10 reps, 3x a day: Burnout recovery and PT
Tags: burnout, devadvocacy, life, physicaltherapy
Published: 2020-01-27 19:39:31

---
title: 10 reps, 3x a day: Burnout recovery and PT
published: true
date: 2020-01-27 19:00:03 UTC
tags: burnout,Dev Advocacy,Life,physical therapy
canonical_url: https://heidiwaterhouse.com/2020/01/27/10-reps-3x-a-day-burnout-recovery-and-pt/
---

I don’t know why I thought burnout recovery was a single event. Nothing is like that.

When I went on leave, one of the things I did was go to my doctor and get signed up for physical therapy to rehabilitate my elbow, because I have tendinitis, _possibly_ from yanking a 30-pound suitcase off a baggage carousel one-handed too often (ever). It’s pretty much impossible to do PT and heavy travel at the same time, because it’s a lot of appointments. But my elbow had been getting worse and worse, so this was good timing.

![](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0096/9926/2560/products/md18_trueice_icepackopen_2_2000x.png?v=1565827192)

I have shitty joints. I mean, technically it’s benign hypermobility, a condition related to, but much less serious than, [Ehlers-Danlos syndrome](https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/what-is-eds/). But it’s effectively “shitty joints” What that means is that I have had PT for my left elbow, right wrist, right elbow, right shoulder (x4), both thumbs, right ankle, both knees more times than I can count, starting when I was 14, and neck. And it all interconnects in really tedious ways! Like in rehabbing my elbow, I have not been able to do all the exercises that I do to keep my shoulder/back strong, so that’s all screwed up now, and I’ll need to go back and fix it carefully after the elbow is done.

![NYC Elbow Injury Treatment Doctor Specialist · Sports Pain Management Clinic](https://www.sportspainmanagementnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Elbow-Injuries-Treatment-Doctor-Specialist-NYC.jpg)

I’m not telling you all this because you care about my medical history, but because it’s proving to be a potent metaphor for me in understanding my burnout. The cycle goes like this:

1. Acute injury or chronic injury getting to the point where I can’t function anymore.
2. Prescribed rest, which may include splinting, immobilization, icing, anti-inflammatories, and generally trying to stop the injury progression.
3. An unreasonably long period of light duty and ridiculously pointless-seeming exercises.
4. Gradually building up strength to more-or-less what I have or should have had.
5. Changing the way I do things _for the rest of my life_ based on this injury and new understanding of biomechanics. Also PT forever. One does not stop doing PT, one just stops going to the office about it.

So when I came back from leave, _for some inexplicable reason_, I thought burnout was somehow different than other overwork injuries. I was just going to go back to the DevRel equivalent of lifting heavy things and scrubbing dishes and generally acting able-bodied.

I think burnout is probably not that different from other injuries.

I think I have finished **Step 2: Rest and stop injury progression**. But now, instead of pretending like everything is fine, I need to squeeze little foam blocks and do 10 measly reps of an exercise that looks like someone told a tray-carrying waitress to walk like an egyptian.

![Figure 3](https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/6/9/e012053/F3.medium.gif)

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/9/e012053

It’s _so hard_. Why aren’t I better?

Well, I know this from PT. It’s because injuries, whether to our flimsily-constructed wrists, or our souls, are not healed quickly. It takes time and patience and work, and — this is the important part — part of that work needs to be learning to do things differently forever. I no longer carry three gallons of milk at a time, because it damages my thumb. I haven’t had a mouse at my desk in almost 20 years, because it breaks my shoulder. But it’s not like I don’t move a pointer around, I just have an external keyboard with a centered trackpad. It’s not the same, but it’s not worse, it’s just different. It’s different and sustainable for me.

So I know that part of what broke me was heavy, heavy travel. I know I can’t do that, at least while also trying to be a good spouse and parent teens. Some people can, but I cannot. That’s ok. I can modify my behavior, do less travel, do more recording and writing and reading and connecting. But I also need to remember that after the acute recovery and before full strength, there is a long and unpredictable amount of time I need to spend on rebuilding, and that’s not a punishment and it’s not a failure, it’s just… rehab. And I can do that.