Scrolling on Instagram one night, like ya do, I came across a post by author Liv Macy about burnout. Not just burnout itself, but also the fact that she didn’t see it coming until it had already pretty much chewed her up and was swallowing her. She put a call out to talk about burnout and self-care, so I’m going to talk about my burnout.
First, I need you to know that I don’t like talking about my burnout. It feels like a weakness. It feels like it makes me sound unreliable. A quitter. Like if you need me for something, I might bail. But that’s the attitude, especially as a people-pleaser, that got me into the gaping maw of burnout before I could even admit it had finally arrived.
Unlike Liv, I did see it coming, I just didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t want to upset people. I didn’t want to interrupt the flow and energy of what I was building. I was afraid if I wasn’t constantly producing that I was going to miss out on something that would make me a success. I also have this deep need to validate my existence, and that validation comes int he form of being productive. It proves I deserve space and that I have value. I also like helping people, but don’t like anybody to have to help me. It is as though not having needs made me more desirable. I’ve had to work very hard on the art of asking for things.
Liv wants us to talk more about self-care, but not in a general way. Not a “you got this girl” sort of way, but in more concrete ways.
I believe my burnout was a perfect storm of many stressors, and that sort of is what happened to Liv, too. So if you’ve been managing a lot of things but have multiple big or new stressors happening, pay attention to that.
To hear about Liv’s specific story visit her Instagram @livemacyauthor.
Here’s my story of burnout, what I think led to it, and how I handled it.
Stress, Work, Loss
Starting at some point in mid-2021 I started having trouble sleeping. I was still missing my cat Kali who passed at sixteen. She was my buddy and spent most days right next to me. I would wake up stressed and sometimes shaking and crying. I was having regular therapy to work on what I thought was panic attacks. I didn’t think of them as a result of a lot of stress and pressure, I was thinking of them more like a medical condition and that the right combination of meditation and therapy would make me be able to treat them and they’d go away eventually.
Each day I would wake up with my mind racing about two things: my health, and the fact that I was not going to get everything I needed to do done today. In fact I knew I wasn’t going to get everything I needed to get done, ever. There were so many demands that even though I’m usually very good at prioritizing, I couldn’t even prioritize.
This was not my burnout point. This was a long climb leading to six more months of being stretched too thin, stress from recent events piled on to old stress.
Then our cat Phyl passed.
Liv pointed out that the deadlines she had, she had put on herself. That some of the pressure she created was her own doing. I realized this was the case for myself as well in regards to my writing and publishing, and I decided I was going to stop pressuring myself with deadlines and build in a day every weekend to do something fun with my husband. And I did that, mostly. I let my re-release of Red August take a back burner and worked on it slowly instead of with a deadline. I worked on book ideas in notebooks instead of forcing a certain number of words out of myself per day. I took time to read some books and sit outside at lunch and do nothing for a half hour. It helped. I still woke up with panic attacks, but the sense that I would never be able to do all of my work settled down a little.
It’s important that you know I had a pretty demanding day job during all of this. You couldn’t even really call it a day job because it happened any day at any time due to the nature of the work. I was often in an on-call situation and it pulled from every skillset I have. It was hard to focus on writing and painting and other creative work as that business moved to DC and grew and grew. So during 2021 there was big growth happening there and I was on the management team. I was valued and I did good, satisfying work. But, I put most of my energy into that and not having hard boundaries for when I was working meant I never fully felt I was “off work.” Some people can easily switch their brains on and off or in different directions, but I’m not one of those people, so it made it hard for me to do my writing.
Then in late 2021 my unvaccinated father got Covid and died on January 12, 2022. That would have been traumatic enough, but while he was in the hospital his wife of about two years cut off his cell phone use so we could no longer contact him. I had been through a lot of therapy the previous months to try and have a better relationship with him because he had fallen down the right-wing conspiracy theory anti-mask, anti-vax rabbit hole and I had written him an angry letter. I didn’t want to be at odds with him. It actually was me being angry because I was scared he would get sick and die from Covid. There had been a widening rift since he moved away from Virginia Beach (away from my daughter who he was very close to since she was born, and my sister who he saw almost every day her whole life), to Luray with his new wife. They say there are two kinds of people who can come into your life, the kind who either strengthen or weaken your bonds to others, and she was the second kind.
These are some of the last texts to my dad.
I still text him. His great-grandson just turned one, the day before his two year death anniversary. Yes, his great-grandson was born almost exactly one year after the day he died.
These aren’t even all of the bad things that happened in this situation. If we thought this was bad, it got worse after he passed.
The years of stress, then the loss of my dad, adding to the dwindling time and energy towards my dream of being a writer took it’s toll when the company I work for just kept growing and I didn’t have anything left. I had hit a wall and slid down it and was limp on the ground.
Burnout Aftermath
The burnout manifested in not just the morning shaking, crying, and racing thoughts, but I was physically ill, I was binge eating a lot of junk like I did when I had an eating disorder when I was in my 20s. I felt ill and depressed. For the first time my A1C was high, my blood sugar was high, my cholesterol was high. Anybody who has been following me for a while knows I’m body positive, and have been essentially healthy and fat for decades. But the stress, the salty, sugary, fatty foods, the laying in bed, lack of sunshine and moving my body, it caught up with me in a perfect storm and aggravating my thyroid condition and my body.
I had to do something! So…
FIRST STEP – Stop everything for a moment, even just a day! Then admit burnout. I had to write to the owners of my day job and tell them. We worked together to reduce my schedule and define it better with fewer roles and they hired somebody to take on a lot of my other roles. I was only able to do this because my husband worked full-time, too.
SECOND STEP – SLOW DOWN! Ask for help in any ways you need it. Who can you call and talk to on the phone for advice? Who can bring you a few dinners? Who can send you a daily check-in to make sure you got out of bed and tried to wash your hair or go for a walk?
THEN I…
-Worked on my grief with books and asking for support from friends when I couldn’t function
-Removed writing and publishing deadlines and worked on things at a slower pace as soon as I was able to function
-Let my husband take me out for my birthday even though it felt too soon after my dad’s passing, but it was a nice day and I needed the lightness of it
-Started sitting out in the sun more, and when I felt I could, I would walk
-Bought art supplies, even though I wasn’t ready to make art (and still haven’t really done much with it so far) but it opened the possibility of making art, it made SPACE for me to think about art
-Reduced my time on social media
-Organized my spaces to make space for thinking clearer – I was so busy that everything was a jumble
-Added more fresh fruits, veggies, and some vitamin supplements to my day when I felt I could
-Stepped up my therapy and did daily meditations from an app on my phone the moment I woke up every single day
-I prioritized journaling, family, sitting down for meals
Within about two weeks I was already feeling much better. Within about two months I started to feel less piled on and like it might be ok.
I miss my dad and I am sometimes so sad and mad at him at the same time. Having my new grandson is bittersweet without my dad around to enjoy that beautiful baby. But I’m glad I’m in a healing place now.
I want to note that Liv also had a pet death and family death just prior to her burnout. These are major stressors like divorce, bankruptcy, illness, buying/selling a house, breaking up from a serious relationship. So if you work a lot of hours and have any of these major stressors, find a way to be gentle with yourself.
H.L. Brooks 