~10 minute read / 1900 words
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A quick warning and disclaimer: I talk about mental health difficulties and systemic issues here. This writing is without gory details but please consider your state before proceeding. This text is from my perspective and your experience will differ, please take what is useful and leave the rest.
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This is a series on meditation and burnout. I’m thinking through the causes of burnout, why it is such a challenging experience, what to do in the moment, meditation practices that create important shifts, and developing an understanding that will lead to burnout being done with, for good. This first part sets the view that burnout is sustained by external and internal systems and that self-compassion is the key to beginning practising with this.
While the September retreat on burnout has a waiting list, registrations for the 23-26 January Retreat are open.
What is Burnout?
Let’s begin with a definition. Burnout arises when demands exceed your capacity. It is a state of depletion that results from an extended period of stress and demand without appropriate support. Burnout is associated with chronic stress, working in caring professions, caring responsibilities, big life events, activist work, or perhaps just witnessing the turmoil of the world with little recourse.
Burnout is a state of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and sense of hopelessness. The phenomenological experience differs person-to-person: it can be felt physically as a heaviness, pain, or tiredness that is not relieved by sleep; emotionally as a sense of misery, flatness, malaise, or depression; or felt existentially as a sense of hopelessness, futility, or worthlessness. Burnout generally comes with a decrease in skills and capabilities: moving and thinking in slow motion, problems seem harder, increased self-criticism, finding the right words becomes a challenge, your memory falters, task-related skills deteriorate.
It brings to mind Samuel Beckett’s refrain: “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” It’s the drive to continue to perform, care, and give effort after the resources have been used up.