Autumn Dying, The Benefits of Darkness and One of the Biggest Reasons Behind Burnout

My Personal Insights, December 2022

Welcome back to the "My Personal Insights" section of the Conquering Burnout Newsletter.

"My Personal Insights" is a place where I'm sharing my recent insights and reflections about life, nutrition, wellness and well-being and my burnout journey.

My goal with this section of the Conquering Burnout Newsletter is to share valuable information and insights that I found useful that might help you in your own life and your own burnout journey.

Here we go: here are my three personal insights from November.

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Autumn Calming and Dying

In Slovenian, my mother language, the words calming and dying are very similar: 

calming = umirjanje

dying = umiranje

There’s just a j that differentiates the two words and that’s the reason why I like the phrase “jesensko umir(j)anje” (in English autumn calming and dying). 

Evolutionarily autumn and winter are periods in the year to calm down, rest, sleep and rejuvenate. In previous articles Feeling A Bit Burnt Out Lately? The struggles of “Autumn Burnout” and What can you do about it? and How To Overcome Autumn Fatigue? I emphasized the importance of adapting and adjusting our lifestyle to the changing seasons (the “calming” part), but I didn’t talk about the second part - the “dying part”.

I got this insight on one of my bad days: I had some emotional things coming up and after lunch, I had a big cathartic emotional release (you can learn more about what emotional releases are in this article:

How Emotional Release Can Improve Our Lives

After the emotional release, I went into a deep meditation. As I came out of it, I looked outside my window and saw how the sun was slowly coming out through the rainy clouds and how the leaves were falling off the trees. The trees were letting go of their leaves, letting them fall, and allowing a part of them that did not serve them anymore to die.

At that moment, it hit me: I too was experiencing something similar. Through emotional releases and catharsis, the parts of me that were no longer serving me were dying, I just had to let go of control, stop fighting against that and allow it to happen. 

Autumn can be a great time for a change. Allow yourself to calm down and let the parts of you that no longer serve you die so that something new and better can emerge and grow.

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The Benefits of Darkness

During October and November I spend a lot of time in the evenings in complete darkness - at least a few minutes to an hour once or twice a week. You might be wondering why? Let me explain. 

It all began at the beginning of October. One Saturday I was meant to go to my friend’s birthday party, but I felt awful: after dinner, I gave in and instead of going to the party I locked myself in my bedroom and just rested, in complete pitch darkness. I was forced to release and process all I had been accumulating up until that point. It wasn't easy, but it was super beneficial: the next day I felt brand new!

Coincidentally, a few days later, after I published the article How To Manage Mental Health Problems?

Doula Nikko

from

Brighter Days, Darker Nights

made an interesting comment: 

Everything started to make sense!

I first heard about something called The Darkness Therapy on Aubrey Marcus Podcast where he talked about his week spent in the darkness. The Darkness Therapy, Darkness Retreat, or simply Dark Therapy is a therapy that’s prevalent in Check Republic for treating psychiatric conditions and it’s a therapy where you go into pitch darkness isolation, and silence. In the absence of light and external stimuli, the mind can focus inward, process and heal things, emotional blockages, and unconscious patterns. 

Again, looking at things evolutionarily, autumn and winter are periods in the year with shorter days and longer nights. Before the invention of lighting, illumination, and electricity, during autumn and winter, our ancestors spent a lot of time in the darkness, which could mean anywhere from 12 to 16 hours a day. And because you simply can’t sleep 12h every night, what the hell were they doing in the darkness? They probably spend some time gathering around the fire, relaxing, chilling, and replenishing energy after working spring and summer, but I would argue that they were also doing the internal reflective work. 

As I mentioned above, last two months I spent more time in complete, pitch darkness. For me, it felt almost like a psychedelic experience with very viions. During these "Darkness Therapies" I was able to process and release a lot of stored, repressed, and accumulated things, stresses, traumas, and emotions: it was quite challenging at times but I was able to process some of them and I felt a release afterward.

Darkness can be a great tool not only for internal work, processing, or “psychedelic experience”, but since humans are visual beings and we take over 80% of stimuli through our eyes, some “enforced” darkness can really benefit you to detox and recover from light and external stimuli. 

If you want to learn more about the darkness therapy, check the trailer of Aubrey Marcus’ documentary about his darkness retreat below: 

 

Burnout is a result of working against yourself

The previous weekend I felt a bit burned out. On Saturday evening I spent some time reflecting on why I was feeling so empty and fatigued… Yes, it had been two good but also demanding weeks and the whole month of November was packed with errands, work, and obligations, but it felt like that was something else.  

Then it occurred to me: my feeling burned out was the result of working against myself for too long.

I was prioritizing the needs of others and putting others before myself, I was operating against my body, I spend too little time in nature, I hadn’t had enough sense of excitement, or fun, and I spend too little time doing things that bring me to flow and I spend too little time hanging out with friends and people that make me feel good.

To put it simply: I spend too much time doing things that drain my energy and too little time doing things that fill me up. I was working against myself and the result was I was feeling tired, empty and a bit burnt out. 

One of the biggest reasons behind burnout is working against yourself and your True self for too long: this applies to multiple different levels: physical, professional, mental, emotional, environmental and spiritual areas.

Energy in the body is not generated only through proper nutrition and lifestyle. There's also a different kind of energy, capital 'E' Energy which is created when we do things that make us happy, when we engage in things for which we feel a great sense of passion, purpose, and mission and when we live a life that is meant for us. 

This Energy is extremely important for us and our well-being, but when we work against ourselves and our True Selves for too long, problems with tiredness, fatigue, burnout, and even mental health problems can occur. 

So make the commitment and choice to prioritize yourself and your needs before others, and do more of the things that fill you up and less of the things that drain you. I’ve been doing this week and I’ve been feeling a lot better. 😊

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That’s it for this edition of “My Personal Insights”. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and insightful!

I would love to know your thoughts about it and if you would like to read about this regularly - maybe once a month. Let me know in the comments below or by email response.

See you again very soon! ✌️