Say bye-bye to burnout!
Back in the heady days of early 2020, there was a lot of talk about how the pandemic-induced remote working revolution would be the end of burnout. Now that people were working from home en-masse, the time for achieving ‘work/life’ balance had come.
Remember all those stories about people learning to bake sourdough, or taking up a hobby, or getting more exercise now that they didn’t have to commute or do the school drop-off? We were all so much more related now that we could rock up to work in track pants and ditch the high heels and make-up.
Fast forward to early 2021 and the #1 issue all of my clients were experiencing was burnout. Whether they were parents, single, partnered without children or empty-nesters, it didn’t matter; they were all burned out. Now that we’re in 2022, and the glow of the new year has faded, their situation hasn’t changed. They’re back in burnout territory.
As someone with personal experience with burnout, I can really feel for my clients. I know what a crappy situation it is and how far-reaching its effects can be.
What’s really struck me during conversations with my clients has been the perpetuation of myths about burnout and the various ‘remedies’ to it. It’s saddening that these beliefs are so ingrained in how people understand burnout and how to treat it.
Helping my clients to debunk these myths and see things in a different light has always been key to helping them find a clear pathway from burnout to rejuvenation.
These are myths about burnout that most commonly arise in my conversations. Let’s take a look at why they're so harmful to us:
You’re not practising effective self-care. It’s pretty hard to find the time to exercise, eat healthily, spend time with friends/family and sleep enough when you’re overworked. These are usually the first things to go by the wayside when you experience burnout, because they are the things that take time away from doing work.
You alone are responsible for fixing your situation. To accept this statement means to accept that you cause your own burnout; that’s just patently untrue. Burnout happens when you become overburdened with responsibilities, when your time and effort are drained by things that give you nothing back in return. We don’t cause our own burnout - others at work are also implicit in causing it - so surely everyone involved must participate in a successful solution?
You just need a holiday. Don’t get me wrong, holidays are awesome. But burnout isn’t fixed by a week or two off; when you get back to work and life-as-usual, the things that caused your burnout are still hanging around. They haven’t gone anywhere. Once that glow of the holiday has worn off, what happens next?
More help at home will fix your burnout. Of all the myths that perpetuate, this is the one that pains me the most. Of course more help at home could be useful for some women. But are we really prepared to accept the idea that more help at home means you’re more available for work... rather than address what’s happening at work to make you need help at home? Are we really prepared to accept that you need to make your out of work experience easier, rather than improve your at work experience? Our answer to this should be an emphatic NO.
Why have we been so accepting of these narratives when they serve us so poorly?
I believe it’s because they suit workplaces; it means they don't have to address the systemic issues that really cause burnout. I’m not saying that this is the result of some intentional machination by a moustache-twirling CEO. It’s just built in, by default, into the world of work. Our current workplaces are designed to undertake more, more, more all at once without genuinely taking into account the impact on their employees. We all know our workplaces are designed to maximise productivity & profit, using as few resources as possible.
But rather than examine what we must do collectively to tackle these systemic issues, let’s look at what you can do individually if you find yourself facing burnout.
Burnout is a complex situation. Alongside your new understanding of the myths around burnout, to resolve it properly you need to an exit strategy, combining boundaries with examining your situation from multiple perspectives.
It’s helpful to have someone assist you with this, to really get to the core of your situation. To guide you through the process, here are the 5 questions you must answer to create your exit strategy from burnout.
In an ideal world, we would have already resolved the multitude of systemic issues that cause burnout. But we have a way to go until that’s happened. So the best we can do in the meantime is to help ourselves (and those we have the responsibility to help) when we find ourselves overwhelmed and exhausted.
So if you’re currently experiencing burnout, or can see it on the horizon, I encourage you to use these 5 questions to squash your burnout and keep it from raising its ugly head again.
I’d love to know if you use this approach to escape burnout and how it helped you. Feel free to reach out to eva@hellohelio.co & let me know.
