One thing that’s become incredibly normalised is burn out.
We live in a society that wears stress like a badge. Whether you are working fulltime or a stay-at-home mum, life is busy and despite the signs such as headaches, exhaustion, feeling flat, we continue to push through, adding more stress to our lives because that is what is expected. That’s what our neighbours, friends, colleagues are doing and slowing down isn’t an option. After all, the only way to get ahead is to be busy.
Where’s all this energy coming from? Picture it. You’re exhausted. You’ve got a million thing on this week but stopping isn’t an option, so you start your day with a coffee and get on with it, heading out the door with cacao smoothie in hand. You didn’t have time to make lunch so grab whatevers on option, and reach for your 2nd or 3rd coffee for the day around 3pm, maybe even accompanied by a snack to keep you going.
By the time you get home you’re wrecked so you don’t have the energy to train anymore, vowing to get up earlier so you do it in the morning. Dinner, bath, bed routine starts and when your time to relax rolls around, you’re so exhausted you leave it to the endless scroll on IG to distract you, or binge watch that new Netflix series. Your alarm goes off (you didn’t train, you’re tired) and you start it all over again.
The scary thing about burn out is we don’t know how deep we’re in it until we’ve had the chance to stop or analyse it. You’re borrowing energy from somewhere, so how deep is your debt?
Just like a frog in warm water, you can boil yourself to death by adding a little more heat or stress at a time so you adapt as you go (disclaimer, frogs don’t actually do this, they’re smarter than us and jump out when it gets too hot) but humans don’t. We run ourselves into the ground.
If you’re feeling exhausted, lacking zest for like, lost your spark, are generally moody, sleep poorly, experience anxiety, have no desire for social activity, lack boundaries and seem to get sick all the time, you’re not tired, you’re burnt out and it’s a serious problem. Burn out leads to disease manifesting in your body and a “mental health day” isn’t what you need to fix it. You need to alter your approach to life because what you’re doing is not sustainable.
If I could teach you how to overcome these feelings and find your spark again, not to tell you to stop but how to manage it sustainably, would you be interested in learning?
Sign up to Healing Burnout commencing Tuesday 12th July, 2022 and let me show you how.