What is burnout and what can we do about it?
Burnout occurs when balance is no longer existent in your life. When events, work or exterior forces are stressful and overwhelming to the point of taking the reins of your life while simultaneously, there is not many things that bring you joy to help balance it out. Burnout can cause chronic exhaustion and no matter how much sleep you get, you never feel refreshed. Burnout can be losing yourself in a job, forgetting what laughing feels like, self-isolation from feeling to “mentally dead” to socialize, burnout is completely debilitating.
Realizing you are facing burnout is the first step to recovering. I spent so much time last year during my third year of teaching researching how to get out of burnout because everything I found always told me that I was burnt out, but there was nothing telling me what to do about it. All I would find is articles saying “spend time doing self care!” and I was constantly wondering “well, okay, what does that mean? What does self care even look like?”, running into constant dead ends would leave me feeling defeated and more lost than when I started looking. So, this blog was created. Full of resources up under the “Quick Resources” tab that has, and will have more things continually added, to help give strategies recommended by therapists for surviving and recovering from burnout.
Healing looks different for everyone, thus the variety of resources and recommendations provided to help those healing all along the spectrum. Some people need a pep talk to take a personal day off of work, some will need help adding more things they enjoy into their lives, others will need someone to just vent to at the end of the day and others may feel compelled to join counseling services to have someone help navigate their thoughts or emotions through the fog of stress.
No matter what this journey looks like for you, just know it is the right path. Prioritizing, and learning, your needs is not selfish. Prioritizing yourself to feel good is going to ultimately cause others you are around to also feel good as a result. Your work, relationships, life, thoughts, feelings and overall health will start to brighten with taking the first steps to becoming yourself again. I am so proud of you for being here and wanting better for yourself. You deserve better. This starts now, I am so happy to have you on this journey with me. I see you trying, I see you obliterating yourself in order to get to the “finish line” of your to-do list, just so you feel like you can be given permission to relax and enjoy life. I’m ready to start enjoying life now, there is no race. The real trophy is having beautiful and healthy memories to reflect on someday.
Are you ready? Let’s go!
Start exploring this site, more detailed blogs will be continuously posted to apply more in depth strategies for success in the coming weeks.
See you there!
Love,
Aubrie
