Next level burnout and how to avoid it

Burnout used to be something we mainly said about work. It became a badge of honor to proclaim how “stressed out” we were because it was an understood indicator of how busy and important we were as career women. In conversation, it was usually accompanied by how many hours we worked or emails received, as proof points that had paved the way to our success.

In reading the book Burnout by sisters Emily and Amelia Nagoski, I’ve learned a lot more about how burnout affects us as women. And how what could be seen as a badge of honor when tied to work, becomes shameful when tied to relationships and parenting. What does it say about your relationship to your loved ones if you are so very tired of caring for them? So tired, that in fact all you want to do is stream as much Netflix as possible before the next tour of duty begins. 

Turns out that a phrase somewhat new to me has been buried in academia for 40+ years:  emotional exhaustion. And within the lexicon of burnout, it’s described as “the element that’s most strongly linked to negative impacts on our health, relationships, and work -- especially for women.” Emotional exhaustion is  “the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long.” It is what happens when we get stuck in an emotion and continually repeat the cycle - can you feel that? I sure can.  

You’ve heard the phrase “feel your feelings”? This is advice that I avoided so much that when life smacked me upside the head I had no other choice but to marinate in them daily. And yes, it was exhausting, but at times it was also exhilarating. Most of the time we think we are allowing our emotions but we may be repeating old patterns like being a “good” girl and stuffing them down or buffering them away with food, booze, drugs and my personal favorite – shopping. 

Weirdly, the one thing that I thought would make me feel worse actually ended up making me feel better because our experience of life comes from within us, not outside of us 100% of the time. In the life coaching work that I do, we have a model for understanding where our emotions come from, which ultimately helps us manage them in a way that can turn down the heat on burnout.