Earlier this week I had a conversation with an old friend. We’ve known each other for a long time; since before I qualified as a solicitor, before I even knew what burnout meant. She’s an NHS worker which so many of us know means overworked, underpaid, exposed to almost unimaginable levels of stress, both in the structure and content of the work she does.
She said this single sentence that prompted an outpouring of a response in me, because it’s a phrase I hear weekly, if not daily. It’s the most common issue I come up against with my clients and it’s this:
‘I know I have major burnout, but I can’t take time off, I can’t do it to my colleagues who are also struggling’.
God.
It kills me every single time.
You know why I love working with my clients so much? Because we need you so badly.
We need you to do your job, to the best of your ability.
You’re brilliant and smart and you make such a difference.
We need brilliant nurses, doctors, pharmacists, healthcare assistants.
We need brilliant lawyers, teachers, business owners, creatives.
You make such a difference and you care so damn much. You care for others, you support and uplift and help and inspire them. That’s how you got into this mess in the first place; caring more about other people than you did for yourself.
But we need you at your best.
Not exhausted, overwhelmed, stressed out, tearful and fearful.
And definitely not burned out and ready to run from it all.
So here’s my brilliant, dedicated and hard working friend, burned out and exhausted, struggling under the weight of her work (which was overwhelming before we ran headfirst into the wall of a pandemic) but too mindful of the needs of her colleagues to do what she knows she needs to do to take care of herself.
With her permission, I’ve reproduced the conversation we had, anonymising the details of course. But the honest truth is that this could have been just about any of my clients, community, friends or family right now.
Here’s our discussion.
Friend: I have major burnout. I would go off sick, but I can’t do that to my also-struggling colleagues
Me: Ok, this is burnout presenteeism, when you think that showing up and doing something is more important than getting healthy and being able to do your job to the best of your ability. The problem with that is that everyone then stays present, working at 25% of their capacity rather than giving each other permission to go away, sort their shit and come back at full capacity.
Friend: ….
Me: What are you achieving by continuing to show up for fear of what you’ll drop on your colleagues in your absence, versus getting well and being able to actually support them?
Friend: But what am I supposed to do? Go off sick, sit at home and dwell on it??
Me: No of course not - you sit at home and get clear on why this is happening, on where your boundaries could be stronger, on why you feel the need to fix everyone else’s problems and feel so responsible for everyone. You ask yourself why it’s ok to you right now to take better care of other people than it is to take care of yourself
Friend: …
This happens quite regularly by the way. My friends have learned by now not to ask the question unless they want the answers I’m going to give them - and as much as I love them, I have never been, nor will I ever be, the person who gives them a head tilt and an ‘aww I’m sure it will be ok, it’s not the end of the world’ speech. I care too much not to be honest.
Yeah, I’m a great, low maintenance friend as you can tell.
From my perspective, more than 6 years into burnout recovery myself, more than 4 years into this work and coming up to 500 hours of 1:1 client work, the answers are fairly simple.
Burnout arises because you care greatly about your work and give too much for too long with too little care and reward.
Once you dig a little deeper and understand the cycle of burnout, the 5 stages, why and how it can arise, how our personality traits and beliefs play in to it and it can all start to come unravelled.
It doesn’t mean that the process of fixing burnout is an overnight solution or even particularly easy - but it does become achievable, understandable and something we can work our way towards.
Even more importantly, when we understand how it works for ourselves we can open up the conversation for others. Burnout isn’t a matter of personal fragility; it is a cultural issue, and it permeates all levels of culture. From our western culture, to our country to our industries to our teams, we repeat and perpetuate the cycle of burnout by adhering to common understandings and beliefs that keep us stuck and struggling again and again.
Once we have a clearer understanding, we can start communicating. We can open up whole conversations for others and start challenging the beliefs and behaviours that drive burnout.
As for my friend, well she’s on that path. Just about the time I was about to message her to apologise for firehosing in the face with burnout information and my impertinent, challenging questions, she messaged me to say thank you. To say that she had arranged a break to give herself some time to rest, and that in doing so, she had opened up honest lines of communication with her team.
She gave herself, and the people around her, permission to speak openly about these issues.
And I couldn’t be more proud of her.
Do you want know more about burnout, how it develops, how to spot it, why 2020 has been a fucking nightmare for anyone with tendencies towards burnout and why we all feel like we’ve been rubbed down with sandpaper?
More important, do you want to know what to do about it, how to take better care of yourself without quitting your job, moving to an unpopulated island for peace or working yourself into the ground waiting for something to break?
On Monday night I will be leading my last public workshop of the year. I’ve cheekily named it ‘Unprecedented’ because damned if I’m not going to take back that word (and ironic when we get into it that this was all very very precedented. Burnout, not the pandemic, take your tin foil hat off!).
This is drawn from the corporate training workshops I have been delivering this year and is a huge step up from the Burnout Prevention Session or Burnout and the Impact of Covid 19, if you’ve listened to either of those sessions.
There’s more research, more explanation, we go deeper into the practical side of burnout recovery.
In line with all my workshops this year, it’s just £25 and you can join us live 8pm on Monday via Zoom and/or you can catch the replay, which will be unlimited, together with a copy of my slides workbook.
To find out more and book your spot head to https://bit.ly/SFS-Unprecedented