Express Yourself
Burnout is a horrible, debilitating condition that we need to understand better so we can manage and prevent it better. Not just the physical manifestations of it, but the thoughts, beliefs and behaviours that give rise to it.
I am often asked why people get burnout. There are countless factors that give rise to burnout; because we are all different, we all have different relationships with our work, our communities, our world – and we all have different patterns, attitudes and habits that form the foundation of all of our interactions. I am on a mission to try to identify and understand as many of the causes of burnout as I possibly can – in order to help my clients recover and also to help myself from going back to burnout.
I’ll look at different aspects of burnout from time to time in this blog, starting today with the suppression of emotions as a contributor to burnout.
When we don’t acknowledge – to ourselves or to anyone else – what and how we are feeling, our emotions burn away inside us. Like a smouldering log, they neither burst into flames nor go out completely; rather, they send out noxious smoke that poisons everything around it and results in a slow, toxic wearing away until there is nothing left but ash.
I choose a dramatic analogy because the impact of unexpressed emotions is also dramatic. The longer our emotions go unfelt and unheeded, the more damage they do to our physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and relational bodies.
Yet we live in a world and at a time that actively discourages us from expressing any emotions that are not ‘positive’. Social media is full of updates from people telling us how happy/fulfilled/lucky/blessed they are, and how awesome/humbling/fabulous their lives are. It’s OK to be great but it’s not OK to be grumpy. So we ignore the challenging feelings and hype up the happy ones.
But it is exhausting to pretend to feel something we don’t, and just as exhausting to pretend not to feel something we do. If we want to address one of the root causes of burnout, we need to be honest about what and how we are feeling.
Here’s one of the tools I teach my burnout clients:
Get still and quiet in a peaceful spot. Ask yourself the following three questions (writing the answers in a journal is recommended but not essential):
- What am I feeling?
- Why am I feeling this way?
- What do I want to do about it?
The answers may be physical (I am feeling tired because I was up late last night finishing the book I was reading so I am going to be in bed by 9 tonight).
They may be emotional (I am feeling angry because my friend spilled red wine – again – on the brand new shirt I lent her. I am going to tell her how upset I am and explain that for the sake of our friendship I am never going to lend her my clothes again).
They might be mental/intellectual (I am feeling jumpy and unable to concentrate because I had 3 coffees before lunch. I am going to drink only water for the rest of the day and reduce my coffee consumption to one a morning from tomorrow).
They could be spiritual (I am feeling empty inside because I have not been making time to journal/pray/connect with myself lately. I am going to make a date to do nothing but be with myself for 30 minutes this afternoon).
They could be relational (I am feeling resentful because my partner is working long hours and I am shouldering the major part of the childcare and housework. I am going to speak to him/her about it to explain how I am feeling so we can together work out how we can address the situation).
The Three Questions (as I call them) seem to be too simple to be of any help, but their power lies in their simplicity; they are a quick and efficient way to check in with yourself and your emotions, honour those emotions and express them constructively.
Because it is only when we acknowledge and express our emotions that we are able release them, thus preventing them from smouldering and manifesting as burnout.
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Tags: ask for help | asking for help | avoid crisis | burnout | burnout recovery | Change | energy | exhausted | exhaustion | overwhelm | resilience
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