In January I wrote about what burn out is and in March I wrote about how to prevent or heal from burn out, now I want to scribble about why people get burnt out.
Since I launched Kaleidoscope in January 2021 I have worked with 617 individuals in a variety of settings – groups, one-to-one, online, in-person – taking them through a variety of my programmes: EMBRACES, NLP, EFT Tapping, talking therapies, meditation, healing circles, Liberate your BS what I have concluded is that people allow themselves to become burnt out because they don’t believe they are good enough, deserving or worthy. This is just my opinion based on experience, and I understand it is a generalisation and an over-simplification of an increasing problem, but for the vast majority of people that I am working with this is the reality.
Let’s explore what this means for the people I have worked with and see if you recognise any of these scenarios for yourself.
Clients tell me they are exhausted and don’t have time to rest. Clients tell me they work so hard at work that when they get home, they just zone out. Clients tell me they don’t believe the work they do is as valuable as other peoples (same qualifications, same experience) and therefore they can’t charge what they deserve to earn. Clients tell me they don’t want to be seen, yet in this modern world how can you sell your services if you don’t want to be seen; because they don’t want to be seen they put out lots of social media posts but are too afraid to put up reels showing the real them, the vulnerable them, the them that people could really relate to and want to buy from. Clients tell me that they put with how they are being treated by their bosses, partners, friends because that is just the way it is. Clients tell me they attract the same type of person over and over and they are tired of being treated poorly.
Hmmmm. Let me break each of these down further for you just in case you do recognise yourself in any of these.
Don’t have time to rest
I am not enough so I have to keep going because if I am busy and doing people will eventually see my enoughness, I will prove myself. Or I am unworthy of rest because that is laziness. Or I am undeserving of a rest because I have not been productive enough yet. If you want something done ask a busy person, that is what society tells us, because we know deep down that these people will just keep going no matter what because something is driving them. What is driving you is this feeling of not being enough and having to prove yourself. But being busy proves nothing and if you don’t do it the bosses will just find someone else that will do it for them. If you won a very large pot of money and were able to leave work who would do your work for you then? Did you know you the Health and Safety Executive recommend short breaks more often for those using computers and that “The law says employers must plan work so there are breaks or changes of activity for employees who are display screen equipment (DSE) users” https://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/dse/work-routine.htm#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20legal%20guidance,20%20minutes%20every%202%20hours. So even the law says you deserve rest and that your employer should plan for this. But you are driven. You want to succeed. Yes, I know some stress is good and even enjoyable (think roller coaster) but long-term negative stress is detrimental to health and leads to burn out.
What is really going on here is that someone in your life led you to believe that you are not enough and that you needed to work hard to accomplish anything. Like all those report cards where every teacher bar one told me I had potential but needed to concentrate more and work harder to reach that potential. Maybe you received a B in an exam and instead of celebrating that wonderful result you were asked why you didn’t get an A! This teaches you that your achievements are not enough, and you have to work harder to prove yourself which means you can’t rest.
Or potentially you were made to do a lot of household chores. Age-appropriate household chores are good, they teach responsibility and contribution; however, when you are overloaded with chores, and you are made responsible for the whole household before you were at an appropriate age then you didn’t learn what a healthy work life balance looks likes. No-one taught you how to rest, that resting and self-care were vital for good health.
Exhausted
Working hard in a job to the point of exhaustion which means that when you go home you zone out and can’t relate to your family the way you want to, tells me you feel you have to prove yourself. If you won or were given a large amount of money and could leave work, would you a. stay for a few weeks to tie up loose ends and work your notice or b. run out the door like your backend was on fire? Your answer to this question will let you know if you are dedicated to a job, you love or you are secretly loath your job but feel obligated to work all the hours that are sent. If you did receive that money and left your work what would happen to your job? Yes, they would give it to someone else. Your headstone will not say ‘Best Employee Ever missed by all their colleagues’ – well it might but not usually. Usually, our headstone is all about the family we left behind. But you are too exhausted to interact with them the way you really want to. So, either you are following a family pattern where your parents, grandparents etc work incredibly hard and therefore you don’t know what a home life could potentially look like, you are trying to prove you are enough through your endeavours or you are avoiding something at home.
If you are following a family pattern now would be a good time to recognise it is a pattern and look to see how well that patterned has served your family. Did this pattern enable strong loving bonds to form between all family members? How is/was the health of the parent, grandparent that worked all those long hours?
If you are trying to prove you are enough through your endeavours, ask two questions 1. When will you know you are enough? 2. Think of a child that you love dearly – a niece or nephew, your own child, a young cousin – what do they need to do to prove to you that they are enough, deserving and worthy?
Maybe you need to have a difficult conversation about health, your relationship, or finance etc and you just can’t face it, so it is much easier to stay in work exhausting yourself rather than being vulnerable. The longer you put this off the harder it will be to have the conversation and the more damage the silence and exhaustion will have done. Whilst many of us avoid difficult conversations at times this tells me that you do not believe you are worthy of love, the love of another or the love of yourself and it easier to avoid the conversation than face the consequences; that in itself can make the whole situation worse.
Work is not valuable
You can’t charge what you know your work is worth because you don’t believe anyone will pay you that amount of money because let’s face it – who are you to be telling anyone else how to do this thing?! Am I right – you know I am. Well, no you are wrong. As long as you have put in the work, you are qualified and have the experience to go with the qualifications then you deserve to be paid the value of your service. This is the crux of the problem you don’t feel like you deserve. Because someone somewhere at a critical point in your life withheld what you deserved whether it was love, recognition, a safe place to process emotions; whatever it might have been that you needed at that time was withheld and you now feel you don’t deserve.
Don’t want to be seen
Not showing up and being seen either in your family life or online for your business in a way that you want to, holding yourself back can mean that if feels scary and vulnerable probably because as a child you learnt that it was safer not to be seen, it was safer to hide in the shadows just on the edge of everything. This can come from the ‘girls should be seen and not heard’ or from ‘children don’t interrupt adults when they are talking’ type of child rearing. Thankfully, society has moved on and we now know that a child feels much safer when a parent is responsive to them. You need to work with your inner child or nervous system and teach it that you are safe.
Put up with how people treat you
There are people in your life – family, friends, or colleagues – that do not treat you with respect. People you need to have firm boundaries with and yet you do not. Because deep down you believe that you deserve to be treated how they are treating you. The people who object the most to your boundaries are the people you needed the boundaries for the most! To be able to have appropriate boundaries you need to feel like you deserve respect. You may also though feel like you are not a good enough person to enforce boundaries to demand respect from these other people. Who are you without them. Well, you are you. You are wonderful, blessed, loved, and deserving of respect. In this situation you need to fall in love with you and then teach the people around you how to treat you properly.
Attracting the same type of people over and over again
Our nervous system is a wonderfully elegant system but there are a few outdated modes that could do with upgrades and that is up to you to do the brain training. Mode one is reacting to everyday stimulus as if it is life threatening, think panic attack over not finding your car keys. Mode two is recognising patterns and assigning meanings. In mode two recognise the behaviour of others and that feels comforting, just because we recognise it, even when you consciously know this person is the sort of person you want in your life because the relationship will not be healthy, but yet you become friends with them or date them, because they feel familiar. I will repeat the advice from above. You need to fall in love with you and then you will start attracting the type of people you can have a healthy relationship with; and you will recognise that the others you attract are merely your brain showing you a pattern that is familiar to you that you can now leave well enough alone.
Can you see how all of these scenarios come from ‘I don’t deserve’, ‘I am not worthy’ or ‘I am not enough’? Can you see yourself in any of these scenarios or something similar? Can you now look at that situation from a different perspective and see it for what it really is? Can you also see how these feelings drive you to take the actions you are currently taking?
I really want you to know this you are enough, deserving and worthy just because you are alive, you do not need to prove yourself. Go live your life and be your beautiful, messy, authentic self.