Anxiety and fear of burnout
The last few weeks have been very interesting: strenuous but also beautiful. I’ve learned some new things about myself and my burnout.
The last few weeks have been very interesting: strenuous but also beautiful. I’ve learned some new things about myself and my burnout.
To contribute to the 10th October which marks the World Mental Health Day, I’d set a goal for myself to finally launch my new publication Conquering Burnout on Medium and post the first articles. The idea of starting a publication about burnout had been on my mind since summer but I kept postponing it. I finally decided to cut the crap and make it happen!
Working towards the goal, I found energy, drive, focus and well-being that I haven’t experienced for a very long time. That is the magic of pursuing your purpose and mission in life which makes such a big difference - at least for me.
In the previous months, I was focusing too much on what I didn’t like in my life, what wasn’t right and on my ”problems”: the job that wasn’t fulfilling and was stressing me out, my problems with digestion, energy and health, missing training sessions, my side hustle not progressing and not going anywhere… But having a clear goal in my mind enabled me to forget about all of those things and made me focus completely on the goal I had set for myself.
At the same time, the last 3 weeks were very strenuous: I was working 5 to 6 days a week, had only Sundays off, worked out multiple times a week, writing and working on my side hustle, drinking more caffeine than usual. But something switched - or let’s say clicked - in my mind: although it was very demanding, I was able to forget about the problems, fatigue, doubts and stress.
Even though I was happy and satisfied with myself, my performance and my life overall, some days I kept having some anxiety and worries at the end of the day. It was that known feeling of fear and anxiety of burnout that has been with me for the last 4 years - since I burned out for the first time in late 2017.
Some nights - especially after a long, demanding and stressful day - the feelings were so strong and intense that they freaked me out and I got really worried. The fears were blurring my mind: “Why am I feeling this much fatigue, fear and anxiety? Are these the first warning signs of me burning out again? What if I have pushed a bit too much and my body, digestion and health are about to break?” were the thought loops I was in.
As painful as it was to deal with the negative emotions and as tempting as it was to ignore and numb them, I went into them and tried to figure out what was behind them. I got still, released some of the anxiety with a few deep breaths and quietly asked myself: “Why are these feelings that I’m experiencing here? What are they trying to tell me? What is true?”
The realisation was two-fold:
Anxiety and fear are the anticipation of a threat and they remind us and warn us of what might happen if we continue at this pace. So my anxiety and fear was there to remind me of the burnout experience and trying to prevent me from burning out again.
The second realisation was that I’m much stronger now than I probably think and believe - I have so much knowledge about burnout, I know myself so much better and my body is so much stronger than it was - which means that I can’t burn out so easily. And even if it would come to it, I would need just some days off to recover using all the practices I’ve learned over the time.
The realisations brought a bit of relief: the fear and anxiety calmed down a bit and I was able to think more clearly.
Even though I had more confidence in myself and my body after the realisation, I knew that I needed to change something: If I kept going at this pace maybe I would really burn out. It happened 4 years ago: because I couldn’t - or better to say because I didn’t know how to - control and reduce the stimulus, obligations and pressures from the external world - daily trainings, obligations at the university, stress and pressure - I didn’t give my body enough rest and I burned out as a consequence.
I can’t let that happen again! I can’t let the world affecting me. So I asked myself what kind of boundaries and strategies could I implement to prevent the outside world from affecting me too much?
A few strategies that came up:
Cultivate mental toughness. Don’t allow the outside world to affect you so negatively. I should do a better job at not reacting and letting outside stimulus put me under stress and into the fight or flight mode so much.
Find stillness and calm throughout the day. Stop and slow down several times a day, take a few deep breaths, release some tension, do the Self-Love practice.
Be stubborn. Be persistent and don’t deviate from your values and priorities in life: My Life, My Rules!
Don’t put additional pressure on yourself. Do anything and everything with the attitude that you get to do things and not that you have to do them. This mindset creates the right Energy and vibrations which play such an important role in well-being, energy and happiness.
To round this up: fear and anxiety are sometimes there for a reason, but we always see them negatively. They both can be a great teacher and direction pointer if only we learn how to use them to our advantage.
My lesson for you today to think about.
Whenever you get overwhelmed by stress or negative feelings and emotions - be it anxiety, fear, anger, judgment, resentment, depression - slow down, find some calm and investigate these emotions. Ask yourself:
Why am I experiencing these negative emotions? What is behind them? What are they trying to tell me and teach me?
How can I protect myself from the stimulus of the outside world? What could some of the strategies be?
That’s it for this article. I would love to hear your opinions, questions or suggestions for the following articles.
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Love and take care of yourself, forget about worries and enjoy life! ✌
~ Jani ❤