Overcoming Burnout Starts With Naming It
By: Attica Black
Tags: Burnout, Work Life Balance, Mental Health, Workplace, Personal Growth

Photo by William Iven on Unsplash

The first time I stuffed a clump of hair under my keyboard, I should have known I was in trouble.

Weeks earlier, when I had to choose between taking meeting notes or sitting on my trembling hands to keep them still, I should have at least been suspicious.

But that’s the thing about burnout — it’s insidious. Denial is part of the gradual, rocky descent, and before you realize your feet have even left the ground, you’re in free fall.

My burnout was several months in the making. When the overwhelm first started to build, I blamed it on personal weakness, and became determined to talk myself out of it — whatever “it” was. I transformed my morning routine into an elaborate regimen of pep talks, positive affirmations and motivational podcasts, desperately hoping that every day would be the day I would finally turn things around.

But about an hour into each morning, with the day’s to-do list scribbled in my notebook and my unread emails flagged and colour-coded to my liking, the debilitating self-doubt would pull up a chair and join me at my desk once again.

Masking my symptoms became a full-time job, and I was pretty good at it. Not only was I still getting my work done, I was earning praise from all directions. Hyper-productivity, I learned, is an effective disguise in a crisis. But no matter how well I was performing on the surface, I lived in constant fear of the next criticism. My self-worth was so unstable that I felt as if a single mistake would cause my whole world to collapse, leaving me to suffocate beneath the rubble.

Still, I refused to consider the possibility that I was experiencing burnout.

I had seen coworkers severely overwhelmed before, even to the point of dropping to part-time hours or taking extended health leave, but I didn’t identify with them. I thought that as long I was still productive, I must be OK — even if that meant holding my twitching eye still with one hand long enough to type emails with the other.

In the end, it took an inability to speak for me to realize I had a problem.

While scrambling to meet a tight deadline, a colleague who noticed me bounding frantically between my checklist, my materials, and my ever-buzzing phone, offered to help. My acceptance took the form of manic instructions spewed on what must have been a single breath.

As I rushed around with my half of the newly divided task list, my anxiety continued to swell. The pressure of the looming deadline gained intensity, crashing over me in violent waves. Still, I pressed on, convincing myself that if I could just complete the task on time, I could come up for air. Several minutes passed before my co-worker re-appeared with a progress report and a series of questions.

And then it happened.

I tried to answer him, but no words came out. Instead, my reply was made of shapeless sounds and shallow, panicked breaths. I tried once more to no avail. Even with my most concerted effort, I was incapable of forming words.

For a few moments, I thought I was having a stroke. Even as a young, healthy, twenty-something, my denial convinced me that a stroke was a more likely culprit than stress.

By the time I regained enough composure to assure my colleague that I was fine, I was ready to admit to myself that I was far from it.

It took me nearly as long to recover from burnout as it did to fall into it. The first step in that recovery, as is so often preached, was verbalizing that I had a problem. Calling my burnout by its rightful name made it real, and once it was real, I was no longer fighting an invisible enemy. It became clear that if I was to recover, something had to give. Whether that something was my mental health or my work habits would ultimately be my decision.

I began the arduous process of detangling my condition from my identity, reminding myself, little by little, that burnout is an affliction, not a character flaw.

I started setting boundaries to regain my long-abandoned work life balance, which meant trading self-sacrifice for self-care, and saying no to unrealistic demands.

I sought out other stories of burnout, including how many before me overcame it, and how to prevent it from returning. I learned whatever I could about the condition that took over my life to ensure I would never have to fight my way out of its grip again.

Years later, reflecting on my experience of burnout is still painful. The memories of missing hair and missing words remain vivid, but it’s the memory of my own denial that haunts me most.

When stress became the rule instead of the exception, I trudged foolishly on. When overwhelm became my baseline emotion, I blamed myself. Even with burnout nearly etched across my forehead, I kept it barred from my lexicon. Had I taken one moment to recognize the dangerous path I was walking, I could have spared myself the journey all together.

The longer it takes to acknowledge burnout, the more time it has to fester and grow, filling its host with debilitating shame in the process. But once its true identity is exposed, healing can begin.

On the other side of burnout, I have found greater self-awareness and a level of peace I didn’t think possible in the workplace. There is no more invisible enemy seated at my desk, and no more hair hidden beneath my keyboard.