Burnout First Aid Kit: The Band-Aids
What are the warning signs of burnout?
As some of you may have guessed from some of my recent emails (or lack thereof), this pride month took a lot out of me. I ended up in what can only be described as a pretty brutal few weeks of burnout in the latter half of June and most of the beginning of July. I’ve been working hard on finding my way back to peace and emotional regulation, and now that I’m really seeing the light at the end of the tunnel here, I’d like to write more about it.
The world is exhausting, and demands on our time, attention, and empathy are constant and overwhelming. I know I’m not the only one by a long shot to have fallen deep into the clutches of burnout, and I hope my openness and the strategies that have helped me might find their way to you, too.
Since I know most folks are not wanting to read a loooong article these days (myself included, more often than not!) I am going to break this down into a couple of parts.
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Part 1: Yellow Lights
Early in the month, as some of you may have read, I passed out at the gym during a normal workout. It was a huge, screaming red flag to me that I hadn’t been properly taking care of myself (particularly as it pertained to remembering to eat or drink). I started to be more thoughtful about my food and water intake, but that could only help so much.
As the month progressed, I had more and more travel and speaking engagements and could feel myself becoming more tired. Something that’s important to me on my mental health journey is learning how to identify my “yellow lights”. Basically, what signals does my body send me that something needs to change?
Listening to and noticing these signals then allowed me to start taking action. I knew that not everything about my month was changeable, and that there would likely be a crash and a recovery to come, but there were some things I could start to do right away to mitigate how challenging that crash would be.
Here are a few of my personal yellow lights, and the things I tried to make it a bit better. In the realm of the first aid kit, these are the band aids. Not at all long term solutions, but they helped me scrape through a difficult time without making it worse.
Signal: I was seriously struggling to concentrate, and frequently switching between tasks. Even if I was getting done a task that was time-sensitive, important, or enjoyable, I felt a constant, anxious restlessness.
Band-aid: This was honestly a really tough one, and I spent a lot of time talking this through with my therapist (whom I increased my session frequency with for the month). I had to give myself grace to be less productive.
Signal: My sleep got way, way worse. It took longer to fall asleep, was harder to stay asleep, and when I woke up my brain was already working—it was like I was showing up halfway through a meeting every morning!
Band-aid: Melatonin, more screen time rules around bedtime, and planning my days so that when I got exhausted at 3 I had already finished my to do list and could take a break until dinnertime. I also picked more calming books for my pre-sleep reading time.
Signal: Caffeine had much worse effects on me, and instead of helping me wake up it made me terribly anxious.
Band-aid: Caffeine ban. This one is still in effect.
Signal: I wasn’t finding joy in things I usually loved to do, like writing articles for good queer news, emailing people about book recommendations, or giving speeches about my favorite topics
Band-aid: Not forcing it. I looked at my normal commitments, projects, and habits, and if something wasn’t mission-critical, I wasn’t going to work on it during June.
Signal: I am usually a very, very patient person, but I found myself much quicker to get frustrated at friends, family, myself, even my audiences! Yikes.
Band-aid: Asking my loved ones to help keep me accountable to noticing this behavior, and helping me slow it down.
Signal: My social media and scrolling cravings became way, way stronger. For me, identifying that my social media use was a capital A- Addiction has been an important part of my boundary setting. It gives me the tools to understand that, like with other forms of addiction, these cravings will be particularly strong at times when I’m feeling exhausted, stressed, or vulnerable.
Band-aid: Make the boundaries stricter. On my social media blocking apps, I turned up the amount of time I was required to wait before using these apps/websites from 20 seconds to 60 seconds. I also did not allow myself to re-download the apps onto my phone and could only use them as websites.
Signal: People I loved were mentioning to me that they were worried about me. They said I seemed more tired, stressed out, and less present than usual. I felt myself simultaneously grateful they were noticing and scared of what that meant.
Band-aid: Resisting the urge to pull away and forcing myself to keep a small number of social plans with people I felt most able to open up to, but taking time at the beginning to be candid about how much I was struggling.
Critically, a lot of these band-aids are ultimately about gentleness and comfort. I wasn’t really trying to start brand-new habits as much as I was leaning into older ones, and finding ways to structure my day that meant I felt less guilty about my lessened energy levels. Spending more time in parks than coffeeshops made it easier to avoid buying a coffee, and removing the social media apps from my phone meant the urge to scroll wasn’t as present because the option wasn’t available.
I also knew that none of this could happen alone, however much the urge to isolate called to me. I didn’t set ambitious expectations for maintaining constant phone calls and text threads, but I tried to avoid spending too much time alone or in spaces where I needed to pretend I was doing okay.
None of these were long-term fixes, but I also wasn’t in a moment where I had time or energy for a long term fix. It was important to me to know that moment was coming in July, and we can’t push healing off forever, but it’s still important to know what your band aids are.
I know I’m not the only one who’s struggled with this, and I’d love to turn the comments on this post into a mini resource hub. How does your body tell you that you need to slow down? How do you respond with compassion?
It's so important that you called out the scrolling and the caffeine and then turning some things down. So often, when we're stressed and burned out, we lean INTO our addictive behaviors. Those (like you) who have a reputation for doing so much can be especially vulnerable to internal pressure to perform at an unsustainable pace. A therapist gave me the concept of becoming a human being, not a human doing.
Did you write this just for me? Kidding. Feels like you did though. I bet it took extra effort to do make this post so perfect. I see you and I am you in so many ways. thank you!