Never ending to do list - check. Longer and longer hours working - check. Frustration at being unable to conquer your to do list without working evenings, weekends and holidays - check.
What about that headache though?
At a recent Burnout Prevention Session I spoke about professionals living from the neck up. Everything we do is about evaluating the past, making plans for the future and the work it takes to get there. Law in particular has become factory work for brains - squeezing every more hours in under the strip lighting drafting, planning, strategising, discussing.
It’s with no small sense of irony therefore that I find the vast majority of my clients come to me, not because of the psychological symptoms of burnout, but the physical symptoms that stop them in their tracks. For most of them, looking back they can see a trail of breadcrumbs leading from smaller physical symptoms to their eventual crunch moment.
So here’s 7 physical symptoms of burnout you have been overlooking
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Tell me if I have this image of burnout right; a desk piled high with papers, a person buried in amongst them. That person looks unkempt; messy hair, hands running through it in agitation or gripping their forehead in pain. Their desk is a mess, they are clearly completely out of control, surrounded by endless coffee cups and you can feel the pain and fear rolling off them.
That’s what you think burnout looks like, right?
Sorry, you’re wrong.
Take a look around you, whether you are on your commute, sitting at your desk or idling at the supermarket. Count four people. One of them is experiencing burnout right now, and another two of them have experienced burnout recently.
Are you one of them?
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I used to think that I was crazy.
I would work a full day, spinning plates and putting out fires left and right and I would be upbeat, chipper, making inappropriate jokes with my black humour and skipping along like a skimming stone. Almost the moment I left the office, it would change. It was like someone pulled the charging plug; my energy would drop and with it, my mood. All of a sudden, the aches and pains of the day would fill my mind with nothing else to distract them.
I cried on the train home, more times than I care to count, my face swivelled towards the window or shielded by the curtain of my hair.
I thought that I was crazy, that there was something wrong with me that my energy and mood could shift so quickly. I hadn’t realised that it was part of the personal cost of doing business, the heavy weight of empathy taking a toll on my wellbeing.
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This is going to be a super interesting blog because, on the one hand, I'm sharing my experiences this week. On the other... well I might be about to piss off a whole bunch of people.
Let's see how that goes shall we?
This week has been an incredibly interesting one. On the one hand, struggle and strife and on the other, well let's just say that the universe has a sense of humour and for once I'm laughing with it instead of feeling like the butt of the joke.
Most people don't approach pain and struggle the way I do. Most people see it as something to be avoided, something to stay away from, something that nice people don't do.
I've never been all that 'nice' ;-)
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I had been at my job for two weeks when my mum was rushed to hospital.
I was working in a demanding area of law and I had just come off the back of several years of scrabbling to try and qualify, to try and keep my head above water. Working multiple extra jobs in order to pay the bills whilst I went through the rigmarole of training and qualifying.
I arrived at this new job thinking that it was a fresh start.
I had moved to an amazing firm with a fantastic reputation for the work I did, with people I could really work well with and looked up to. I thought ‘this is it, everything is going to be better from here’.
And then I got that call.
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