Breaking the Burnout Cycle

How I'm Resetting after a Long Season of Doing Too Much

A few weeks ago, I realized that I was approaching the point of burnout. Burnout is such a widely used term in modern life that we often overlook its significance, its pathology, and its meaning. The US is such a burnout-prone culture that we often have difficulty recognizing when it’s happening to us. In some occupations, it’s even considered a mark of success.

According to the ICD-11, “Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:

• feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;

• increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and

• reduced professional efficacy.”

The ICD-11 further specifies that burnout “refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.” I take issue with that. That narrow definition reflects a patriarchal bias that views “work” as something that takes place outside the home or family context and that we are paid to do. It ignores the realities of stress and burnout that occur in the context of caregiving and emotional relationships, labor that is historically deemed to be “women’s work” and that has no set hours or vacation time.

It also ignores the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic and the pervasive experience of burnout that many of us have been experiencing. Our nervous systems have not had a chance to recover from multiple years of quarantine and hyper vigilance about our health and surroundings. And with the continual news about war, genocide, terrorism, and global political instability (the latter of which the US seemed immune from until recent years), it’s unclear that we’ll have a chance to reset anytime soon unless take our risk of burnout seriously and pay attention to our body’s signals.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that my body was sending some emergency signals. I was tired most of the time and kept experiencing mini fibro flares: bouts of pain that kept me awake at night, fatigue so severe that I’d manage to do only one or two things before crashing for the rest of the day. I’d anticipated it. Since last summer’s lead-up to the publication of Sacred Self-Care, I have been moving at full tilt. In mid-March, I installed a countdown widget on my iPhone to keep a running tally of the days left until my last professional engagement before summer. I prayed for my energy and stamina to carry me through May 23rd, when commencement would have passed, the last speaking engagement would be over, and final grades would be submitted.

I did more than pray. In the last month of the semester, I doubled-down on self-care, napping, exercising and meditating more regularly, even doing my first flotation therapy session in years. Self-care can only mitigate stress and overwhelm so much, but it helped. Midway through May, I decided that I wanted an objective assessment of how I was doing. I paid $25 to take the online Maslach Burnout Toolkit for Educators, which measures burnout and work environment for teachers, administrators, and staff (there are also versions for general use, medical personnel, and human services workers).

According to my report, I was Overextended, somewhere in the middle between Engagement and Burnout. Overextended profiles are characterized by high levels of emotional exhaustion but also high levels of personal accomplishment. The report states:

The Overextended person has a different psychological experience, shown by a high Emotional Exhaustion score. This might be the profile of a teacher who is dedicated to her job and who derives a strong sense of accomplishment from her work, yet feels emotionally exhausted due to long work hours and disrupted recovery opportunities. This teacher is fulfilled and involved, but emotionally drained.

The high stress/high satisfaction paradox is common for educators, activists, clergy, therapists, and other helping professionals. We often love what we do, but what we do is often high stakes and high stress. As long as we think that our work matters, we can ward off burnout, but that doesn’t mean we are well.

For higher education faculty, summer is the time we get to do the work that often matters most to us: research and writing. We hunger for it so much during the school year that we jump right in after finals so we can make as much progress as possible before classes start up again. When we finish one project, we immediately start another. Like many faculty, I started summer with a dream list of projects that I’d like to accomplish over the next year. I suspect that I am unlike many of my peers in that I have given myself permission not to make progress on any of them.

My primary objective this summer is to rest, reset, and recover…full stop. That, though, is easier said than done after moving at top speed for an extended period. It’s like landing a heavy, fast moving plane. It requires some good landing gear and a skilled pilot to help absorb the shock.

My shock absorber came in the form of a week of heavy self-care that included a spa staycation at the Waldorf Astoria (just granting myself that luxury was a huge step forward in my self-care). For 48 hours, I minimized electronics and social media. I left my tablet and laptop at home, put my phone on DND (allowing only calls and texts from my husband, son, and parents), and used the hotel television only for YouTube yoga videos. I spent the days meditating, doing yoga, exercising, swimming, soaking in the whirlpool and the in-room tub, working on a puzzle, and of course, getting a spa treatment.

I left not rejuvenated, but also not quite as tired. More importantly, I left with a decreased addiction to doing. That was the whole point of this first week: to break the cycle of over-doing and over-stimulation so that I can begin to settle into a new rhythm, one that will lead to rejuvenation and restfulness, not just for the summer, but for the whole year.

Me just before checkout, feeling much better after two days of relaxation.

Books on Rest

I am reading Octavia Raheem’s Pause, Rest, Be during this season of rest. I’ve had it on my shelf since it was released two years ago. On the way out to my spa staycation, it called to me. I started reading it at dinner the first night and had to fight back tears. There are some other book companions that continue to reshape my understanding of labor and rest. I’ve used both Kirk Byron Jones’ Rest in the Storm and Marva Dawn’s Keeping the Sabbath Wholly in my spiritual formation classes in the past. Of course, I must mention the Nap Bishop herself, Tricia Hersey’s Rest is Resistance. And if you are a parent or work with you, take a look at Nathan Stucky’s Wrestling with Rest. All are available on my Bookshop list and the purchase will benefit my favorite local bookshop, Charis Books & More (or choose your own favorite indie bookstore!).

I hope you’ll leave a comment to share any resources that might be helpful to me and others looking to deepen our experiences of restfulness.