Burnout Recovery: The horrors persist and so do I

(I hope that writing it out here may help someone else who's hurting and help me not feel so alone as I try to rejoin the living.)

I've had a lot of really REALLY challenging shit happen to me over the last few years: cheating spouse, layoffs, divorce, dad dies, mom got cancer. It was a lot and I burned out. I spent my entire life sacrificing for others and never learned how to be kind to myself. So here I am, rebuilding my life, and learning how to heal.

I spent hours this morning journaling and realized that I was ruminating, just chewing this bitter cud where I blamed myself for accepting bad treatment and crumbs for so long. Here's the thing about blame and rumination: it's not processing or being accountable. It's trapping yourself in a trauma loop where you can't tell the difference between a Level 2 problem and a Level 9 problem. You are lost in a haunted house of your own making.

So I'm learning how to exorcise my ghosts and heal. I have a therapist. I have friends. I have a supportive partner who understands what I'm going through.

Part of what my burnout recovery is trying to practice mindfulness. It's hard. I've got ADHD so it's really really hard. I started just aiming for a few seconds or minutes throughout my day, like exercising an unused or damaged muscle. What really helped me start being able to access mindfulness was addressing my time blindness, one of my ADHD symptoms. I have attractive clocks everywhere so I can notice the passing of time without being tempted by the distraction vortex that is my phone. I'm teaching myself to notice what I'm doing when I notice time. That's how I caught that I was ruminating in my journal.

Another strong tool for my recovery is thought interruption. If I notice I'm abusing myself, I immediately let go of the topic and check in on myself.

First, I check my body: have I eaten? drunk water? moved around? showered? It's not uncommon, when my flesh and blood body feels "low" that my mood will follow. I take care of the meat suit and then then I check on my feelings (hence that feelings wheel). Usually they're strong and all jumbled so the wheel helps me untangle and understand what's happening.

Next I check what was I meaning to do before I derailed and see if my feelings are making sense. Sometimes there's some emotional trigger, sometimes it's just that being mean to myself had become a habit. I try to recognize that the feelings happened, and make sense considering what caused them, but also that the intensity and focus of it isn't appropriate for right now. Feeling remorse because I couldn't be there more when my dad was sick makes sense and is normal, but I can now recognize that getting lost in the feeling does nothing but harm me: I'm haunting myself.

I have a real problem with concepts of "worth" and "deserving". I'm not comfortable with the statement: I deserve to be safe and I am worthy of love. So, until I am, I tell myself that, as a living creature, I require safety and community to be healthy.

I force myself to eat something, anything, at least twice a day. I force myself to maintain a sleep/wake time. I force myself to drink water, go for walks, communicate with my friends, spend time with my partner. I force myself to not give up. And I try to do it with kindness instead of using negative self talk. It takes a bit more effort but eventually it works.

I've always been a workaholic, staying busy is a great way to avoid your problems. So now I have to go against my instinct to "try harder" and get comfortable with resting, which is hard when I'm so depressed that it's challenging to enjoy things. Right now I'm starting small: walk around my home, pet my cat, take a shower, take a walk, video games, audio books. As a matter of fact, I bet writing this post is an expression of using busy-ness to avoid caring for myself.

So I'll wrap up for now by saying this: it's way WAY harder to recover from burnout when you're being mean to yourself. Slowing down so you can notice what's happening in your body and mind, learning how to identify your feelings so you can intentionally choose how it expresses in action, can help give you the space you need to catch your breath. It gives you time to observe what's actually happening and what is learned reaction. It gives you some distance from the pain in your past. Then you can choose what to do: maybe you don't need to feel quite so anxious and nauseous for something that happened years ago. Maybe you did the best you could with the resources you had, and that's enough. Maybe you are enough.