What's Beneath Burnout: Finding Meaning in the Mess

On Valentine’s Day 2017, I was sitting next to my husband, Bill, and across from Dr. Rollow, my integrative medicine doctor. I was sicker than I'd ever been.

As I was lamenting how awful I felt – sore throat, swollen lymph nodes, fatigue, low energy, malaise, a cough, congestion – Dr. Rollow asked me, with curiosity and compassion:

“Would you say this is the result of pressures from the outside and work, or would you say that it’s more self-inflicted?”

In that moment, I wanted to blame my job (most of us would be inclined to do that, right??).

But I knew the truth and knew I couldn't hide from it any longer:

“Oh, it’s totally self-inflicted…

I do this to myself.”

Tears began to well up in my eyes and roll down my cheeks as I realized how much of what I was experiencing was brought on by my own demands and expectations.

It was my relentless drive to achieve, succeed, and be perceived as worthy and impressive throughout school and in my career that brought me to this point of exhaustion.

A lifetime of striving, proving, and performing had finally caught up with me.

My body and soul were tired.

We talked candidly about how I would have to decide that I wanted my life to look differently if I wanted to feel differently. I had to be honest about how much I tend to set my personal needs and health aside for the sake of my career and my desire to get ahead.

I chose to take responsibility for where I was instead of blaming people or complaining about their role or responsibility in it. It was hard to acknowledge and accept the reality of where I was, burned out at 32 years old.

I had said "yes" to everything on my calendar that was stressing me out and I had said "no" to rest, connection, joy and any kind of reasonable boundaries.

So many of us wait until a diagnosis or a crisis before we decide to make the changes we know we need to make in our lives. We think we can keep going...until something we didn't see coming stops us in our tracks.

Here's the good news: We can choose to change at any time. We have the power to unmute ourselves to ask for what we want and need at work and at home, so we don't end up burned out and bottomed out like I did.

As difficult as my experience with burnout was, the learning I experienced and insights I gained were gifts in that season profoundly shifted my life, work and mindset for the better.

Getting to the Root Cause

Less than a month after my diagnosis, a mentor reached out and asked me to be a guinea pig for a coaching certification she was going through called Immunity to Change.I share that full story of that process in this blog post.

One of the key insights I gained as a result of going through it was identifying my “Big Assumption,” a belief that was beneath all of my striving and unrest, a belief that led me to drive myself into the ground at work.

My Big Assumption was this:

“I won’t be ‘enough’ by just being me. I won’t be 'good enough' to be loved.”

And there it was, staring me back in the face:

I thought love and acceptance were on the other side of achievement, that I had to consistently PROVE my worth and value.

I feared that, without that external approval and validation, I wouldn't be "good enough" to be loved.

I thought, "Who I am is not enough."

For my whole life, I've believed that my value and whether I'm worthy of being loved comes from what I do and accomplish, not from who I am. I didn't fit in growing up and felt out of place socially, so achievement was what made me feel worthy and valuable.

If I didn't fit in, at least I could "win" academically. I carried that mentality into the workplace. I felt like if I wasn't being impressive or seen as the go-to expert or "the best," that I was nothing, no one.

And who would love a nobody?

That might sound extreme, but that's really what was beneath my burnout. So many of us drive ourselves to burnout because we feel confident and competent at work but not at home or not in our social relationships or not with our physical or emotional health.

We gravitate toward what makes us feel the most validated and valuable, and for many people, that "what" is work.

When we jump right to the "give me tips to not burn out!" mindset, we bypass the hard and painful but necessary and healing process of getting to the root of why we burnout.

In the five years since making those realizations through the Immunity to Change process, I've made significant changes in my life related to therapy, rest, setting boundaries, building friendships, changing my job and using certain health technology to keep myself in check. I'll elaborate more on those practices in future newsletters on this topic.

An Honest Moment of Self-Reflection: Doing the Work

Today, I want to invite you to take an honest and compassionate look at yourself and why you might be burned out or on the brink of burnout using some of the questions below. Journal about them. Talk about them with a friend or trusted colleague:

1. What assumptions are you making about what will happen if you slow down, ask for help, say "no," leave your job, or let people in to see your struggles?

2. How much of what you're experiencing related to burnout is brought on by the outside or by work and how much is self-inflicted by your own assumptions, expectations and even pride?

3. What is the need beneath your striving and achieving, and can that need be met in another way other than working harder?

4. Do you have a consistent practice of expressing and processing your thoughts and feelings through journaling, therapy, coaching or spiritual support?

5. Think about all the commitments you've said "yes" to lately. How many of those "yes"es were said out of guilt or obligation? Can you either drop, delay or delegate any of those commitments to create more margin for yourself?

Every time we say "yes" to one thing, we're saying "no" to something else.

We often say "no" to rest and our health and wellbeing and to expressing what we need, think, want or feel.

So much of what inspires me to do the work I do is to help people unmute themselves across every area of their lives - their body, their mind, their soul, their relationships, their work, and their creative and self-expression.

How can I help?

Over the last 15+ years, I’ve devoted myself to helping organizations, leaders and teams become resilient, connected, compassionate, engaged and energized. I've done this through interactive keynotes, workshops, leadership trainings and retreats nearly 300 times virtually and also do this work in person.

If you're interested in learning more about my services for yourself or someone else on the topic above or other topics, start here and we can find time to connect.