If you are unfamiliar with the term “burnout”, a simple definition is “feeling empty and mentally exhausted, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring”.1 You may have experienced moments of this definition but real, true “burnout” is when you live in a state of feeling constantly exhausted, unmotivated and no longer care about certain things the same way you once did.
To be honest, I have had my fair share of hard days, but those days pale in comparison to wading through a tough season of burnout. Now that I am on the other side of the fence, I can see that I had several warning signs begging for my attention that I ignored. I would love to potentially save you from the hard journey of a season of burnout by sharing three things I should have paid attention to.
1. You have quit making time for personal hobbies, fun activities or creative outlets in your life. Looking back I can see that prior to getting hit by burnout, while trying to traverse my newfound role as a mother, I had unintentionally placed all my personal hobbies and life giving endeavors on the backburner (really more like they were shoved in a forgotten cabinet).
This all happened so slowly that I really did not notice it happening in real time. The shift was never an intentional one time decision, but rather little decisions happening over and over again for years.
In reality, motherhood is not a season, it is a whole new way of doing life. All of the sudden one becomes responsible for someone else 100% of the time and it is easy to allow it to consume your entire existence. Motherhood IS all consuming and there is no way
around that beautiful truth. This is by God’s design, no doubt, and there is something so sweet and special about the all consuming gift of motherly love. Pope John Paul the Great puts it eloquently like this, “Man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”
Yet, I don’t think we are supposed to lose ourselves in motherhood so much that we forget who we are in the process. I want my kids to do hard things and rise to the challenges that life hands them, but I do not want them to forget to have fun along the way.
I want my kids to set good boundaries for themselves and keep doing what they love, even when life gets hard. So if I really want that for them, they need to see me doing it for myself!
I want to give my children all consuming motherly love from a mother that still enjoys life and has FUN hobbies, dreams and hopes!
Do you prioritize your own hobbies, creative outlets and schedule FUN in your life? If not, start small today.
Put something on your calendar that sparks JOY for you!
2. There is no space for stillness or self reflection in your life. The second issue leading me to hitting burnout was an inability to say no to things and still feel peace. This is a hard issue to articulate but I will do my best to try and put it into words. I have been a lifelong people-pleaser. Meaning I have found my personal worth and “okayness” based on the feelings and beliefs of others whom I care about. It used to be really hard for me to admit that I struggled so much with this, but I no longer see it as a weakness. Rather I acknowledge that
“people pleasing” was a tool I picked up during my childhood to navigate difficulties.
I accept the people pleasing tendency in myself and know that it will always be something I wrestle with and struggle to reign in. This internal battle requires
my time, my attention and demands that my life has enough stillness in it that I can listen to what is going on inside me.
Before I knew it, I had slowly allowed my life to become much too busy. Too busy with really good things. I found myself frequently saying yes to too many things out of a fear of letting someone down or disappointing someone. Constantly saying yes caused me to unintentionally say no to time for self reflection and stillness in my life. I can see now that this level of business paved the way for me to enter into a hard
season of burnout. Saying yes is good, saying no is good - both are needed in every season of life.
3. You feel exhausted most of the time and even sleep does not make you feel rested. Persistent fatigue, lack of joy and recurring headaches/sicknesses is not meant to be our normal mode of operation in life. (Sadly there are some chronic illnesses/diseases that cause people to feel like this all of the time, but that is not what I am referencing here.) It is unwise to continue to ignore the signs your body is giving you and push yourself to trudge
ahead.
For far too long my body was asking me to slow down, to eat healthier food, to prioritize deep sleep, to play, to move and to be still. I did not see the headaches, fatigue, chronic pain, etc. as warning signs from my body, they were merely inconveniences to me. It was not until the pain in my joints became unbearable that I started to pay attention.
Long story short, we had black mold festering in our home which was causing a cascade of symptoms in me for many years. Because I ignored the warning signs for so long I found myself wading through healing from mold toxicity and feeling emotionally burnout all at the same time.
(It was a trying season for me physically, emotionally
and mentally to say the least) Maybe had I slowed down enough, we might have caught the black mold early on, before it made its way through our entire flooring and I would not have become so sick. I now try to listen to what my body is trying to tell me and prioritize my health as best I can.
Moral of the story? Burnout is not a fun place to be, but thankfully, with some simple changes we can set ourselves up for successfully avoiding it! Next month I will highlight some of the tools that helped me overcome being stuck in burnout and helped me shift to a healthier place!
Thanks for being here,
Brooke Summers
1 https://www.helpguide.org/mental-health/stress/burnout-prevention-and-recovery
