Burnout: one year on
An honest post about finding my way through
The last few days have been fractious. My moods have been undulating, and I'm bursting into tears at the slightest challenge or provocation. Some days I'm happy and at peace; slicing through the glassy surface of the outdoor pool at my gym, the only one there, or I'm sipping a decaf flat white in a quiet café as I write. Other days, I'm overwhelmed by all the things my bodymind is trying to process and the result is that I get stuck: I can't move or think of what to do, and I spiral and end up dissociated and feeling untethered from myself.
PMS and chronic trauma are a nasty mix. As someone who takes carefully calculated measures to stay on an even keel with being autistic, having combined-type ADHD and hEDS, I feel like I've failed whenever something gets the better of me. Eight years after my first burnout and I'm still fighting against internalised ableism.
It's natural for me to want to be active – whether it's going for a walk, a swim, or meeting a friend or getting some work done in a café; I prefer to be moving, to have things to do. But I'm starting to realise that much of that is coping strategy to manage the trauma I've lived with, the CPTSD that never allows me to rest. Ingrained as the more unhealthy behaviours – of pushing myself beyond my limits, of overachieving, of feeling I need to serve others above myself. Partly, of needing to be seen as successful to be valid, to matter, to have a voice. A lifetime of putting other people's needs before my own has made me shout as loud as I can in other ways, to remind myself that I do exist, I do have agency, and autonomy over myself.
Ambition can be a lifeline in a world where there is little self-worth or secure sense of identity. It can give us accolades, drive us to develop skills, help us to feel like we matter in a world not built for us. I have learnt how to put my natural introspection down on a page, to build narratives around the questions I need to ask about my life experiences, which I can find no answer for elsewhere. Ambition helps me to meet myself, somewhere on the page. To give space for my voice and my story be heard.
But I need to be careful that it doesn't become me, that I don't become it.
I am working on feeling valid without these things. I hope they will always be there, and I dream of a long and happy creative career, but it's vital that I don't let it define me.
The same goes for activism. Oh, the toll of activism. It's a hard place to be, to give so much of yourself, over and over. It's incredibly difficult to not take it all on, when you're built to see a wrong in the world and want to right it. Or a space for equity that isn't being filled, and you want to conjure it. It can sometimes feel like the world is on our shoulders and that's not good. No one can carry a planet on their back let alone fix all its problems.
I'm finding myself off-kilter – my central nervous system craving chaos, feeling at odds without constant demands on my time and head-space, but equally requiring utter stillness and recuperation.
The catch-twenty-two of trauma and the bodymind: my whacked adrenals are begging for me to stop, to breathe slow, to hunker onto the mat and stretch and let the ground hold me. The minute I do, my mind throws every unprocessed or still-processing thing at me at once, and I feel like I need to create a solution for each and every one if I'm ever to be still. Throwing myself out the front door, to walk, to be in nature, to feel expansiveness, is how I cope.
My therapist helped me to realise something kind of profound the other day. I do not know what peace feels like. Or security. I've lived in an environment of fear, of 'catching', of keen surveillance, my whole life. I am married to a wonderful partner who offers both of these things (and more) in abundance, but it's never quite equalized where they’ve been lacking elsewhere in my life. There's always, as long as I can remember, been something else tipping the scales the other way.
Recently set boundaries have nudged the balance slightly back toward equilibrium – for the first time in my life – and my bodymind doesn't know how to handle it.
Vigilance is a key quality of mine, conditioned from a young age, useful occasionally, annoying mostly. It's a hard thing to switch-off. It's afforded me resilience these thirty-seven years. But it's no good to be in a chronically heightened state. It takes a massive toll on health.
This is my second burnout since I turned thirty.
The first, I hate recalling. I was so baffled by it. My brain just stopped functioning as it should. I couldn't type an email, I lost a lot of my possessions, and I was crushed by ton-heavy fatigue. My glands kept swelling up, I kept getting sick. The GP had nothing. Nothing in my blood tests. I was told to rest. I quit my freelance PR and events work.
I eventually couldn't leave my flat, even to nip to the supermarket around the corner – I just couldn't get that far. I had to stop every couple of steps (we were renting a tenement flat on the 3rd floor), and it became impossible. My hair thinned, I cut it off, and my guts were in a bad way. It went on for months. I saw a nutritionist who talked about adrenal fatigue. I took loads of supplements and I did what I had to – I rested. Showering and feeding myself were my goals of a day. I couldn't read, so I watched TV.
It took me a year to be able to go for a twenty-minute walk without feeling like I was going to pass out. I took it a tiny bit at a time and I'm lucky that I started to feel something like myself again by the time two years had passed. Many don't get there. Some of us are just always at risk when we overdo it. Covid has brought a wave of people into this awful experience, and we can only hope research will yield some results.
Ambition drove me and my co-founder to some excellent success with the Inklusion Guide – it was as much energy as I'd put into anything since my burnout four years prior. Two years of non-stop work and promotion and fundraising (whilst I was getting assessed for ASD), and the brain fog and fatigue was biting back with a vengeance for both of us. We'd given everything and then some, it was time to be done. Then my dad died. My perspective on life blew wide open.
I'm creeping, slowly, slowly forward. Finding out last year I have combi-ADHD as well as being autistic has led to the realisation that ADHD is the primary cause of the majority of the challenges I face. I love so much of my autie self; but right now ADHD feels like my enemy. Being autistic is just who I am, but in a time of intense grief and unpacking trauma, my ADHD is worse than ever. I can feel traumatic stress eating away at areas of my brain that control moods, daily processes, memory and the fight-or-flight response. I'm having more good days than bad, though; even though the bad still royally suck. I have energy enough to swim, to go on walks, to go to gigs, and find the joy in life. I’ve spent more time with friends these last six months than I have in four years. It’s something I’m incredibly grateful for. But it's squealing up against a huge shift in perspective on my life and fresh awareness of my experiences.
Heavy things aren't easily shaken, this is a re-positioning that's going to take time and tenacity. Where nothing but acceptance of an entire new state of being will do, accepting the bad bits along with the good. The tugs that pull me back down into shadows, knowing I have the tools to reach out and grab the light once more.
It's a pattern of waves, always.
This is, I think, the default combi-ADHD existence – the hyper against the hypo, the need for stimulation and rest at constant odds with each other. An unsteadiness of it's own making, in order to find more stable ground.
I can only it's out there for me, somewhere down the line.
Thank you for sharing that, I recognised a lot of my own situation in what you describe, and it's a really helpful perspective. I hope you're able to find what you need to be able to heal and thrive.
I feel for you. I'm going through my own trauma, although its hormone related, and nothing like what you are facing. A transition none the less. Like you, I turn to wilderness for healing. The heron, what a gift! Wishing you all the best. 💕