You’ll have read about burnout. The WHO defines it as exhaustion, reduced efficiency, and cynicism. You might have an image of it in your mind: of the stressed-out worker, lying flat out on the sofa, unable to move. That probably isn’t you. (But if it is, get in touch.)

You’re still doing what you need to do at work. You’re still delivering on your KPIs. Or maybe, it’s a different sort of work. Maybe you’re still out there, organising. Either way, you’re working, you’re doing. It’s go time.

It always is.

But underneath that, you know something isn’t right. You’re wondering if you’re burnt out.

Burnout in high-functioning people

You’re not the ‘picture of burnout’ that the symptoms describe. Instead, you might have noticed a few things shift. You might not be sleeping as well. You might have lost (or gained) an appetite. You might have noticed that you’re just not looking after yourself as well as you used to. Another drink here, even on a school night. Perhaps that extra line – who cares?

Indeed.

There are two symptoms I see all the time in high-functioning people with burnout. The first is that voice – the “who cares”. That is cynicism, from our original list. The sense that nothing matters, that either what you are doing is pointless, or what you are doing will not be any good anyway. And I also see its cousin, which I describe as joylessness.

Here’s what that could look like:

You could be out doing what you love with people who you love, but something feels a bit flat. It might even feel like you’re not quite there. Like you are watching your own life, as though through a TV screen. When you speak, it can even feel like you’re reading off a script. It doesn’t feel like you, somehow. It all feels a bit Truman Show, if that’s a reference that helps you.

If it’s been weeks, or perhaps months, since you last felt present, content, light, or even happy. If that gnawing tension that you sometimes feel never quite goes away. Or if the insides of you just feel empty, dead… you might be burnt out.

What happens when you burn out

Burnout is a process of losing yourself at work. Somewhere along the way, the workload grew, and somehow it never felt, never feels, like something you can refuse. Like ink blotting itself on paper, it just spreads, covering more and more of your life. Now, you might find yourself at work more and more. And when you’re not at work, you might be thinking of little else. When you’re not at work, you might even be wishing that you were.

If you never really leave work, even after you’ve left, this is how I think of burnout. There are other behavioural changes that go along with it, like irritation and insomnia. But conceptually, I imagine work has become for you like a pair of golden handcuffs, something that you can’t quite break away from, even if you want to, even if it gives you something important. Perhaps, especially if it does.

The fact that you are high performing, the fact that you have got it together, is a warning sign, not a green light.

Burnout is, for many people like you, hard to avoid. You’ve probably spent your whole life being high performing, at least in some ways. At work, you might be climbing the corporate ladder, and fast. You might find that receiving praise, as words or bonus cheques, feels enlivening. Or, you might have noticed the adrenaline coursing through you makes you feel like you’re living. Without it, life is flat, dull. The mission that you are working towards, whether social justice or a bottom line, can feel so important that your needs, who you are, no longer seem to matter. You lose yourself in that way too.

Burnout then is not fun. It can be destabilising, and it can feel endless. And, it can also be a gift.

Reconnecting to yourself after burnout

Therapy for burnout is not about encouraging you to quit your job and move to a meditation centre. It’s not about booking a holiday. You might not even need to quit your job. It’s really something much more profound.

You might be thinking that this will pass, that it’s a busy month or you can recover on the weekend. You might be thinking that it’s not that bad, you can power through. But if you’re reading this, there’s a part of you that already knows that isn’t true. That voice in your head that is telling you to keep going is perhaps a voice that we can get to know. This is part of the process of recovery. We get to know the full you. And then we can ask the bigger, more profound questions: Why does this happen? How can we stop it from happening again?

And that is where the next stage of the work begins. If that sounds good to you, you can schedule a free 15-minute call. No obligation, just a chance to get a sense of me before the next step.