Hello from burnout. I’m about 90% certain I wrote a blog post last year around this time with the exact same opener. It may have even been the title.
I’m currently sitting on my couch completely surrounded by telltale signs of overwhelm. My headphones are on. I’m listening to some binaural beats/nature sounds on full blast to drown out my son’s TV shows that are on in the background. While I’m grateful for the fall weather to come creeping in, my hoodie is less for the cold as it is more because of my need to feel comfort.
I still have my sunglasses toppers on from when my son and I were just outside for a bit. We came in from a half-walk we did, where we got halfway around the block when the 6-year-old realized he didn’t have any water with him, and then complained his feet were tired. When we got back to the house, he got his water, asked for the remote, and forgot about the rest of the walk he begged me to take with him about 20 minutes earlier.
When I realized we weren’t going back outside, I sat on the couch next to him and glanced over at my laptop. Even though I knew I was in a state of burnout, I felt that familiar boulder in my stomach and heard my conscious naggingly saying, “There’s so much work to get done. Since you’re here and you’re not needed by anyone else right now, you should open the laptop up and get to work! People are depending on you! Future-You is depending on you. You’re already in burnout, just keep pushing a little longer. Maybe get enough work done to go to bed early tonight?”
I heard the nagging voice, thanked it for its suggestion, and instead decided to write this post.
I made it a habit not to write for others when I’m stressed or in a bad place. I’m reactive. I’m angry and resentful. Many times I’ll read the writing later and realize I said things in the moment aren’t kind and certainly not helpful to anyone. I like to think I’m much more intentional with what I create and put out into the world than I used to be, especially since I stopped drinking about four years ago.
I’ve also seen the bridges that have been burnt (bombed, even) when I or others have posted knee-jerk reactions online from a place of extreme emotional dysregulation. I believe there is a time and place for raw and unfiltered emotion, and too many people confuse that for genuine vulnerability, authenticity, and, “keeping it real.”
But in this particular bout of burnout, I’m currently at a place of resignation, perhaps? Maybe it’s Radical Acceptance of the fact that I can’t stop the PTO from emailing/texting every day since school started or that my monthly Adenomyosis flare from ovulation is also this week.
Maybe it’s the energy let-down from doing a last-minute rush job a few days ago that I’m resentful of but not resentful enough to spend the extra time and energy to write the email asking for compensation. It isn’t worth it to me right now because I’d rather spend the time and energy working on today’s client work so maybe I can go to bed before midnight.
Maybe by the time I edit this for posting, I will have gotten a decent amount of sleep and I’ll have the spoons to write that email and set that healthy boundary. But it won’t be today. And I already have a few other boundaries that need setting that take precedence at the moment.
I’ve noticed that since my therapist gave me the homework of setting healthy boundaries, I’ll set one and then it feels like I require a 3-to-5-day recovery period because of the emotional exertion. Unfortunately, I can’t just set a boundary and go on vacation to reward myself.
After writing this, I’m actually realizing I’m in a much different space mentally than I was when I first started writing this. And it’s not like my workload’s gone down at all — nowhere on my to-do list was “write a blog post” today, but then again this is the blog I write when the mood hits anyway.
“I’ve noticed that since my therapist gave me the homework of setting healthy boundaries, I’ll set one and then it feels like I require a 3-to-5-day recovery period because of the emotional exertion. Unfortunately, I can’t just set a boundary and go on vacation to reward myself.”
I feel like I should send a “thank you” to past-Emily for getting the laptop and writing. Once again, life doesn’t seem so bad.
I have choir tonight, which will give me an hour to reset my brain, it feels like. I love that I have a concentrated time weekly where my only focus is on singing the right words to the right notes to the right beat and I don’t have time to think about the long, long to-do list and the emails piling up.
Tonight I plan on going to bed early-ish (for me) or at least earlier than I have been going to bed. The end-of-the-night sleep procrastination is real, especially when I’m buried in my work all day and haven’t seen much of my husband.
But for now, I’m going to try to give myself some extra compassion and grace while I also push and prod myself to do the things that I know will benefit my mental health, like remembering some of the ways I handle my ADHD burnouts.
Here’s my current ADHD burnout “toolkit”:
Getting out into nature — especially now with the days getting shorter and cooler.
Journaling and brain dumping.
Being aware and intentional about my priorities. I try to stick to 3 main things per day that I need to accomplish. If it’s more than that, like lots of clientwork on top of kids' school stuff or personal stuff, I know I’ve overbooked and don’t have enough white space.
Water and plenty of ways to stay hydrated.
Yoga, hypnosis, breathing exercises — anything that brings awareness to my mind and body and grounds me is a good thing, even if it’s sometimes the HARDEST thing in the world to convince myself I have time for any of it when I could be working on the things stressing me out.
Phone games — I’m currently enjoying Connections from the New York Times but my go-to for the last few months has been Cat Sort
Outsourcing or delegating. My husband knows I’m stressed and has been wonderful when I’ve needed him to step up. He knows I do the same for him.
Pomodoro Technique — I use the Forest App for this and I’m honestly pretty proud of the forest I’ve been growing this month for all the times I’ve used it to help me put my phone down and focus!
More sleep, less staying up because I know for a fact that Emily on 8 Hours of Sleep is like a completely different person than Emily on 5ish Hours of Sleep, which I’ve been pretty regularly for a while, if we’re being honest with ourselves.
Saying “no” more (Working on it, but it’s tough! It’s almost like I enjoy doing stuff, you know?)
I also have to remind myself that it won’t always be like this. I won’t always be in burnout. I won’t always have all this input from all directions. And hopefully, I won’t always have to feel like I need 3-5 days to get over setting a boundary.
Let me know any ADHD burnout tools you know of and have used below 🙂
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