Burnout and I have an interesting connection…
When I hit burnout I was in denial about it. Until one weekend when I was supposed to lead a meeting, I realised I didn’t even have strength to speak to one person how could I possibly welcome a whole group of people to an event? Yet, I dragged my feet and continued that same work for another two months within the burnout.
Burnout became more of a realisation when my pastor, who has been in ministry several decades, said words that brought a lightbulb to burnout “Are you feeling physically and emotionally exhausted?”
“Oh yes indeed!” Lightbulb moment – I have hit burnout!
Eventually I was able to move myself outside of the environment where I hit burnout – which meant moving countries and changing complete surroundings.
Finally I was able to rest… or I should say, this is when burnout hit the ground and I needed to understand how to cope with people’s misunderstandings towards me.
Do I need to prove there is something difficult going on in my life right now? How do you explain burnout when you are in burnout? It is really difficult – to place words to raw emotion without the emotions of burnout taking you on a roller coaster ride…
And then when some other scheduled timetable comes back into your daily routine, that’s when people stop asking what are you doing? Why couldn’t they stop asking that before? One of the hardest questions for someone in burnout is “what are you doing right now?”
My new daily routine consisted of study which was helpful in the midst of trying to understand life during burnout. I studied counselling, a wonderful area which actually gave me great understanding and insight in that season.
The heaviness of burnout was still hard on my shoulders when it came to certain areas, like serving in ministry and church settings. There were many times I felt a little trigger inside or a moment when I was ‘on my toes’ when someone put an expectation on me – which I was not ready for yet.
How do you respond when you look fine on the outside but inside you feel really exhausted? The struggle with someone who has hit burnout is figuring our how to say no to a request put on them.
The layers of burnout are like onions, because though people do not know what’s really going inside, the unhelpful questions and unexpected opinions are like pulling off layers of pain and agony from the core of who I think I am and how I am supposed to respond.
It’s one thing for burnout to pull down layers of what one thinks of themselves, but it is another thing to try and figure out how to rebuild life in a new pattern that does not involve going back to unhelpful mindsets.
I finally am out of the burnout heaviness of physical and emotional exhaustion, feeling the light breeze of wind in my face, delighting in life with joy and peace.
I choose to be brave, I choose to be courageous, I choose to be vulnerable – which does come at a risk. I choose to speak about burnout so that it can be helpful to others. I pray that it brings awareness to help them avoid burnout.
In writing about burnout I am aware of the raw emotion that pops up to remind me what used to be… and there are certain mindsets that do arise reminding me that today, like any other day, I need to choose wisely how I step forward so that I too do not hit burnout… again.
