Not sure which famous person said this, but it may have been some past U.S. president, or someone. If anyone knows, please remind me…
“I don’t trust anyone who hasn’t gone through burnout.”
For those of you that have gone through that, this quote is kind of good news. You can be trusted 🙂
For those of you that haven’t… well, you can take from this whatever you like 🙂 But please, read on, cause this will help you (trust me).
My near burnout experience
This quote rings true to me. I came very near to burnout once, during my college years. I was trying to catch up a missed semester, due to spending five months in Romania on a personal trip, between my 2nd and 3rd college years. As a young guy in my early twenties, I just had to go somewhere else and do somethings else than… just school after already a million years of high school. Plus, I wanted to experience of volunteer work in another culture in helping less-fortunate people and, I guess, to find more the heart of God through compassion.
Returning from Romania, I went through what cultural anthropologists, or other experts, call a reverse culture-shock. Everything in Romania was so different from Canada, my home-country of that time, that my psyche just couldn’t process.
What added to my angst was a break-up with a girlfriend of the time. I was missing a bunch of courses, that I needed to make up for, and that was stressing me out.
But, what was one of the biggest bummers, was a silly thing, a musical instrument, the piano! It turned out that my piano teacher was not happy with my progress (5 months of no practice while in Romania). “So what, it’s just piano…”, you might think. Well, yeah, and no. The thing is, that I needed to reach a certain level of piano proficiency, in order to get that 1 credit (1 stupid little credit!), which was required for my program. So… my entire graduation was hanging on that instrument skill! Also, the fact that our chemistry did not work, whatsoever, with the piano teacher. That stressed me out, big time.
My symptoms of burnout
I couldn’t sleep. I’m not talking not being able to fall asleep till like 1:00 am. I’m talking not falling asleep at all, for the whole night, until maybe 6 or 7 am. And then it was time to wake up for class. This went on for weeks on end. I started feeling a weight on my chest, all the time.
I was tired. Stressed. Annoyed. I remember failing one important test after taking a sleeping pill at night, and my brain was just completely shut off in the morning. I didn’t see that coming, but that was a learning experience about taking sleeping pills when you have something important the next morning (don’t do it). I had NEVER failed a test, which I had studied for before. I was actually a good student, cause I loved the subjects that I was studying: theology.
So, one day in the library, as I was grinding away on a 10-page essay, everything started spinning. An overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety overcame me and I panicked. “Am I losing my mind?”, I thought to myself. It was my first full-blown panic attack. (Luckily, I haven’t had one like that since).
I had to go see a therapist, a counselor – a somebody!
I remember the moment to this day, when Melody, the guidance counsellor, looked at me with compassion after hearing about my plight.
“Hah!” She just said and smiled.
“You know what the thing is with you, Walter?”
“No! That’s why I’m here… duh!”
“You’re actually totally normal. You’re about the 50th student this year, who has come to me with similar stress-problems. The thing is, you’re doing way too much. You’re not taking any days off (true, I wasn’t), you’re not resting at all (yep), you’re taking school way too seriously (that’s me)… and life will go on.” (It will?)
As weird as it sounds now, I totally got it at that moment. That really helped… to accept that I’m not a freak, who’s going crazy, but that simply my boundaries had been neglected for way too long and I had pushed myself nearly over the edge, without realising it. Burnout creeps in subtly and in sneaky ways.
“This is something that conscientious and sensitive people especially struggle with”, she said.
“And perfectionists.”
Oh… do I have that tendency? Yeah… apparently I do. Much less nowadays.
So…
To wrap up this story, I sat down with the Academic Dean. He helped me to figured out a plan for me to take extra some summer courses to catch up. I practiced my butt off on the piano and was able to just squeak by and pass the profiency test – by a hair. I also needed to lower the bar on my grade-goals. I needed to start taking a day off during a week (a Sabbath, like the Bible calls it). I let go of the disappointment of the break-up and chose to accept rejection as re-direction, for something better in my future.
Getting out of this (I will call it pre-burnout stage) didn’t happen in a day, but it took about 6 months. I spent an intentionally more care-free summer that year and started to set new, healthier boundaries set for my physical and emotional well-being. (Oh yeah, I did not have any exercise routines at that time going on either.)
And, I guess, I started to trust God in taking a day off from my work of studying. Jesus once said,
“God made sabbath for man, not man for the sabbath.”
The idea is not that I have to take a day off in order to please God (that wouldn’t make any sense), but that we get to take breaks to allow ourselves to rejuvenate and to recover.
Recovery, I learned, is as important as work. That’s true emotionally, as well as physically. Muscles grow at rest, they say. (Whoever they are, which I always wonder about…)
So yeah, let’s go back to the starting point: Why doesn’t the president (or whoever) trust people who haven’t gone through burnout?
Because… and here it comes… they have not yet found their boundaries. While learning does happen from hearing about others’ experiences, deeper learning usually happens by doing, and in many cases, unfortunately the hard way. That kind of sucks. We often don’t really learn, expect from our mistakes.
The “president” didn’t trust a non-burner-outer probably also, because those who haven’t gone there before, have a tendency to push others too hard as well. They don’t have the awareness to respect other peoples’ boundaries, if they haven’t discovered their own.
Remember that saying: “Hurt people hurt people?” Well, those who are hard on themselves will be hard on others. So, I came up with this quote:
“Burnout people have a tendency to burn out people.”
Think about it. if you have very high expectations for yourself, isn’t that how you will treat others? This is especially important for people in positions of influence. Think about the high-strung leader or the stressed-out parent. If you are anxious and burning out, chances are the people around you don’t have it that easy either…
The blessing in burnout
Burning out teaches us grace and compassion. Grace towards ourselves and compassion towards others. And probably the other way around.
So, if you burned out – congratulations!
Now we can trust you.
We need you. You are not alone. There is light at the end of this tunnel.
Love, Walter
PS. I REALLY do not want to belittle your condition, if you’re going through burnout right now Please seek out the support that you need. See a therapist. Get counselling. GET SUPPORT! Be vulnerable and do it.
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A link to a good therapist: here.
Note: I have recently started as a certified coach (Finnish work-life coaching association, STOry), doing Professional and Personal Coaching. Professionally, I help individuals and work-teams to think about their work-life, team-work, and everything related to work. On the personal side, people seek me out during transition phases in their lives, with questions related to their work-life balance, and also (and not least) to help harness more of their potential in life! Feel free to reach out and I would love to tell you more about different types of coaching that might benefit you or your team.
Photo creds: Unsplash: Alex Hiller (title photo), Darius (the piano player), Nik (anxiety).
