How To Break Up With Burnout – Breaking up with burnout isn’t as simple as it may seem.
It’s not cured by typical attempts at self-care, like spa days, massages, or even a planned vacation.
While these activities may provide temporary relief, your burnout remains.
You still feel groggy, lacking in creative flow, rigid, anxious, and even bored with your life. You might find yourself asking, “What do I do from here?”
The Root Cause of Burnout
Burnout is not solely the result of an overbooked schedule or a critical and demanding boss. It’s not your spouse at home, either.
While these factors may contribute, they alone are not the cause of your burnout. The real cause of your burnout could be rooted in fear, one fear that develops specifically during early childhood events and family dynamics.
This fear creates subconscious self-doubt that causes us to question our worthiness of love, even as adults.
The fear is that we are not good enough as we already are.
In other words, we fear that we’re not worthy of love, respect, and attention in our original packaging. Instead, our fear tells us we must become somebody worthy of these things.
So, we pursue said worthiness through achievement, accomplishment, and perfectionism.
“We don’t believe love will ever just come to us on its own. We believe instead that we must have to do something to ourselves acceptable. To so push ourselves to try hard to be good, to whip ourselves into share, we hire an inner house critic to keep tabs on how we’re doing.”
– John Welwood
The Mask We Wear
To cope with fear, many subconsciously create a persona that fits what others want them to be—a “good” person.
As we strive to maintain the “good persona,” our wonderful qualities, passions, and dreams can be neglected.
The never-ending chase to accommodate and appease people can create burnout, resulting in hollowness, like we’re missing something.
The Solution Isn’t What You Think
Many believe that burnout is solved by waiting for something external to make it better. For example, burnout will resolve itself when the economy improves, the work project is complete, or when the drama dies down at home.
But this is a trap.
There will always be another project, another task, another demand on your time and energy. Waiting for external circumstances to change is not the solution to burnout.
The Real Solution
The real solution to breaking up with burnout revolves around something more personal to you. Burnout stems from attachment to being a good person so that your deep fear isn’t realized. Therefore, the solution stems from within you by nurturing the fearful part of you back to emotional safety.
The Inward Journey
The inward journey is a process that requires compassion for yourself. It involves realizing that you have been doing your best in a judgmental world.
It involves reconnecting with your true identity and who you are outside your roles and responsibilities.
Steps You Can Take Now:
One of the most supportive steps in overcoming burnout is reclaiming your essence—your authentic self outside of titles.
You do this by allowing yourself to reimagine your identity and change how you show up in the world.
Courageously reject the norms you’ve followed.
This process may take time, and it starts with acknowledging your true qualities and letting yourself do more than what’s expected of you:
Here’s how you can begin:
- Write 3-5 things that have always been true about you outside your achievements.
- Write 3-5 things you have always loved to do when there’s no judgment.
- Remind yourself daily that you’re human, not perfect.
- Allow yourself to make changes based on these findings.
Allowing yourself to make change, to break out of the norms and conventions you’ve participated in to preserve that “good person” persona, is one of the hardest steps to take.
It requires courage to go beyond the norms of your life, family, and culture. You may disappoint people.
But when you do, the grip of perfectionism can lessen. You can allow your self-worth to develop and guide you towards more supportive choices, even if they aren’t what others would choose for you.
“Too many people in the world today decide to live disappointed rather than risk feeling disappointment.”
– Brene Brown
You might find yourself changing jobs or leaving a relationship.
As a client of mine described during her journey of breaking free from burnout: “I was always a ‘yes’ woman. I was the responsible one. Everything looked fine, but it wasn’t. I wasn’t happy. I was burned out. And it wasn’t until I let myself disappoint that person – the one who always needed to please people – that I found the clarity and confidence to make a big decision. I was able to file for that divorce after ten years of thinking about it.”
While letting yourself be someone other than the “good” person requires big change and courage, it can help you feel free and full in the ways you’ve been craving. Like my client, you, too, can release yourself from burnout. Give yourself the space to reconnect with your essence and allow yourself to receive the support to start this journey so that you can start making choices as your courageous, unguarded self.
- Check out the Embrace Your Essence Podcast:
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