Recovery from Burnout
Burnout and the Challenge of Wanting to Do More
Learning to shift the balance from doing to being
My best friends canceled our weekly get-together yesterday morning. I wasn’t disappointed.
I felt utterly burned out.
With my morning freed up, I considered the grocery shopping and errands I routinely do after our gatherings. But I couldn’t imagine moving off the couch.
Despite my foggy mind, I meditated for twenty minutes — a routine that grounds me.
I didn’t magically feel energized after finishing the sit and eating breakfast. But my energy meter had ticked up a bit. I could manage my afternoon tasks if I approached them in a low-key way and pared them down to the essentials.
I’m accustomed to making adjustments because burnout has featured prominently in the last decade of my life.
Should we all abide by “The Spoon Theory?”
I regularly feel burned out by Friday, but exhaustion came earlier this week, partly due to a sketchy sleep schedule. I knew I’d feel better after a good night’s rest and a day off from responsibilities.
This weekly burnout cycle doesn’t mean I never have a decent amount of energy. But I have a limited capacity. The more I respect my limits, the better. As you probably know yourself, that’s not necessarily easy to do.
Ideally, I would abide by “The Spoon Theory,” a concept coined in 2003 by writer Christine Miserandino, who suffered from Lupus. Miserandino used spoons as a metaphor to describe the experience of chronic illness to one of her close friends.
A spoon represents a unit of physical and mental energy. A healthy person begins the day with many spoons, but a person with chronic illness starts with far fewer.
When you have a chronic illness or burnout, for that matter, you must carefully plan your day and what you can realistically accomplish in advance so you don’t run out of energy.
Might this apply to healthy people, too? Indeed, using the Spoon Theory might help you prevent burnout or catch it in its earlier stages before it might lead to chronic illness.
What burnout steals from us
I experienced significant signs of burnout after working in a high-stress job for too many years.
Psychology Today defines burnout like this:
“Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress. Though it’s most often caused by problems at work, it can also appear in other areas of life, such as parenting, caretaking, or romantic relationships.”
Prolonged stress can have a wide range of ill effects on your physical and mental health. According to the American Psychological Association, chronic stress adversely impacts all bodily systems:
- Musculoskeletal system
- Respiratory system
- Cardiovascular system
- Endocrine system
- Gastrointestinal system
- Nervous system
- Reproductive system
No wonder burnout led me directly into chronic illness.
I didn’t know I had a genetic trait that could bring me down so dramatically. Researchers didn’t identify the trait, Hereditary Alpha-Tryptasemia, until 2016, years after I burned out.
But anyone can burn out if they push themselves too hard for too long. It doesn’t require a genetic tendency. And it can take a significant amount of time to recover from burnout.
According to Medical News Today, recovery can take three months to over a year, depending on the severity of burnout. Studies have shown that some individuals don’t recover from severe burnout after four years.
Anyone can burn out if they push themselves too hard for too long.
Autism and ADHD can compound burnout
Other factors can compound burnout. Take the example of 30-year-old Charlie, who runs the YouTube channel called “charlierewilding.”
Charlie felt disenchantment with her work as a corporate finance lawyer. She worked hard, constantly pushing herself to do more.
Burnout, however, isn’t about overworking alone. Charlie no longer resonated with her work in the corporate world. She felt it conflicted with her sense of self. Psychological stresses like this sense of disconnect can also contribute to burnout.
One day, she couldn’t take another moment on the job. She walked out and never returned.
Not too long after quitting her job, Charlie was diagnosed with autism. Her work burnout had been exacerbated by autistic burnout:
“Autistic burnout is a prolonged state of intense fatigue, decreased executive functioning or life skills, and increased sensory processing sensitivity experienced by autistic people. Autistic burnout is thought to be caused by stress arising from masking or living in a neurotypical environment that does not accommodate needs of autistic people.” — Wikipedia
Charlie was also diagnosed with ADHD. ADHD commonly co-occurs with Autism.
The symptoms of ADHD, which typically include attention issues, difficulty with organization, and time management problems, can contribute to burnout as well, according to Web, MD.
I think it’s worth mentioning these two conditions because autism and ADHD have gone radically underdiagnosed in girls, women, and non-binary and transgender people.
Autism was once associated primarily with boys who had intellectual disabilities. We now know that the spectrum is far broader, exemplified by actor Anthony Hopkins, diagnosed at 72, and environmental activist Greta Thunberg.
Like Charlie, you may discover other factors have contributed to your work or life burnout.
The desire to do more keeps us trapped in burnout
The desire to do more can block recovery from burnout and spike chronic illness if you have that added challenge.
I’ve always wanted to do more, even when I was flat out on the couch due to work burnout. That desire stays with me today, but I’m more aware of its danger.
For example, one of my favorite online writers recently completed a 31-day writing challenge. She wrote 31 high-quality articles in that period, including a number that required research—a fantastic feat I would like to accomplish myself.
But should I be so foolhardy to attempt it?
My chronic illness is well-managed. But still, I’m only able to write 9–12 articles a month. I feel burned out when the end of the weekend nears. I need to replenish myself, not write more.
Miserandino expressed a similar sentiment in her 2003 article, The Spoon Theory.
“Its hard, the hardest thing I ever had to learn is to slow down, and not do everything. I fight this to this day. I hate feeling left out, having to choose to stay home, or to not get things done that I want to.” — Christine Miserandino
Many people who burn out experience this desire to do more. Once they feel a little better, they push their limits and fall back. This cycle can repeat itself many times.
What’s the solution?
Dare just to be
The Internet offers an unlimited number of tips for addressing burnout. But how do we overcome the underlying desire to achieve that lies at its root?
In an achievement-oriented culture, we’re conditioned to do more. We’re praised when we overwork and awarded for increased output. From a societal perspective, our value depends on how much we produce.
But is that true?
I’ve found my answer through the practice of meditation. Meditation allows me to let go of doing and just be. The nourishment I receive from stillness makes me want to flip the script from doing to being more and more.
People often confess their regrets when faced with death. As Bronnie Ware chronicled in her bestseller The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing, her palliative care patients told her:
- “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
- “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
3. “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
4. “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
5. “I wish I had let myself be happier.”
Societies’ priorities are upside down, aren’t they? Should we wait until death knocks on our door to figure this out?
The quality of your being, not how much you accomplish, is what truly matters.
Meditation allows you to foster your connection to yourself and others. It cultivates positive qualities like patience, compassion, and inner peace, all of which make a more genuine contribution than a stressed-out, burned-out, semi-crazed person.
Burnout sucks. Chronic illness sucks. But they force you to slow down.
They allow you to go within and connect with who you indeed are and what you want. They give you time and space to tune into the beauty surrounding you — the wind rushing through trees, birds calling out, and flowers boasting their sweet scent.
Burnout gives you a chance just to be if you’re willing to take it.
Meditation has been a window into a new way of being for me. But you don’t have to practice formal meditation to make the same shift.
Instead, practice the art of stillness for a few minutes a few times each day. Gaze out the window, feel your breath entering and departing your body, or gently pay attention as you submerse your hands in soapy water and sponge off a dish.
Whatever thoughts arise, let them come and go like waves in the ocean—a practice that will get easier over time.
Dare just to be.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lessons to learn
What can you take away from my story and the science about burnout?
- Burnout can happen to anyone, including you
- It can take months and even years to recover from burnout
- Burnout can lead to a wide range of physical and mental health problems
- Common tips on recovering from burnout can help, but ultimately, we must balance doing with being to make a fundamental shift
Please, don’t be the next person who burns out at 30. Please, don’t be the next person to develop a chronic health condition due to overworking. Please, don’t be the next person who arrives at the end of their life wishing they hadn’t worked so hard.
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