What Are You Still Struggling With?

Aspects of burnout that I still struggle with the most

I’ve had a tough few days. Like, days where I don’t have the power to wake and get up in the morning, don’t have the motivation to do anything, everything feels heavy and I have to use a lot of will power to push through and finish the day.

And pushing and grinding through is draining: the energy that you give into that, doesn't flow back to you and doesn't fill you up, so you end up even more tired and fatigued. 

The worst thing about these hard days is that I don’t know the exact reason behind them.

I take really good care of my body, lifestyle, mental and emotional health: since I don’t know the root cause, I don’t know how to fix it and that creates a lot of fear and anxiety, which then in turn worsen these days. 

I’ve also had a lot of mental unease (brain fog, unclear mind and thinking, mental tiredness, etc) which trigger some trauma and past stressful events, which cause even more problems. 

On those days I also feel a lot of guilt and shame that I feel bad, that I have these days and that after all this time and all this work on myself, I still can’t figure my sh*t out. I tend to have a more negative and pessimistic point of view on myself and my life and often lack the ability to change that mindset and see the bigger picture.

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One of the aspects of burnout that I still struggle with is the trauma and identity of burnout. 

On those bad and hard days when I don’t feel good, my mind connects how I’m feeling with burnout symptoms, triggers the trauma that burnout left in me and makes me feel that I’m burned out - that burnout is and will remain part of me and my identity.

And all of this escalates the symptoms, triggers fear and anxiety and makes it more difficult to get out of this cycle. 

I’m working on this trauma and identity, but that’s deep and hard inner work, and inner work is f*cking hard! (more on this below).

One of the things that helps me when I feel that burnout trauma and identity have be triggered and have been taking control of me, is the following question:

“What would I do if I wasn't afraid?”

This question works great because it helps me put aside the emotional charge and think rationally - and normally I’m able to think and guide myself out of that mental state.

More about this tool in the following newsletter: 

Fear Question, Who Needs my "A Game", Water and Hydration

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I think I know some of the reasons why I’ve recently had more bad and hard days.

The first one is that it’s currently my destress and deload week.

Destress and deload weeks is where I let out all of the accumulated stress and fatigue from the past weeks and allow my body to rest and recover. And the past couple of weeks have been very demanding and the more you accumulate, the more unpleasant the release symptoms will be, that’s just the nature of things. 

I write more about this idea of “accumulated stress” in the following article, check it out if you’re interested. 

Is Accumulated Stress Burning You Out

Another reason is that I’ve been doing a lot of Inner Work: processing and dealing with some deep emotional and spiritual things in therapy and workshops.  

The reason Inner Work is so hard and challenging is because it’s hard work - just like any work on yourself - except you can’t see it and can’t measure it. 

For example: When you work on your physical fitness and you go to the gym, you feel soreness and tiredness in your body, tendons and muscles for the next few days and you know that that’s the process of growing your muscles and making your body stronger, and over time you can feel and see the progress.

But deep internal work it’s not that simple: you can’t see what’s going on in your mind, emotional body and psyche and can’t measure it.

Another problem is that things and realms of the body, mind and psyche are interconnected and interdependent, so they affect each other

Mental, emotional and spiritual healing often shows on the physical and mental wellbeing as fatigue. tiredness, lack of motivation, drive and mental health problems (fear, anxiety, depression).

Overtime I came to understand that when nothing from my nutrition and lifestyle practices seems to improve my general wellbeing, there might be some emotional or spiritual healing taking place.

And if that’s the case, I have to focus more on my mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. 

More about emotional practices in the article below:

How to Overcome Emotionally Challenging Times

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Ultimately, I think it’s about control - or better to say, illusion of control.

As

Livio Marcheschi

from

Think twice, it's all right

wrote in the newsletter that I shared with you last week:

We live in a world focused on sense making.
We want to understand the cause of things.
And we are praised when we do it.

Universities invite critical thinking.
Psychologists ask us “Why?”.
Work invites us get to the root cause of problems.

This gives us the pretext to let our mind take over.
Assuming that we can get out of the discomfort by knowing its origin.

Paradoxically, understanding does not help.
It rather hinders the process.
It makes things more complicated.

We often use our minds to push away feelings of unease.
And analysing them is just another way to try to maintain control.

Instead, dropping sense making might be a better idea.

The more you hold onto control, the more you worsen things. 

So on days that you’re struggling, here’s what you can try to do:

• let go of control,

• try about what you would do if you weren’t afraid,

• and focus on your mental, emotional and spiritual health and wellbeing. 

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Have a great weekend and I’ll see you again soon!