I suspect that if you’re reading this, you’re struggling. Perhaps deadlines are piling up, you’re working later and later. Or, perhaps you feel flat, joyless. You wake up every morning, and it’s like you’re on autopilot. Perhaps the commute into work is filled with dread. Or perhaps it’s the office that is the relief and it’s at home that you cannot switch off. You’re always checking your emails, always imagining what is happening when you’re not at the helm.
And it can feel endless. You have bills to pay, perhaps mouths to feed, so you cannot just quit. You worked hard to get to where you are now. You might enjoy your job or work with someone who is well-regarded in your industry. You cannot just walk away from that. Life is more complicated.
It is. I get that. And so in that spirit, let me also say this. This is not going to be a “10 things you can do to fix your life” post. I wish I could write something that could make your burnout disappear. If I could, I would. I can’t.
Can you recover from burnout without quitting your job? Short answer: yes. Honest answer: it depends on you. Burnout is a process of losing yourself. Recovering from burnout is rediscovery. I’ll ask some questions at the end. You might not like them.
What is causing your burnout?
This is often the first question people ask. But it can be misleading. It implies that once we’ve located the source of the burnout, we can just cut it out, like it’s a suspicious mole. We can just stop doing ‘The Thing’. But in my experience as a therapist working with burnout, it is rarely one thing. There are often multiple things, not all of which you can stop, and some of them, you wouldn’t want to stop, even if you could.
You might find work stressful and energising at the same time. You might feel depleted after an argument with your kids, but overwhelmed with love an hour later. You might hate your boss, but love your colleagues.
The answer to burnout is rarely just “stop”. Life, as you know already, is more complicated.
A better question, I find, is not what, but why?
Burnout is an invitation
There are several symptoms of burnout: exhaustion, brain fog, inefficiency. But for me, the most illustrative one is cynicism. A relentless voice of ‘this doesn’t matter’, ‘this is crap’, ‘I don’t matter’. A belief in the pointlessness of everything.
This is, I believe, at its core, the absence of wonder.
Wonder is a word that we don’t give much currency to in our lives today. It feels childlike, magical. Perhaps, in the context I’ve just used it, unscientific. But wonder is powerful. Wonder allows us to imagine a better world and see joy in the banality of every day. To wonder is to be human.
Burnout is what happens when wonder disappears, and your day-to-day becomes a ceaseless, unrelenting grind. Eventually, your body, your psyche (perhaps, even, your soul), cries out “something isn’t working” and asks, insists, that you stop. If you have burnt out, reading this, wiped out on the sofa, you know this already.
It’s time to audit your life
And so, what to do about it, with bills to pay and commitments in your life. It’s time to take stock. I want you to ask yourself three questions. These questions are simple, but they are not easy.
What do you enjoy?
I cannot tell you how hard this question is to answer for lots of people. Perhaps you are drawing a blank right now. Perhaps your day looks like this – you get up, you go to work, you go to the gym, you come home, you have dinner, you watch TV and go to bed. Or perhaps that’s what 80% of your days look like. That’s OK. This is where we begin.
Fun doesn’t need to be anything radical or exciting. Fun can be hanging out with friends, or your family. It can be going to an art gallery, spending time in nature. (If you’re really drawing a blank, a good place to start is “what did I do as a kid?”) If something feels like it nourishes your soul, it goes on the list.
What drains you?
Be specific about this. The answer is unlikely to be “work” – there are probably parts of your job that you enjoy. It could be “your boss”, “the report I have to do every month that feels pointless”. The more specific you can be about what you don’t enjoy, the less overwhelming this exercise becomes. (It may already be quite overwhelming.) You probably can’t fix work, but you might be able to fix that report.
It could also be something that feels taboo. The way your partner always needs to be reassured. The friend who always rings you in a crisis. The constant demands of your kids.
Nothing here is off limits. You don’t need to tell anyone, except yourself. (You can, of course, tell me.)
What can you change?
Simple, but not easy.
There might be low-hanging fruit on this list. You might find ways of spending more time in nature or with your friends. There might be a conversation with your boss about how to change that tiresome report, or perhaps there’s a new job you can work towards. If there is low-hanging fruit, do that and see where it takes you. The answer might surprise you.
But if you need more, if you still feel an absence of wonder in your day-to-day, if you feel ground down, there might be some harder questions to ask. That won’t be easy. It might even be painful. I am afraid I have no simple solution for that.
But I am here to talk about it. I am here with you, wherever you want to go. Schedule a call, and let’s begin.