Burnout & The Coming Crisis

I feel like part of what I do is turn my experience into medicine and guidance for others. And so, telling my stories and being transparent about my experiences feels not only meaningful but that it's part of my calling.

These past few years have brought new challenges to our lives, both collectively and individually. We're all having a difficult time, to various extents. Everything is hovering somewhere between terrible and fine. Both globally terrifying and yet weirdly normal locally.

We're all doing our best. We're getting by. Hopefully, you've been doing things to take care of yourself and recognize that you might be working under new limitations. Things aren't easy. Things take more energy or effort to complete. Give yourself the grace you deserve to recognise these new limits; they aren't forever. But while you're having a hard time, it's okay to do the bare-minimum or take a full-stop break for a while. What does that look like for you?

The past few years have proven to be a difficult time for me. I fell in and out of love; I experienced a trauma that gave me diagnosed PTSD and I worked, and continue to work through that; I developed a chronic illness; and pruned friendships that were no longer in alignment (or worse, toxic and harmful). My dad calls this sort of thing a beautiful crisis. He says facing a beautiful crisis always delivers a beautiful outcome. I know that by working through my own challenges, I'll enjoy a more supportive and fruitful future because I'm doing the work.

If you're in the midst of a beautiful crisis, and you're doing the work to face it, it will deliver a beatutiful outcome.

Take it from my dad.

Burnout is a common occurrence. In fact, most of my clients are either healing from one, in the midst of one, or on the precipice of one. And I am on the tail end of one myself. We work so hard to uphold commitments we've made, even if we no longer feel they're worth upholding. We want to impress or otherwise please our loved ones, our peers, our parents, our bosses, ourselves. So we keep pushing, we keep saying yes until we get sick and burn out.

Most common is career burnout, when our jobs just become too demanding and leave us no energy to cope with (or even have) our personal lives. But there are other kinds of burnout! The symptoms of burnout are varied, depending on the type you're suffering, but here's a quick list:

• Constant exhaustion that doesn’t improve with rest

• Feeling a growing sense of dread

• A lack of motivation that feels hard to shake

• Difficulty concentrating, mental fog, making more mistakes

• Heightened irritability, anxiety, or a sense of being overwhelmed most of the time

• Loss of executive function (basic tasks feel disproportionately hard)

• Sensory sensitivity increases

• Just feeling less like yourself overall

Any of these on their own is deeply unpleasant but might not signal burnout. But if you feel like all of the above are true for you then it might be time to admit that you're in burnout. So what does that really mean? Well, it means you're doing too much. You're not having enough fun, you're not resting enough. Recovering from burnout takes a minimum of 6 months but can take years in some cases. The best way to address your burnout is to acknowledge it and then start flexing your ability to say "no" or —as my dad loves to say: "that's not for me." You need to learn to hold to your boundaries, stop agreeing to things you don't actually want to do, and start putting energy into creating joy. My motto for the past 3 years has been "preserve peace, chase joy" and I'd invite you to do the same. If something is disrupting your peace, it's gotta be a no. But joy doesn't just find us, we need to create it (more on that coming soon!).

I have helped a lot of people face their burnout and create steps that work for them (because it really is an individual challenge, even if some broad approaches work for all). There are a ton of resources on how to cope with burnout but if you think you need something more tailored, or someone to help keep you on track I'm happy to help. My Insight Sessions are always free, gives you a chance to decide if I'm the right fit for you! Burnout resources: What are the 5 stages of burnout?

Burnout unfolds in five distinct stages. Explore each stage in detail, highlight key symptoms to watch for, and share practical wellbeing strategies you can apply in both your personal and professional life to help prevent and manage burnout.

Pillars of Wellness

As a counterpart to burnout are pillars of wellness. These are areas of your life that require ongoing maintenance in order to avoid burnout in the first place.

Canadian Mental Health Association

A simple invitation to pause and take 15 minutes for yourself.

The Burnout Collection

For those of us who are neurodivergent, burnout can have a significant and lasting impact on our health. The more often we go into burnout, the more intense and lasting the symptoms. AIDE Canada has a great list of resources to help avoid and recover from burnout.

American Psychological Association: Building Resiliency

A guide for navigating life-changing challenges, with a focus on adapting and emerging with greater strength and stability.