How to Burn Out in 3 Easy Steps
It’s incredibly frustrating to be caught between identifying a destructive pattern, and having the tools to stop it.
I’m able to recognize the beginning stages of my own implosion fairly quickly. Extroverted character traits, particularly my sense of humor, begin falling away. My personality becomes rather dry and unappealing, like a gingerbread house someone has plucked all of the candy off of.
Let’s walk through my typical cycle:
Obsession. Craving rules that divide the world into “good” and “bad,” I begin obsessing over how organized my apartment is, how much money I should be spending, how much and what I should be eating, how much I should be working. The irony is, of course, the stricter my rules are, the more likely I am to fail and be “bad.”
Overcommitment. Craving validation from others (which I no longer get from myself), I fill my schedule with more obligations than I can reasonably sustain. This works OK for a few weeks; exhaustion, however, is inevitable.
Self-punishment. Having successfully engineered a system designed to fail, I deride myself for weakness and begin pruning out sensations I enjoy: eating, feeling warm, relaxing. If I am comfortable, I feel the shadow of my mother on my psyche: I am not pushing myself hard enough!
Rinse and Repeat as necessary until I lack the physical and emotional capacity to function.
The important thing to understand is that this was a very effective strategy when I was a kid. I was heavily praised for self-sacrificing behavior. Not only by my parents, but by my teachers, my coaches, my college advisors, and my managers. The fewer needs I had, the more energy I could focus on people-pleasing, which was the only way I knew of to build social connections and bolster my self-worth.
No one ever taught me about the value of quiet. Of rest. No one explained how to do less with myself, how to listen to my body, how to hold myself gently. Life was about reaching the next goal, whatever that was. I could rest when I had achieved.
As my goals became less defined (from “get an ‘A’ on the math test” to “be a functional self-sustaining adult”), the effectiveness of my strategy waned. There was no one around to praise me for managing to clean the entire house, cook dinner, and study for vet school after a ten hour shift. There was no one to set limits for me, and no one I could turn to for help, which is what every counsellor and therapist and self-help book told me I needed to do.
The problem was, I fundamentally didn’t understand how one obtained ‘friends;’ I hadn’t needed them to make my parents or my boss happy. And I have never had a long-term partner. Knowing that strong social bonds are closely correlated with wellbeing is NOT the same as knowing how to safely form those bonds.
I have come to understand that my brain is a special kind of fucked up, where being truly open with someone feels, at a primal level, like staring down a lion. I was trained to never express my needs. Vulnerability is terrifying.
All this to say, if you struggle with emotional intimacy, you are not alone.
If you struggle to get your needs met, if you can even name them, you are not alone.
If you struggle in that gap between recognizing destructive, self-isolating behavior and being able to change, you are not alone.
I struggle too. My work now is to become the support I never had, by offering intentional touch, companionship, coaching, and shame-free intimacy. By proving through practice that vulnerability is nothing to fear- you can and should ask for what you need.
No one should feel stuck using dysfunctional childhood coping strategies.
It’s not easy work to get out of a destructive cycle. I’m currently working to return to baseline, and progress is slow. But my sense of humor and my confidence are coming back bit by bit.
And if a class-A autosadomasochist like me can learn to do a little less self-punishing, by golly, so can you!
