Surviving the Burnout Crash: The Airbags

Last week was the first part in my series about my delightful/harrowing adventures in burnout. Last week, I focused on Band Aids: strategies that were somewhere in between prevention and a reaction. I understood pretty quickly that I was going to have a crash in July (if I could manage to hold it off that long) and I wrote about the strategies I undertook to try to make that crash a little less bad.

I think these strategies really helped make the crash less terrible than it could have been, but it came all the same, and it was brutal. I still had a week and a half left to go of pride and had just landed in St. Louis for a five day adventure with 12 events on the books.

Before we get further into the burnout toolkit part 2, I want to share one of my favorite good news stories from the past week: Four republicans voted with all democrats to affirm that transgender people should be allowed to join the military! However you might feel about the American military complex, seeing republicans cross the party line to vote for the dignity of transgender servicemembers is a win in my book.

The Crash

I realized pretty quickly upon arriving in St. Louis that I was not well, and a really important part of supporting yourself through a burnout crash is being able to identify that you’re in it.

Within twenty four hours of arriving, three of my most trusted friends had all independently told me that I had never looked so tired in my life, and they were very worried about me. Here I was, thinking I was putting on some excellent display of energy and commitment. And my god, what a relief it was to put that down and be a real person.

A walk I went on to go cry in the park. Felt kind of magical over here.

So once I had accepted that it was going to be a rough week, what were my “airbags” that I could use to be in survival mode without having much room to actually slow down yet?

• Assign jobs to my loved ones. When I get stressed out, I forget to eat, and I’m not great about drinking water when I’m running from place to place. I specifically requested the people I would be around most keep me accountable and ask me constantly whether I was eating and drinking.

• SLEEP! Usually, I’m someone who avoids naps. When I’m struggling with other mental health lows, naps tend to make me feel more depressed. But I knew that this flavor of exhaustion was not the same as the depression urge to climb into bed and stay there. I needed to sleep. And so I popped in for as many tiny naps as I could squeeze in, went to bed earlier than usual, and prioritized rest in a very different way than normal.

• Feed my heart. I knew that I would have time in July, fortunately, to recover. My focus that week was on survival. For me, this meant ICE CREAM!! I love ice cream, and spent the week doing whatever little things I could do to bring myself some joy.

• Be outside. Sometimes, our stresses can make the borders between ourselves and the rest of the world feel really intense. We feel isolated, disconnected, and hopeless. When I feel like that, I go tell my problems to trees that are waaaaay older than me and birds that don’t stop flying to try to fix it. Sometimes it’s great to talk to the people we love. But sometimes it’s nice to be reminded that the world will keep turning, and the sun can patiently dry my tears for me.

• Say no to stuff (a lot) I had 12 hard commitments when I got to St. Louis on top of a much larger list of things I was hoping to do. People I wanted to grab a coffee and catch up with, favorite places I wanted to visit, things I wanted to write about, etc. Once I realized I was mid-crash, I did almost zero of these things, and guess what, it was fine! I shared honestly (and briefly) with my friends why I wasn’t free. They love me anyways, so I went back to sleep.

• Meditative arts and crafts The friends I stayed with in the city were the proud owners of the button machine for our PFLAG chapter, which is basically just a crank. I would be lying if I told you that it healed me to know that I was doing an action that would make so many people happy. People really do love the buttons, but to be honest with you, the healing of the button machine had nothing to do with the impact of the buttons and everything to do with how nice it is to turn my brain all the way off. Making pin after pin, sitting quietly in the sun and staring at a really pretty houseplant was a kind of meditative state that was really peaceful.

Next week, I’ll write about part 3 of this journey: the recovery. I’ve spent the better part of July putting myself back together, recharging my energy, and figuring out what I want the second half of this year to look/feel like.

If you know someone on their own burnout recovery journey, send this their way to give them a little extra love. Then read this article about how to show up for someone and actually help!