The Blessing of Burnout
It’s hard to imagine that something as distressing as burnout could actually be a blessing in disguise. This notion may seem downright outlandish, especially if you are trudging through burnout right now. When I was going through my darkest days, I never imagined I would eventually declare, “Burnout was a great blessing in my life!” Yet, I say this with a warm, humble, confident smile upon my face to this very day. Before we delve into the blessing of burnout, let’s get clear on what burnout is.
Burnout arises from an accumulation of pain, moral injury, and trauma that leads to stress-loading within the nervous system, brain, and body, across one’s lifetime. What we commonly refer to as burnout is a saturation point within the brain and body.
Think of it as the point when the nervous system is literally saturated in stress-based signaling and simply can’t efficiently, or properly, process another stressful input. When we think of it this way, guilt, shame, and blame are immediately muted by that scientific fact.
Yet, guilt and shame so often are what keep us from getting the help we need.
How do I know this? I know this to be true because I lived it. And then I spent years digging deep, researching and learning, and practicing new skills, just as I had throughout my entire surgical career. But my journey was not a straight line; it had switchbacks.
I had been stuck in denial, guilt, and shame for years. I felt I was somehow deficient, maybe even defective, and not good enough, strong enough, or smart enough. I now know that these negative attributes I ascribed to myself were part of the stress spiral or stress cycles that keep us stuck in the grips of stress and strapped to the burnout trajectory.
So, what did I do? I did what any high-performing, high-achieving, Type-A perfectionist would do; I denied it was even happening. Because admitting that brought up too many insecurities, too many negative thoughts and emotions that I was not equipped to deal with, much less process and release.
As the negative thoughts got stronger and the challenging emotions became overwhelming, I turned to tried-and-true practices for building resilience. Positive thinking sounded like a good idea. Certainly that’s what I needed more of, right?! I tried and I tried harder. With each trial and failure to “snap out of it”, I found myself more frustrated and, yes, pissed off. How come I was the only one who couldn’t get this positive-thinking-thing to work? It simply fueled more of the shame I was already carrying AND it added more stress to my poor mind and body that were already saturated in it.
Next, I tried gratitude. This was supposed to be the golden ticket to resilience. This was going to be the thing that turned it all around. Except, when I practiced it, when I listed the many things I had to be grateful for, it somehow backfired. And, again, I felt worse. How could I be so miserable with all this abundance and prosperity around me? My guilt and shame were further fueled in a myriad of ways AND, not surprisingly, more stress was added to my worn-out brain and body.
It sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
I didn’t know that recovering from burnout requires a multi-modal approach. It requires a system for dismantling stress in the brain and body through a strategic, step-by-step approach of re-balancing the nervous system. Nothing can really change until this major threshold is crossed.
Yet, that’s only the beginning. Next, any effective and efficient strategy for recovering from and preventing it in the future requires a system for processing negative thoughts and emotions, because these are the very things that create stress in the first place.
The gurus were telling me to build resilience and I was more annoyed and frustrated than I’d ever been. I concluded that I was a hopeless case of burnout. That’s when the real work began. I had learned and experienced just enough to say “Enough!” and to leave the ‘pity party’ that I was now aware I was attending on a regular basis.
I studied compassion, mindfulness, neuroscience, and I acquired deeper knowledge and guidance that the wisdom traditions espouse. As (or more) important, I practiced what I learned. Little by little, I became aware of my growing resilience. It was being revealed!
And, here’s a newsflash… You are resilient, too, at this very moment! You don’t need more resilience-building practices. What you need is an effective strategy for releasing the things that block you from knowing, embodying, and expressing the resilience that is inherent in you…that is inherent in all of us.
Look, burnout is ugly. Healing from burnout can be messy. Messy, yet magnificent!
Burnout itself is an opportunity for you to:
Restore balance to your nervous system (which is desperately needed in burnout)
Take stock and reassess how you think and how you live your life
Gain clarity about how you want to do both going forward.
It will be a marker that can become the turning point where your life began to take on deeper meaning, greater purpose, richer depth and joy. Your experience with burnout will end up being a true blessing and one for which you will feel gratitude.
When you’re ready to explore how you can heal from burnout, explore Stress Mastery Academy or, 1-on-1 coaching with me. As someone who is walking the path, (becaue let’s be real, the path never ends!) I can tell you this work is ALWAYS worth it. YOU are worth it.
ALL the Love,
Dr. Tami
