The Relentless Bite of Burnout.

12.11.2024

Burnout. 

“Burnout is now categorized as a “syndrome” that results from “chronic [workplace] stress that has not been successfully managed,” according to the World Health Organization's International Disease Classification (ICD-11)

And sadly, Burnout has become one the most familiar terms used in our ever fast-paced, urgent, achievement-orientated society.  And quite frankly, people seem to have forgotten how to just switch off and it’s created a pandemic which in my opinion trumps COVID19, and will have considerably longer and more damaging consequences. 

18th October 2023.  The day before my 40th birthday.  The day my body decided that it’d had enough of me ignoring ALL of the very obvious warning signs –[hindsight ‘eh] – for YEARS and pressed the big red stop button, hard and I had no choice but to stop.  It wasn’t the first time.  But it was the first one I physically could not get up from. 

For those who have experienced the full-force of a panic attack, it is quite frankly one of the most terrifying things I have ever experienced (and continue to, though thankfully much less viscerally and considerably less often) and the funny thing is that the fear of the attack itself drives the onset of the attack. 

I understand that everyone feels them differently.  For me, it felt almost out of body.  Everything was in slow motion.  I felt no pain, so to speak, but I could hear the beat of my heart – everywhere.  I felt like my head was in a vice – it felt like it was being crushed. This was the tensing of my neck and my jaw. I had pins & needles from the base of my neck, all the way up to the top of my head – my lips, my cheekbones, my earlobes…which then spread down my arms, into my hands and fingers - hyperventilation.  I was hot – like it felt like someone had lit a furnace inside my rib cage and I was combusting.  And I was scared.  Scared for my life, yet I couldn’t reason WHY… I just had this absolute feeling of foreboding deep in the pit of my stomach, a feeling that something really terrible was about to happen.  When I explained it to my therapist a few months later I recalled that it reminded me of the scene in the film Deep Impact where the people are sitting on top of a hill or a sand dune and watching this giant tidal wave flying towards them, knowing full well that they cannot out run it; and KNOWING the outcome.  And I cried.  I cried so hard.  I didn’t know what to do with myself and those 25-30 mins felt like an eternity.

I spent the next 3 odd weeks, mostly asleep.  Fueled by some pretty heavy sedatives and a concoction of all sorts of happy pills.  Sleep is an incredible healer but my body appeared to have forgotten how to do it, and needed a lot of help to remember just how.  I’d been averaging maybe 2-3 hours a night most nights in the long term lead up, often fueled by too much wine, or gin and had got myself into a pretty unhealthy pattern.

I summoned just about enough energy most days to put on a relatively normal face to get my kids up and out the door for school, before collapsing on the sofa and giving in to the mental, physical, emotional exhaustion which I had been holding in for so long.  In the brief periods of awake, I was numb and mostly just stared at daytime TV, not really noticing or being aware of it. 

I had various calls and visits from the mental health team, the crisis team and my GP – all of whom were absolutely amazing.

My husband would bring me breakfast, lunch, dinner, all the tea in the world, make sure I took my meds, remind me to actually shower and gently encourage me to occasionally get outside into some fresh air.  Whilst he would do all the school runs, home and life admin. 

He was working, whilst doing 99% of the parenting of our two beautiful children, both of whom had just started new schools – the big one into year 7 - HUGE, and the littlest, our little anxious boy, into reception, and that was SO hard.  Mostly he was just there and let me be the very broken version of myself with so much love and tenderness – truly an ‘in sickness and in health’ test.

I had lots of calls and texts from friends and family, many of which I didn’t respond to, because I simply didn’t have the social or emotional capacity to talk to anyone else. 

And work – well they loved me too, so much from a distance, giving me all the time and space I needed and with no pressure and not a day goes by I don’t fiercely miss the truly an amazing bunch of humans at Appetite.

And yet with all of this love and support – over a whole YEAR later, although in a MUCH mentally healthier place and I am still in the grips of the aftershocks of burnout.  I can’t begin to imagine how much more difficult it is for someone having to go at it with less support and without the luxury of being able to have actually paused for a considered period of time.

Burnout is relentless.  It repeats on you like a spicy curry!  And it still has the power to wipe you out when you least expect it.  There is no quick fix. 

My brain still has this uncanny ability to wake me up at 3am with a start and set my heart and thoughts racing, but actually not let me in on the secret of WHAT it is I am panicking about and so I end up having sh*t night sleep which makes me tired which exacerbates the whole bloody thing.  Repeat. 

A lot has helped over the last year.

Sleep.  Exercise/movement.  Fresh air.  Intentional chill time – and by that I mean, giving myself the permission to actually NOT be productive…that is a hard one to master.  A LOT less alcohol.  Good nutrition.  Time spent with friends.  Stuff to look forward to.  Intentional digital detox.  Mindless reading (great soppy novels!).  I got two absolutely delightful kittens in June which make me smile every single day with their sheer nuttiness (#CrazyCatLady)

…Of course some amazing counselling with my warrior therapist Ro; and a fun concoction of pills to try to calm the crazy. 

And my absolute saviour – journalling!  Writing always has been a love of mine and a channel of release, without which I don’t know how I would have got through.  Funny thing with writing, is that once I start, I find it difficult to stop, and when I do stop and read back over the blurb I have scribbled, it’s often full of stuff I had absolutely no idea I was even thinking. 

I have probably 1500+ pages of ramblings, some makes a lot of sense.  Some has opened Pandora’s boxes of stuff I will take years to unpack.  I have begun to delve into philosophy, and particularly existential theories and it has caused me to ask a lot of questions and have some really interesting conversations with people about just WHY. 

Lots of people have reached out to share parts of their own stories and to ask me to share some of mine and I have always been a bit cautious – I don’t want to be perceived as jumping on the ‘same here’ train… BUT, equally, one of the WHYs I have explored and journalled extensively about is about whether or not I would have listened to the warning signs if I knew how to recognise them; whether I would have admitted that that was me or stayed on my pig-headed, stubborn road and whether hitting the bottom was the only thing that was going to stop me… and so if nothing else, if this speaks to one person and stops just one person from reaching that dark and unrelenting place of burnout, then sharing is worth it. 

Over the next few weeks, I intend to share parts of my experience – the build-up, the recovery, the discoveries and pillars, boundaries, the balance – all sorts of stuff which may well bore you to tears.  It probably won’t be in any sort of chronological or really ANY logical order and much of it will just be ramblings from my scrambled brain, and perhaps referencing stuff I’ve read!

If there is any part, you’d particularly like me to write about and of course if I have anything half way useful/relevant about said thing, please do wave. 

I’d love to chat to people who have experienced burnout – and to share more recovery success stories or struggles in the hope that more stories out there may resonate with more people.

I am definitely jumping on the ‘We need to shout about and normalise admitting to not being ok’ train.

So let me know your thoughts.  I would prefer kind comments if its all the same to you, but gentle feedback also welcome.

Much love,

KC x