How to Avoid Feeling BURNT OUT Around the Holidays
So let’s talk about burnout for an overachiever and how this can be tricky to uncover.
You see – when you place all of your value in achievements and DOING SHIT, burning out seems like another day in the life of an overachiever.
When your worth comes from DOING ALL THE THINGS – you do not exhibit all the signs of burnout that other people might experience
This is REAL TALK Tuesday so I am going to be very honest – That is not to say that it cannot happen, but I am going to be honest and tell you that I never just “gave up” and said “fuck it.”
IT is not in my DNA. I am built to keep on working, and that is why the topic of self-care and burnout is even more important for the overachiever – because the high achiever will simply internalize all the pain and develop anxiety, neurotic behaviors, disordered eating patterns, ups and downs like you don’t believe – the overachievers’ burnout does not come out in not showing up for work or giving half assed efforts – it comes out in the inability to stop working, the distance from those around you that are close to you, the acting out by partying hard on the weekends or binge eating, and not sleeping.
A lot of the root of high achieving comes from some kind of worthiness story or shame story – that is the truth
I actually took burnout out of the title of my coaching, even though I coach on it, because the clients I seek are those who probably do not recognize burnout for what it is – they will see that they have to be more productive – but they don’t quite understand how…
So let me bring you back to me in 2018, and why I love to coach on this stuff.
So 2018 – I had been hanging around some not so great people and dating a person who was not the best for me – mostly because I did not spend enough time focusing on my personal life – i was working all the time and working out all the time and just keeping myself buried in work; the funny thing was that when i look back – I was incredibly unproductive – I thought I was productive though because I worked 10+ hours and worked out every day and I looked like a bad ass in my super prestigious job.
I had two dogs, and I was training to be a federal agent so I was running every day.
For all intents and purposes, I was killing it.
However, that was very external. I was internally melting. I was itching from guilt because I did not want to be in the relationship I was in anymore but I did not know that because it took me 3 years to let myself feel enough.
I was a master emotion number – oh yeah – I did not feel shit it distracted me; if I was emotional, I would go for a run or drink wine.
I also avoided the nagging angst that came with the thought of becoming an agent. I was clearly not wanting to do that – but I thought I had to do that.
When you don’t spend time feeling back feelings – you don’t really notice when you don’t want to do stuff because you ignore bad feelings.
I was fucking miserable to be honest – I did not know why though – I looked fine had all the things. When you have crippling anxiety to the point of not sleeping, something is probably not right, right? WRONG – I was just not doing enough.
By some stroke of luck or divine intervention, I just called it crippling failure, I ungracefully did not make it through to the next round of my agent process immediately following a breakup with the boyfriend which only happened because again divine intervention …. Even though some call it divine intervention I called it CRIPPLING FAILURE.
Only then did I slow the fuck down and go…. WTF DO I WANT TO DO.
I look back and go – something spiritual was in the air – but at the time I just pitied myself.
IF I felt enough emotion for enough seconds, I would have noticed another feeling – RELIEF.
I felt relieved when my relationship ended and my job blew up. I FELT RELIEF. Like holy shit I can put down the fucking facade. I am a fucking human.
I came to realization that I could be not bullet proof and SURVIVE. No one suddenly hated me, no one thought less of me, no one gave a fuck.
I then had a novel idea to maybe fix my mindset because I was in a shit way and it clearly did not work – so I started to think how life could be different – I abruptly applied to a masters program because I had a dream about it – and here we are.
In between then and now, I started recognizing, slowly, that I liked to help people; I also reconnected with my values of hard work but family; I realized I hated where I lived; I realized I did not like being away from family; I realized that I was not a healthy person and I binge ate and drank; I realized that I was very far from who I wanted to be; I tried so many fad diets and trends to help me; but the only thing that really helped me was meditation, slowing down, and feeling emotions.
In summary, taking care of my damn self helped me- and here I am inspired to help other people get through some crazy mental shit to make the mindset stuff fun
I am here to tell you that there is more to life than what I described above; there is more to life than one job or one hobby – your life is fucking awesome and should be.
You should like your partner and have fun with them
You should like your body and what you eat
You should like your job and who you work with
You should like your living space and what is around you
You can choose to be happy
All of this sounds foreign to someone who is chasing the wrong dream and ideal.
Through my coaching container, I built SSA to give people a space to explore all of this in more detail with support and guidance – something I wish I had.
I provide the overthinking, anxious achiever something they desperately want – relief from the headspace they are in; I take the pressure off; I make decisions seem less do or die; I add in more fun into your world; I show you that the hard stuff like telling someone they are not right for you or leaving a bad job is not as hard as you think – your gut is a beautiful thing to listen to – when something does not feel good or right it is not right; when something feels right it probably is;
I help you meditate; I help you set goals and I show you that you really can wrangle the mental beast.
That relief – that feeling of sweet relief and pressure allows you the ability to truly be productive- which is the end goal. It all starts with taking care of you first.
So, if you feel like any of this resonates with you – Check out my Work With Me page for more information – you wont regret it
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