A piece about recovering from burnout after a healing day inside my Wellington apartment, as a promise to reconnect with my values of slow living and mindful recovery.
I have telltale signs of burnout. Overwhelm creeps subtly in the corners of my life, and self-care begins to wobble. I skip meditation. I postpone a run.
If that goes unchecked, my life is consumed by work. I give everything I have, yet I’m unable to keep up.
If that goes unchecked, things begin to spiral. Every little thing causes overwhelm. I skip showering, or brushing my teeth. I’m glued to the TV a bit too long, draining the hours away.
Burnout is an ugly thing. And after a long sob session, it didn’t seem right to come on here and talk about travel or my amazing New Zealand life.
To honour my mind and spirit, today I’m writing from inside my Wellington apartment about my authentic experience of burnout and the hope of recovering from it.
Recovering from burnout inside my Wellington apartment
Disclaimer: I’m not a health professional. None of the below should be taken as clinical advice. This is for entertainment purposes only. Please talk to your clinician if you’re worried about your mental health.
Here is a resource to learn more about burnout: Burnout Prevention and Treatment
Note to self: Resilience is bullshit
Resilience is often glamourised. Claimed an essential tool of life, it’s a measure of one’s ability to manage and overcome challenges. Which sounds fair, except we aren’t all measured from the same clean slate.
After the hardest three years of my life, I started beating myself up about my lack of resilience. Where has it suddenly gone? All my life, I was praised for it. For surviving childhood trauma, for immigrating and adapting (twice), for staying calm and quiet and lovely through all my turbulent decades.
But now it seems my resilience has shattered, and oh the shame. I am no longer resilient. I am sad and angry and people notice.
Resilience often feels like a judgment rod we lash at those who disrupt society’s expectation to be fine and carry on. It fails to measure the accumulative impact of stress and adversity.
A sinking ship will manage to stay afloat… until it doesn’t.
The real shame is that no one noticed through all my “resilient” years that I was definitely not okay. That I was detached, had no sense of boundaries and one day it would all come crashing down.
Last week my psychologist gave me permission to not be okay and release the shame about my “lack of resilience”. Only then was I able to implement the necessary tools to get myself out of burnout.
What broke the camel’s back
I’ll be brief because the volume of adversity shouldn’t matter to justify feeling like shit. But to satisfy your curiosity, here’s a few curveballs I’ve had to navigate the last three years which sunk my ship lower than was comfortable:
- In 2019 a panic disorder manifested out of nowhere, and although I’m past the worst of it, I still feel its ripple effects. The journey exhausted me in ways I haven’t fully comprehended.
- In 2020 the pandemic hit, tanking my partner’s business, changing our lifestyle, and pushing us into financial hardship and uncertainty. Our relationship has been tested, highlighted by scary conversations and debilitating doubt.
- Because of the pandemic, I’ve been stranded in New Zealand and haven’t seen my family in years. The loneliness has been suffocating without any support through our hardships, including an unexpected health ordeal (read here if interested).
- I started my own business. This is actually exciting. But with a full-time job and the aforementioned lack of boundaries, I work round the clock, which only exacerbates the fatigue, stress, and uncertainty about the future.
All this culminated into an intense state of burnout I’ve been dipping in and out of for the last year.
Recovering from burnout by reconnecting with Wellington City
Today I decided to reconnect with my home, my apartment and Wellington city.
If you’re feeling burnt out (or any related emotion), reconnecting with your surroundings is a gentle way of grounding yourself.
Lately I’ve been living in my head, hypnotised by a rolling film of a doomed future and endless despair. The act of returning to my surroundings is jittery and awkward.
This morning I went on a walk. I live not far from the waterfront and it’s a shame I don’t visit the sea more often. My camera came along to facilitate some creativity (read my post here on why creativity is essential for wellbeing).
Although I’ve been holding onto my pennies, I bought myself a coffee. A new cafe opened on my daily walk, and I’d been meaning to try it for weeks. The coffee was divine and I jived with the barista, which lifted some internal heaviness.
A low-simmer day at the apartment, permissive of all emotions
Upon my return, I checked on my plants. Shaun had been doing most of the gardening so I missed a few new leaves and hadn’t noticed how much our basil had grown. I nodded my head at the cathedral that sits tall and quiet outside the window.
I made a jasmine tea. While it brewed, I admired all my beautiful things. The special touches and creative efforts which designed my little place. I spent some time clicking photos, capturing the quaint emotion of home.
Then I sat and wrote this post. I huffed and puffed while trying to articulate my sadness and frustration. I sipped tea, took a few more photos. My phone pulled at me, and I noted my obsession with it and Instagram and the news. My brother texted me about when I was coming home and I didn’t reply, paralysed by a cocktail of emotion.
I won’t lie, I feel awful. Depression is difficult, but I’m going gently with the heaviness, allowing it to be.
Later, I plan to have a yoga session and meditation. Then I will shower and brush my teeth. It is a low-simmer day. And it will feel like my greatest accomplishment.
What’s next? Moving forward with burnout
I wish all my woes would shrink after a single day. But (and this is important) it takes awhile to recover from burnout.
This weekend, I plan to work less. Maybe try to take a nap. On Sunday, I scheduled a yoga session and nature hike with friends. It will be my priority to go gently and heal the mind and body. And I will try to harvest that peace to take with me into a new week of work.
