I’m going through a not-so-fun thing called burnout. I always was familiar with the term, I vowed to myself to never let it happen to me, and now that I have one it’s easy to communicate to others why I’m not working at the moment. Yet at the same time I notice that it’s hard to describe what I’m going through and what I need, and that others only know of burnout in the most general sense, i.e. “someone is overloaded and recovery could take months”. Burnout is also typically associated with work, and that is where I feel some friction with the term. I don’t think my burnout is caused by my job. In fact, I hated that wasn’t able to continue work fulltime. I liked my project, I liked my colleagues, but I was also so tired. Tired of working from home, tired of the lack of sunlight in Dutch winter months, tired of the lack of fun things to do.
I point the blame towards the accumulation of corona measures. Or, at the very least, they have been a catalyst for the burnout. In the Netherlands, a lockdown was instated in October and a 21:00 curfew was added in January. The lockdown stripped away the things that helped me disconnect from work and recharge, such as the gyms and restaurants. Then, the curfew practically decimated the time I could spend with friends after work. I faced a 8-9 hour work day (of which at least 5 hours were video calls) with only 2-2.5 hours of fun with friends to counterbalance the work day. Combine this with the winter season, in which we only have sunlight for 7 hours a day, and I found myself in a situation in which I had very limited options to replenish my energy. I felt my energy levels slowly drain week after week, and at first I didn’t understand why. It wasn’t that work was too much - I could’ve easily handled the work load under normal circumstances -, I later realized that it was the shrunken personal life for a long period of time that caused the unbalance.
So, I guess I am an exception to the rule and have a non-occupational burnout. Now what? I searched for other definitions and others’ experiences with burnout to see whether I could recognize myself in some of the descriptions. It is difficult to find a similar case. Burnout can manifest itself in different ways and on different levels. There is a whole spectrum of burnout, ranging from not being able to leave your bed for weeks to being able to continue daily life, just not work. I’m still figuring out where on the spectrum I fall and at the same time I don’t really care how severe my burnout is, I just want to recover. But it can be comforting to know that you’re not the only one, and to be able to relate to someone else when you’re going through this. Fortunately and sadly, a friend of mine is kind of in the same boat. We’re not always experiencing the same symptoms at the same time but we do understand each other well.
I know that not everyone is blessed with a Burnout Buddy, so I thought I’d share my journey and experience with this strange, frustrating, but also educational phenomenon, for those who are going through something similar, those who might not realize they are going through something similar, or those who know me but haven’t talked to me since I abruptly went off the radar and want to know how I’m doing. I’m now at the point that the worst exhaustion is behind me (I think, I hope), and I found some space for reflection. And, writing has a therapeutic effect so this also helps me process this experience and find a little structure in the current chaos in my head. So, here is a narration of the past 4 months.
It was early March, 4.5 months after the restaurants closed, 2.5 months after the gyms closed, and 1.5 month with a 21:00 curfew, when I realized I couldn’t continue work at the same pace. I had noticed in the past couple of weeks that it was getting increasingly difficult to get myself to start a new week. Usually I mentally conclude the weekend and prepare for the week ahead by cleaning the couch area, looking at the upcoming meetings on Monday, and deciding which clothes I want to wear. I started to notice mid-February that I didn’t want to get up from the couch on Sunday evening to go through that ritual and when I finally did look at the upcoming meetings I didn’t feel the usual thrill of knowing that we were going to book progress with the project. Once we were back at it, the week flew by and I didn’t think much of the feeling I had on Sunday. But then I had the same feeling the next Sunday and it was heavier, and even heavier the Sunday after that.
I knew that I couldn’t ignore this warning sign any longer and decided to open up about my decreasing energy levels at work. I received a lot of support which was very comforting. I also consulted the company doctor, who said that I was on the verge of a burnout and could attempt to prevent it by cutting back my working hours to 3 days per week. I was fortunate to be on a project that actively supported me in the diagnosis and facilitated the necessary time off. The nature of my work is very cerebral but I couldn’t maintain the necessary levels of “brain power” due to my exhaustion, so balancing out 3 days of work with 4 days of rest (2 sick days, 2 weekend days) was great. This way, I still had a purpose at work while also having time to relax the brain when needed. On the resting days I would go on a walk (often with a colleague), take a nap, eat with a friend, binge RuPaul’s Drag Race, take another nap.
At the start of June I took a week off. It was glorious. The weather was amazing, the gyms were open, the patios were open, and I spent the week exercising and doing a lot of fun things with fun people. I felt energized and even contemplated increasing my working hours.
Monday came around and I had to work again. I didn’t really feel like it but didn’t think more of it because I always need to get in the mood for work after a holiday (I’m probably not the only one). Halfway through the morning I found my groove and enjoyed being back at work. Tuesday was a fun day but I noticed mid-afternoon that my brain switched off. I was familiar with that feeling, but only on a Friday evening after a long and busy week, not on a Tuesday afternoon after a week of holiday. That was red flag #1. After work I had a gym class and noticed that I wasn’t really present. My mind was blank, I just stared into space while going through the exercises, and felt completely drained afterwards. That was strange. I’m always present when working out and I always feel great afterwards. Red flag #2 I guess. Wednesday I couldn’t get out of bed. Nothing seemed to work. Not my brain, not my body. It was like I went back in time 2 months, when my energy was at its lowest point. Big red flag #3. When I drove to work the next morning, I knew once again I couldn’t ignore the signals. But I thought I could hold on a few weeks longer until we finished the current phase of the project, and then perhaps take a time-out. However, a few hours later my employer and I quite abruptly concluded that it was best for me to completely disconnect from work for a while. The red flags were practically screaming at me, trying to make me understand that I had not been able to combine my recovery with parttime work and that enough is enough. There was no other option than to call in 100% ill until further notice and to be replaced on the project. A few hours later I was home. No project, no work. Just me and my overloaded brain.
It was time to rest, for real this time.
But what the heck is “rest”? Physically, I am fine (thankfully). Mentally, I am exhausted. So, my mind needs rest. But what does it mean to give your mind rest? It’s easy to know what you can’t do and need to do when you’re physically impaired, but when you “break your brain”, how do you let it heal? Turns out, there is no easy answer because a burnout feels different for everyone. There are a few guidelines, such as to be active for at least an hour each day, limit screen time, and be careful with undertaking social activities. The first two are easy for me as I am an active person by nature and enjoy reading books. The latter guideline however, was a constant internal struggle until a week ago. I used to feel a strong urge to compensate for the lack of social contact during the 7-month lockdown, and now that I had the time, I wanted to go out an do stuff. At the same time, social activities were mentally taxing. They still are, four weeks after calling in 100% sick. So how do I find harmony between the urge to go out and be social, and the need to not overwhelm myself?
To make things worse, my overwhelm seems to be triggered by the slightest things. I have trouble handling bright daylight and sometimes need my sunglasses indoors when the sun is very bright, and I need to avoid patios for a while because the combination of daylight and people talking around me is too much. It feels like my filter is broken. Instead of being able to focus on the conversation at my table, I also hear every conversation from every table around us, as well as birds, traffic, clinking glasses and cutlery. I can’t banish those sounds to the background, they all come in as loud as the conversation I am holding.
But even in an isolated setting I struggle to maintain a conversation. It’s more difficult to find words, I jumble up the word order in a sentence, I jumble up letters within a word and end up saying a totally different word than I intended, I even jumble up letters, words, and languages at the same time. (One noteworthy example: I wanted to say “kikkers” - Dutch word for frogs - but couldn’t come up with the word, then my mind jumped to "frogs", then I jumbled the letters and made “forks”, so I said the sentence in Dutch while replacing "kikkers" with "forks". For my Dutch readers, the sentence turned out as: "Vind je geiten schattiger dan forks?” My friends’ faces were priceless.) I also need twice as much focus to follow my own line of thought, let alone the conversation, and in the middle of a sentence I sometimes forget what we were talking about. Also when multiple things happen at the same time, I get overwhelmed. For instance, I needed to connect a Nintendo to a TV so I was focusing on the cables and ports, while a friend read a few sentences of a news article to me. Usually, I would be able to combine listing to my friend with plugging cables, or I would pause working on the cables and just listen to my friend, but this time I felt overloaded and could do neither. I needed a few seconds to calm myself, then I was able to ignore the cables for a moment, I asked my friend to repeat the sentences, responded to her, and resumed connecting the Nintendo.
Until a week ago, I couldn’t accept these limitations and felt frustrated with myself for not being able to do the things I really wanted to do or used to easily be able to do. The turning point came when a 2-day camping trip with friends wiped me out for 5 days. By force, it became easy to do nothing, to not push myself to make up for lost time and missed activities, and I was finally actually resting.
For me, I discovered that resting means not setting an alarm clock, reading books, exercising, doing puzzles (jigsaw or crossword, when my mind is up for it), going on walks, bingeing Netflix or Disney+, and having a maximum of 2 social activities per week. It also means not doing or limiting certain things, such as driving, grocery shopping (being in a space with many people moving around me is overwhelming), going to patios, listening to music (if I do want to listen to music I do it at a lower volume), and social activities with more than 2 other people.
Although I accepted these limitations and found ways to have fun days despite them, it still sucks. I would love to be more social. Whenever I’m confronted with my new limits I feel broken. I have to remind myself on a daily basis that this is only temporary, even though right now it’s hard to imagine that I’ll ever be able to properly handle external stimuli.
I’m still in the midst of recovering, but I do already have one resolution for the future. I used to only take time off when I actually had travel plans. In the pandemic and due to the lockdowns we were home so much, I consciously decided to not take time off because I was afraid I would be bored to death doing nothing at home. Work gave me purpose and a reason to start the day. Well, the burnout forced me to do nothing at home. And I learned that I actually find it enjoyable. Going forward, I want to take time off more regularly. It doesn’t have to be a getaway or a whole week, a day or two would be enough for some introspection and to just catch a breath in the hamster wheel.
I like to think that if only I had taken the time for introspection during the lockdown, I might have been able to see the unbalanced life I had and taken precaution sooner. But I am the type that needs to learn certain lessons the hard way and I am learning now to do things better in the future. I hope that someone who is less stubborn might be able to learn from my story and hopefully even prevent a similar situation.