life changing. “You don’t have to be perfect, you don’t always have to be strong,” opened up a door of vulnerability in my life that allowed me to face myself on a deeper level.

3. I heard my story out loud. Over and over again.

Therapists are great at rooting your behavior and feelings back to an earlier event in life. The smallest childhood traumas can skew your perceptions, and these are the lenses we see the world through. Pinpoint the trauma to understand the perception. Root it back. Explain the experience, and feel the emotions. We have to feel these emotions to fully release them, but then what? This is what was lacking for me, this was the point where I felt stuck. I could pinpoint the cause of a feeling or reaction, but I had no tools to pivot and move forward. I have a story, yes, we all do. But how do we change the story? Without these tools we are running in circles, and simply reliving these moments, as if we’re stuck in a time loop. How can we create the life we want if we’re stuck in the past?

Simple; you can’t. Knowing that I had stories and was replaying them in a viscous cycle inspired me to dig deeper. I needed more. I did an emotional healing retreat that brought me into a spiritual practice and opened up my inner world. Only then did my outer world change. I learned to connect with my inner child, with the shadow aspects of myself, feel emotions I’d pushed aside, and learn to regulate those emotions through reparenting techniques. Again, this retreat was simply a doorway that led me to another healing modality, Marconics, which continued to expand my consciousness and shift my life. 

We’re all on our own separate paths, and yours may look very different than mine. For so long I thought psychology would change my life, but what I needed was a spiritual awakening. Know that if you feel defeated after years of therapy and little progress, there is more out there for you!

4. Finding a therapist is like dating.

I saw 4 therapists in a year’s time. The first one told me that it sounded like I was doing pretty well, and wasn’t clear on what I was seeking. The second one felt more like a friend to me, and actually started sharing a lot more of his life with me than I did with him. He was late to our appointments, sometimes forgot, and would often vent about the pandemic. It made me wonder who therapists talked to, but my curiosity wasn’t enough to stay around and find out. 

The stories go on and on. The point is that I had to find someone who didn’t fit the image I had of who I would “mesh with.” Someone that was neutral, and didn’t tiptoe their way into our sessions, and wasn’t afraid to tell me things how it is. It may be appealing to find someone who is warm and like minded, or someone who is simply empathic and understanding. Yes, we need to feel comfortable and receive compassion in this setting, but we also have to remember that the people who tell us the hard truth and inspire us to sit in our discomfort are the people who truly care about our well being and personal progress. 

5. This is your journey, and yours alone.

You are your own advocate, no one will ever care more about your healing journey than you. Yes, you’re paying someone to assist you in navigating whatever it is you have going on, but at the end of the day, the work is yours to do. Don’t hand your life over to someone else to “fix your life.” They may have titles and qualifications and experience that you trust in, but handing over your power is self limiting. Only you have the power to change your life, and to create a reality that is all that you’ve imagined or more.

Whether you’re lost and not sure what’s missing in life, or you’ve been seeking guidance for years, there is a new place for you. Therapy, like life experience itself, is a tool to add to your armamentarium as you move forward. But remember, it is just that: a tool.

 There is a turn in the road that can lead you to your greatest path, so long as you’re looking within and are open to finding it.