🔼: # Burnout[^1] %% “*I don’t want to be this character anymore.*” Love or Validation Addiction — swinging between over-giving and burnout. %% 🫠, but like…everything. The Three Common Components of Burnout: - Extreme Exhaustion or [[💡 Fatigue|Fatigue]]; Emotional Exhaustion. We can’t handle any more emotional labor, for ourselves or others. - [[Depersonalization]] and Cycicism. Feeling negative about our work or life; questioning others’ intentions, which gets in the way of authentic relationships. - Personal Ineffectiveness. Our efforts feel fruitless, or like what we do doesn’t matter. - David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence, even though as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend this is not the case. - Life feels monotonous, work feels like a Sisyphean task. We feel tired and depleted, yet all our effort feels like a drop in the ocean. Burnout can lead to multiple physical problems: - [[💡 Fatigue|Fatigue]] - [[Headaches]] - Trouble with [[⭐️ Sleep]] - [[💡 Depression|Depression]] - [[💡 Anxiety|Anxiety]] - Extreme [[💡 Emotional Dysregulation|Distress]] - Chronic stress, which often overlaps with burnout, is a risk factor for many chronic diseases. --- We can avoid burnout by staying attuned to and acting from our capacity, and by learning to tolerate the embarrassment and guilt of honoring our exhaustion before it becomes “a thing.” - [[🔑 Guilt is better than resentment, depletion, or burnout]] - [[🔑 We have a right and responsibility to say No]] (because capacity) - [[🔑 We can’t do everything]], even when it involves our [[💡 Strengths and Weaknesses|Strengths]] - [[🔑 We build capacity by respecting our limits]] - [[🔑 Don’t wait for crisis]] ###### Why do we burn out? Each of us has unique capacities. Each of us has unique desires and demands / expectations / obligations. Broadly speaking, we get burnout when our (even desire-based) demands are higher than our capacities, which have gone un-replenished. We burn out when we’re over-extended, under-rested, and under-nourished for too long. Our [[🕯️ Boundaries]] around capacity aren’t being adhered to. - A misalignment of demand and capacity. - [[🛡️ Overworking]] (voluntary or not) - constant demands or stressors in any area of our lives. - [[🛡️ Perfectionism]] - A misalignment of desire and capacity. - pushing past a growth edge - saying yes to something we want to do without checking in with ourselves to know whether we have the inner-resources for it - Over-socializing - The friction, stress, and tension of [[🛡️ Masking]] or of being out of alignment with ourselves, which drains our capacities. Many of us can push through temporary difficulty, but if something doesn’t change our resources will eventually become depleted and we will burn out. > [!important] > [[🔑 Our inner and outer worlds are not separate]] — burnout seems to mirror the way the over-extraction of Earth’s resources leads to natural disasters and ecological collapse. Burnout may well be the product of [[🪨 Internalized Capitalism]]. It’s a natural consequence of unsustainable inner-resource exploitation. It is a sign of self-neglect or self-abuse. ###### The Lessons of Burnout Depletion and burnout teach us that there is a line to be drawn between demands/desire and capacity. Burnout forces us to acknowledge our limitations in a visceral way, and this can have us feeling helpless against the monumental task(s) we’ve given ourselves or have had thrust upon us. Our limitations can be something to [[💡 Grief|grieve]]. - [[🔑 Act from capacity]], not desire - [[🔑 Go at your pace]] - [[🔑 Listen to your body]] %% https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/slow-practice-practitioner-group As part of my Save the World complex, I often find myself working from the belief that if something is easy, if I’m not tired or straining, I’m not doing enough or my very best. The truth is I can only do my best when I’m [[Self-Inclusive|Self-Inclusive]], when I’m considering my own needs and capacities in my decisions and in my work. When mind, body, and spirit are tired and drained, it’s a sign we’re nearing the end of our capacity, in the “red zone” that leads to burnout. Our capacity is something we need for many areas of our life — “Don’t spend it all in one place.” We act from our capacity because we have to — there’s nothing else to draw from. The phrase “have to” can a bit loaded for many of us because its meaning is likely often informed by the ways we’ve been treated and the have-tos our caregivers burden us with. My have-tos were informed by other people’s demands, like a kind of rule or requirement someone else imposed on me which became [[💡 Should Statements|shoulds]]. I ”had to” do this or that thing on someone else’s schedule, I had to drop what I was doing, I had to give my affection or my time to someone out of obligation, I had to finish my plate, I had to perform something, I had to do more and go faster or further than I was prepared to, and I was punished for protesting. I was taught to mask and ignore my capacity to meet others’ expectations, desires, or demands. Many have-tos focus not on capacity but physical possibility. If it seemed, at least from the outside, that something is physically possible, I have no excuse to not do it. Our capacity was never foregrounded. My desires are also part of this. I want to love everyone as fiercely as I can, accept everything, say yes to every opportunity, give everyone all the time I want All those ideas about what a parent ought to be, we should make every effort to be ourselves — those things can inform our have-tos. Today, here, now, make a conscious choice to erase those definitions. Redefine have-tos as where desires meet capacity. When we’re depleted, burned out, and struggling, we‘re going beyond our capacity and have to stop. --- But what do I do about this terror I feel about having no money? Raise my rates, take on more clients, or find new ways to generate income. The misalignment of desire and capacity leads to burnout. Systemic problems contribute to this. I want to put systems and strategies in place to support me. --- Many of these decisions are depleting because they’re fear-based. We might overextend ourselves because we’re afraid of what might happen if we don’t. Truly aligned choices are generative, not depleting. If we believe we’re making aligned choices and feel depleted, we’re not including ourselves or our capacity in the decision, we’re somehow neglecting our [[⭐️ Needs]]. There’s a popular phrase about this: “Don’t light yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.” Put another way: Acting from our capacity, choosing to not burn ourself out or overextend ourself for other people, is not selfish. Selfish is *expecting* others to burn themselves out for you. Burning yourself out for others is not generous, it is self-sacrificing. And that sacrifice is okay to make, but it isn’t owed to anybody. Generosity is pouring from an overflowing cup. It is self-sacrificing to pour from an empty cup. Maybe there’s a time for self-sacrifice as a conscious choice, but it certainly isn’t in our day-to-day — and certainly not when we have more to give when we take enough for ourselves. Our needs are generative — we have more to offer when our needs are met. --- Loving from our capacity. I want to give people more than I have the capacity for. I want to give them the love they deserve, not the love I actually have to give. I want to save the world, not just what I can save. There’s also an element of FOMO. Not wanting to let opportunities go because of it. Not wanting to let people go, because what if I stick around and it actually ends up being really wonderful? See if it’s possible to put something aside for now and revisit it another time. We can make the choice to back away from something and leave the door open, don’t finality to choices unnecessarily. There are no “best practices” to standardize with. Life comes in seasons and we want to uncover our own personal best practices that match our needs and capacity, there is an ebb and flow of expansion and contraction, growing and shrinking, activity and rest. Foundational to all of this, to every choice we make, is to. [[🔑 Make aligned and compassionate decisions]] which honor your capacity. - Stay within your [[💡 Window of Tolerance|Window of Tolerance]] - Do you have the spoons for it? - [[🔑 Listen to your body]] - [[🔑 Go at your pace]] - [[🕯️ Self-Regulation]] can me misused to squash down feelings and push past our capacity, don’t use it that way. - [[🕯️ Resourcing]], reverse kryptonite. --- %% #### How to address burnout While we can increase our capacity to help to cope, this isn’t a sustainable solution. We need to both expand our capacity and shrink our demands, and then act on desires in consideration of our capacity. >“*The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.*” >— Bertrand Russel [[🔑 We need Nothing]]. We need idleness. That’s when we have time to contemplate. When we’re free from necessity of work to meet our needs or lead a decent life and have no drive to do anything except for its own sake, a process orientation without an attachment to outcome Get Space - Create [[🕯️ Boundaries]] - What can you take off your plate? - What can you delay? - What can you get an extension on? - What can you say no to? - Can we set something aside and leave open the possibility of picking it up again? - Do Not Disturb. - [[⭐️ Rest and Restoration]] - [[🕯️ Resourcing]] - Who can you ask for help? - What brings you comfort? - [[🛠️ One Point Better]] - [[🛠 Sacred Space]] - Reflection, [[🕯️ Doing Nothing]] Get Organized - What are your current [[⭐️ Needs]], [[💡 Desires|Desires]], [[🛠️ Goals and Intentions]], [[⭐ Values]]? - How do they intersect and overlap? - Where are they in contradiction? %%- [[Align Your Life]]%% - What are you [[🛡️ Avoiding]]? Avoiding is **exhausting**. If you need help, [[⭐️ Community Care#🦮 How to know when you need help, and how to ask|🦮 ask for help]]. You can even ask people to help you find other help. %% Consider your demands and resources. It can be helpful to come up with a short-term solution and a long-term solution. You will also want to take into account your experience of the three elements of burnout and which is affecting you most strongly at this moment. For example, high exhaustion burnout might require more [[⭐️ Self-Care]]; high cynicism burnout might require connecting to a purpose or to other people; high ineffectiveness burnout might require breaking big tasks into small, achievable wins (see: [[🛠️ Goals and Intentions]]). %% Are you doing any stressful things that you don’t need to do? %% #### Decreasing your demands  Start with evaluating what you can take off of your plate. Here are a few ideas to get you started: - Many of us have burdened ourselves with very high expectations for what we should do every single day. If you are worried that you might be experiencing burnout, it’s a good time to release yourself from them. What can you let go of right now? (Just because you let go of it doesn’t mean you can never pick it back up!) - Schedule time with your manager at work and discuss what is on your plate. If it is safe to do so, have an honest conversation about how you are feeling. What projects are work are not the priority? Where can you decline unnecessary tasks (like side projects or ‘nice-to-do’s’?) How can your manager better support you? - Take a break. If you haven’t taken your vacation days, schedule them right away. Consider exploring short-term leaves of absence if necessary. - If your workplace is a burnout pressure-cooker, as so many are, eventually, you will likely need to explore taking your [[💡 Strengths and Weaknesses|gifts]] elsewhere. It is a painful truth that these environments are not likely to change anytime soon, no matter how hard you work. You are valuable and you deserve a workplace that supports you for who you are. - [[💡 Cognitive Load#🦮 How to Lighten Your Cognitive Load|🦮 How to Lighten Your Cognitive Load]] #### Increasing your resources Take a look at your psychological, social, and economic resources, and evaluate where you can bolster them. - Make [[⭐️ Rest and Restoration]] a non-negotiable. While this can involve tough tradeoffs, it is essential for you to cope with the situation you’re in. Can you fit in small moments of rest throughout your day? Can you take a day off of all work once a week? - [[⭐️ Community Care]]: Reach out and ask for help. When you’re burnt out, even this can feel like too much effort to expend. But spending ten minutes considering, “Where could someone in my community lean in to support me?” could pay off in tens or hundreds of hours of effort down the line. - Ensure that you are being a good friend to yourself. Be honest with yourself: where are you subconsciously holding on to Old Happy burnout beliefs, and how can you release them? With awareness, we can start to unwind the myths in our own lives: every time that we catch ourselves pushing ourselves too hard, saying yes to too many things, breaking [[🕯️ Boundaries]], or deprioritizing our [[⭐️ Needs]], and we hold firm, we are taking a radical step against Old Happy culture. - Reconnect to a purpose. How can you keep top of mind why you are doing what you are doing? Focusing on the beneficiaries of our work can help us to regain a sense of fulfillment and motivation. - [[🕯️ Self-Stewardship]]: Define the [[⭐️ Self-Care]] habits that you need to stay strong and hold yourself accountable for them. Often, we neglect them because we feel like we don’t have enough time — however, that feeling is often a sign that we need to do them more than ever! #### The responsibility of leaders If you are a leader, you have an absolute responsibility to create an anti-burnout culture. If your team is burnt out, it is not their fault — and it's your job to help fix it. A study from [Gallup](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/237059/employee-burnout-part-main-causes.aspx) found the top five reasons for burnout are: 1. Unfair treatment at work 2. Unmanageable workload 3. Lack of role clarity 4. Lack of communication and support from their manager 5. Unreasonable time pressure Take a look at this list, and grade yourself on each item. Be careful not to base it on your experience of the workplace, but to consider what it is like for your employees (taking into account who they are, their roles, their lives and experiences outside of work.) Once you’ve graded yourself, challenge yourself to implement systematic changes that will help you to improve each area. In what ways can you help your employees to increase their resources and decrease their demands? Adjusting deliverables, removing ‘nice-to-do’s from their list, canceling meetings, re-prioritizing or cutting projects, advocating for what they need to your boss — these are all things that you can and should be doing.  We’re well overdue on building a work culture that doesn’t promote burnout. With increased awareness about what leads to burnout, increased clarity on what is in our control, and a renewed sense of responsibility from those leading workplace institutions, we can start to take meaningful action to improve work for everyone. Burnout is a problem that must be solved with widespread systemic change, not only with individual effort. [[Autistic Burnout]] %% ##### Resources Book: The Burnout Society - The Achievement Society, an outcome orientation - Even when we do something fun, we try to rationalize or justify it by saying it’ll recharge our batteries so we can do better work - Reduce Burnout: https://www.calm.com/blog/quiet-quitting-burnout - Dr K: You Are Burned Out and Don’t Even Know It: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqONINYF17M - [[📖 🟡 Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle]] by Emily Nagoski - https://thenapministry.wordpress.com/about/ - [[📖 🟡 Rest is Resistance]] - https://www.calm.com/blog/quiet-quitting-burnout - https://www.calm.com/blog/how-to-recover-from-burnout %% ###### How to Work With Guilt How to work with the guilt that arises when we listen to our capacities and break old rules of shoulds and have-tos in doing so? Guilt often arises when we begin to prioritize our capacity because it challenges deeply ingrained rules about responsibility, productivity, and worth. Breaking those rules can feel like betrayal — not just of others but of the internalized narratives that say survival, morality, or love requires sacrifice. Guilt is the emotional residue of those rules, asking, What if I’m selfish, what if I’m wrong, what if others are harmed by my boundaries? 1. Acknowledge guilt without judgment: Don’t resist or suppress it, sit with it. We might ask, what is this guilt protecting? Whose voice is it speaking with? What does it think will happen if I rest? Often, guilt carries the weight of other people’s needs or expectations, real or imagined. Naming this can reduce its intensity. 2. Redefine responsibility: Many of us are suffering from [[🪨 Internalized Capitalism]]. We’ve been culturally conditioned to treat our inner resources the way our culture treats the planet’s resources: exploitatively. Responsibility doesn’t mean giving until we’re empty. It means showing up in ways that are sustainable. When working from capacity, we’re taking responsibility for yourself in a way that ultimately benefits others. You can’t serve the world if you’re running on fumes. We have to compost and recycle our own resources. We're trying to create something of value. 3. Reframe rest as service: Resting isn’t selfish—it’s regenerative. It allows clearer thinking, better decisions, and more intentional contributions. You can see rest as an act of service to your future self, your relationships, and your work. Rest and acting from capacity is both a [[⭐️ Needs|⭐️ need]] and a privilege. Many of us are or have been pushed beyond our capacity by inescapable environmental or survival demands. Those of us who deeply feel for others might find this paralyzing as we try to reconcile our need for rest with the fact that so many others in the world who can’t afford to do it. Sacrificing our privilege to restore our capacities won’t help those who lack this privilege — it might be a further hinderance because we normalize unsustainable work and burnout as the cost of caring for others. When we’re depleted we make worse decisions it harms our health while sustainability maintains a balance of effort and renewal. Yes, it is a privilege and not a right. The best thing we can do with our privilege is use them to empower others. Receive care from ourself and others and then use those energies to help those without. Get out of the hole, and then turn around to get others out of the hole. **Addressing FOMO and [[Scarcity Mindset]]** Many of us struggle to slow down because we’re afraid we might miss something. It’s true. While resting opportunities will pass. Opportunities will always be missed, no matter what. We also up opportunities by not resting, the new ones that would come along if we were to rest and would be unavailable to us if we didn’t. Rest creates space for creativity, intuition, and connection—qualities that are vital for meaningful contributions. Acting from exhaustion often leads to avoidable harm or regret. No one person can save the world, and no singular moment is responsible for its fate. Resting doesn’t mean unwillingness to engage with the messy and urgent; it means choosing to show up with clarity, strength, and discernment when the time is right. A depleted person is less likely to recognize or seize opportunities effectively, to rise to the occasion and milk it for all its worth. If it feels like everything is resting on you, you’re likely acting alone. [[🔑 We need each other]]. Reach out and connect with [[⭐️ Community]]. By honoring our limits, we expand our impact. Instead of trying to save the world all at once, you sustain yourself so that your contributions can ripple outward in ways that align with your values and capacity. This isn’t abandoning responsibility; it’s including ourselves in it — it’s [[🕯️ Self-Stewardship]]. Just like [[Planetary Stewardship]], it ensures we can sustain for the long-term. These decisions might be fewer and slower, thought they’re often made with more clarity and discernment, with a higher positive impact and fewer reckless mistakes. --- The themes resonate with cycles of expansion and contraction, where honoring natural rhythms is essential to avoid self-erasure. Recognizing that “enough” is not measured by depletion but by sustainability is a radical shift, especially when survival fears press the body and mind into overdrive. When facing terror around financial security or the fear of letting people and opportunities go, it can help to create a framework where fear isn’t the loudest voice in decision-making. This might mean slowing down and asking gentle questions: - What am I really capable of giving right now, without self-betrayal? - If I choose rest, what might become possible when I return with fuller capacity? - Am I staying or saying yes because I want to, or because I fear what leaving or saying no might mean about me or my future? Leaving or pausing isn’t failure or finality. It’s a conscious choice to realign with one’s own seasons, trusting that space creates openings for something more aligned, a right thing for the right time. Aligning actions and relationships with capacity ensures that offerings come from overflow rather than depletion. This isn’t selfish—it’s foundational. It’s recognizing that saving the world starts with saving oneself, a world unto itself. If saying yes leads to burnout and saying no creates fear of disconnection, what might a middle path look like? Perhaps it’s setting boundaries that prioritize self-inclusion without abandoning relationships entirely. Or it might involve offering small, manageable pieces of love or effort that are sustainable, without the pressure to save or fix. Seeing relationships and opportunities as ever-evolving rather than fixed destinations might help soften the anxiety around leaving or staying. People and paths can be revisited. Seasons of distance don’t mean love or value disappears—they simply honor what is true now. Rest and reflection can bring clarity to whether something is worth returning to later. The point about FOMO tying both to staying alive and staying in relationships raises a profound connection between hope, fear, and endurance. For some, the belief that “things could get better” acts as an anchor in moments of despair—whether that despair is about life itself or a difficult relationship. The anxiety around leaving something that feels bad now mirrors the fear of giving up too soon, of cutting off a potential future where everything might shift for the better. This fear is complex because it mixes the valid hope for growth and change with the uncertainty of the future. It asks: What if leaving now robs me of a chance at something beautiful? But it also raises the need to distinguish between productive hope and harmful endurance. Productive hope allows space for faith in better outcomes while taking actions that preserve your well-being. Harmful endurance keeps you in cycles of suffering, clinging to the possibility of change without acknowledging the harm being done in the present. The FOMO you describe might not just be about missing out but about the finality of a choice. Leaving a relationship, an opportunity, or even life itself can feel like saying, “This is the end of what could ever be,” and that finality can be unbearable. But leaving doesn’t have to mean finality—it can mean honoring capacity right now and trusting that other opportunities, connections, or paths will arise. It’s a shift from “What if this is the only chance?” to “What if there’s something better for me when I make room for it?” To reconcile this bind, it might help to ground decisions in a mix of present reality and self-trust: - Is the current situation causing harm or depletion that outweighs any realistic potential for growth or improvement? - Does staying align with my values, needs, and capacity, or am I staying out of fear of the unknown? - Can I leave or pause for now, while keeping the door open to return later if circumstances or my capacity change? %% --- [^1]: https://www.thenewhappy.com/article/what-to-do-if-you-are-burnt-out