Burn Out… (what people never tell you.)
So Burn Out is defiantly a thing! It happens even to the very best of us.
No, it does not mean you are crazy; no, you should not be annoyed with yourself because you are crying but you don’t know why. You are tired!!!! Your body has had enough. It has given you all it can give you and it needs you to stop! One extra early night is not gonna cut it. You need to listen to your body. Time to rest!
Burn Out happens when we let our cup of energy run dry. It is not pretty and yes we all wish we had listened to our bodies sooner but we didn’t! So here we are burnt out and feeling like death warmed up.
Burn Out has/is happening to me right now! There is a part of me that would like to hide this from the world. I want to pretend that all is well. However all is not well and I think that sometimes it is important that we allow people to know that they are not alone.
I could feel it coming before I pulled my kids out of school. The tiredness where not just my eyes felt tired but my whole body felt exhausted. I couldn’t finish the end of my sentences or make sensible conversation. I have had 12 months of stress from the Local Authority not believing that my daughter was ill or disabled (even though she was diagnosed and medicated by her consultant.) This was following on from many months of her being very unwell, and six years of being blamed for her behaviour challenges and other issues which arise from her disability. I have been to court once accused of emotional abuse (and won) but then have been threatened with court repeatedly because of her low school attendance and threaten again this summer with court because of “emotional abuse.”
Yes it is over and yes I have been (unofficially cleared) but I am utterly exhausted. My daughter is still unwell and still disabled (funnily enough!) I am still a lone parent and still trying to squeeze work and study around being a fulltime carer for one child and regular parent for the other. So here I am with a messy house, having eaten far too much ice cream lately and very definitely Burnt Out!
If you have never experienced an empty energy cup, I will try and describe it to you. You feel as though no amount of sleep will ever be enough, in fact you regularly catch yourself eyeing up a patch of floor and wondering if anyone will notice you napping in the corner. I have days where even throwing the stick for the dog has felt like too much effort. You just can’t wake up in the morning and even making the words for sentences feels too hard. Thinking becomes like swimming through treacle and your fuse is much shorter than it should be. Being burnt out does share a fair few symptoms with depression but I am feel sure that it is slightly different. You aren’t sad, you are just flipping shatter and have NO ENERGY left.
In the next post I will cover what kinds of things are helpful to refill your energy cup but for now I just want to say that if you are burnt out, it is okay. So many of us have been here or are here right now. Give yourself a hug and be kind to yourself.
Perhaps you could share in the comments some of the symptoms of burn out which I may have missed, because lets face it I am currently burnt out and thinking through treacle…
Inspire Liberty 