What’s the connection between burnout and your life story

Burnout - we hear this word every day but what does it really mean? 

By definition, burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands. But one skeptical mind could ask why are we so stressed about and overwhelmed nowadays? Aren’t we living in the best period of human history? Valid points, Sherlock, but let’s stay open and curious.

The mind works in mysterious ways. But it also likes control and predictability in order to maintain a sense of physical and emotional balance. 

Are we familiar with our own defense mode on/off button?

Every time it senses a physical or emotional threat, the defense systems are activated: we either fight, fly or freeze. Again, one could ask - aren’t we supposed to protect ourselves? Yes, but we should also ask ourselves how often and how long we are in the defense mode.

Going back to the definition of burnout, I would rephrase it like this: 

Burnout is not about the events that occur, it is about the perceived person’s ability to cope or integrate the emotions involved when the events occur. 

So, the real question is: what is the level of your emotional regulation abilities?

Test your emotional regulation abilities

Think about your childhood now and the ones who raised you - parents, grandparents, extended family. There are no good or bad answers. You just allow yourself to remember your perceived emotions related to your caretakers. I invite you to be open to the idea that they were not perfect caretakers, they just did what they could best with the resources they had.

• What do you remember about their emotional traits? 

List each caretaker’s traits as you recall them from childhood. 

Use adjectives such as kind, distant, absent, warm, loving, angry, cold, etc.

• List (all) the negative and painful experiences you had with each childhood caretaker and other significant persons as you recall them from childhood.

• What negative feelings did you experience over and over again with each childhood caretaker? 

(Note: feelings can be stated by single words such as angry, hurt, etc.)

• What was your deepest fear with each caretaker? 

(Note: fears can be stated by words such as neglect, shame, exclusion, suppression, abandonment, disapproval, rejection or of being used, invisible, devalued, ostracized, dominated, smothered, controlled, ignored, etc.)

• State your deepest unfulfilled desire with each caretaker. 

(Note: unfulfilled desires include ‘always feel safe’, ‘be appreciated’, ‘never be alone’, ‘be loved unconditionally’, etc.)

• When these desires were not met by your caretakers, how did you cope/adapt? Did you minimize your energy by withdrawing, shutting down, detaching, avoiding attention, or did you expand your energy by crying, pursuing, whining, clinging, attracting attention?

By answering these questions, you now have a glimpse of your emotional abilities to cope with different life events. 

What do you observe now about yourself when dealing with stressful situations - do you tend to maximize or minimize your energy? 

Growing up, using one of the strategies mentioned above was a brilliant way to cope when your desires were not met by your caretakers in order to feel safe and protected. However, once you activate them you tend to overuse them in all life situations. What that means is that you tend to be less flexible and adaptive, therefore, unconsciously contributing to your own emotional suffering. 

As adults, we use a single word for such a complex process - burnout. 

In fact, what we experience now as burnout is the same feeling of overwhelming helplessness that we felt as children when our caretakers did not know how to meet our emotional needs and desires. 

Therefore, in order to counteract the feeling of burnout we all have to learn to take care of our inner child by being our own emotionally capable adults. 

This is a learning process and it may take a lifetime in order to heal and be whole again but that is the beauty of staying open and curious.