My journey with burnout

Burnout was a cyclical occurrence for me; it began with the perfectionism that lives in me, but in more recent years, it took on a different character: a seduction/ addiction to living my purpose.

My experiences with burnout kicked off when I went to law school in early 2005. That was the first time I applied myself to something as diligently as possible. I found pleasure in excellence. I remember stacking my books up in a pile and measuring the reading for that semester in metres; towards the end of my degree, it would be around 2-3 meters a semester (that was measured across the back of the books). When I graduated, I was in the top three in my year, and it had come about from grit and hard work, not just natural aptitude.

I would continue working on assignments after submitting them because I felt compelled to answer them perfectly (they weren’t done until they were done), not simply because I had to submit them by a particular deadline. I recall getting a pass for the unit in evidence and applying to resit the unit because I treated passes as failures. Fortunately, I was contacted and told that there had been an error in the marking of my exam, and my grade was changed. During this period, I would need downtime, cycles of inactivity and solitude for a few weeks at a time.

My work ethic went up a notch during my PhD. During the eight years I was working on it, I was also teaching and lecturing various units simultaneously. I recall working on New Year’s Eve until after midnight in the last three years because I would need every moment I could find. I vowed never to do that again as a general rule.

My cycles of burnout peaked after I decided to bring thought leadership into my chosen career as a therapist coach. This was because I found a way to infuse my love of teaching and facilitation into my focus on supporting people to thrive. My career now is filled with passion, which makes overworking all the more seductive. Add to this the pressure of pivoting a career from cultivated mastery in law to starting a new journey as a therapist and coach from nothing in 2016. The pull to work took on an existential dimension because I uprooted my financial life to try something completely different and needed to maintain an income.

My methodology for constructing my courses and cognitive frames is also a high labour model; my literature reviews are thorough (as I cultivated a love of reading and extracting information from books during my studies). I then create and test my hypotheses on myself experientially. This takes time and energy well over and above what I know I could get away with if I chose a different approach to engineering ideas and experiences. Still, then, I wouldn't have integrity of expression, so it's a non-starter for me.

I take pride in crafting well-researched courses because I believe in the importance of balancing the certainty of scientific methodology with the insight arising from integrating body, mind, and soul into a coherent whole. No one lens works perfectly, the scientific knowledge base evolves into perpetuity (which means it is never complete and static), and modalities like kinesiology have been shown in well-crafted studies to be only about 50% accurate.

Reflecting on my experience of finding my purpose and choosing to make it the basis for my personal and professional life, I see that it was a recipe for burnout and recovery cycles lasting months at a time because I am pulled to overwork from a place of passion. I coined the phrase “burnout is fear’s sexy city cousin” to express some of what I learned along the way. I unpack that phrase in the course.

My saving grace has been a chosen value I hold dear, which is that I invite anyone (including myself) to hold me accountable to the ideas and values I espouse. So, I tackled my burnout and recovery cycle head-on. I realised that I needed a foundational change in my life to break the burnout and recovery cycle. I worked out what was needed to put the cycles of burnout and recovery to bed and have worked this into the course on offer.

Whether overwork comes about from self-directed, mission and purpose-oriented action or a life that demands more from you than you can sustainably give, the effect is the same: burnout and recovery cycles. The basic relationship to manage is energy outputs and inputs. Fulfilment is definitely an input, but for me, it is seductive, if not outright addictive, and it doesn’t (and can’t) replace other necessary inputs.

As with every course I make, I’ve synthesised robust, evidenced-based information with the types of embodied insights that come about from personally experiencing the work. I share it only when it's 100% animal tested (on myself).

The dates for the Energetic Hygiene: Moving From Burnout to Flow are:

Content: Wednesdays December 4, 13 and 20, 6-8 pm AEST

AMA and integration sessions: Mondays, December 11, 18, 2023 and Jan 15, 2024, 12-1 pm AEST

Sandy and I record the content so you can be anywhere in the world, and one of the times above usually works for in-person attendance.

If you would like to attend, please let either of us know and let's have a chat. The course is offered on a sliding scale.

Reference:

Schwartz SA, Utts J, Spottiswoode SJ, Shade CW, Tully L, Morris WF, Nachman G. A double-blind, randomized study to assess the validity of applied kinesiology (AK) as a diagnostic tool and as a nonlocal proximity effect. Explore (NY). 2014 Mar-Apr;10(2):99-108. doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2013.12.002. Epub 2013 Dec 18. PMID: 24607076.