Do you have 'existential burnout'?
Burnout isn't always about overworking. It occurs when you begin to question the very foundations of your life and beliefs.
This is one of my most popular posts on The Hyphen from 2023, in terms of the amount of people who read it and shared it with friends, so I thought I’d re-share it today and also offer a discount to join the newsletter membership for 2025.
When I told an acquaintance that I was severely burned out (at the end of 2022), she seemed surprised. She replied something along the lines of:
“Oh gosh, sorry to hear that. I thought you worked a four-day-week etc….?”
I understood her confusion. She didn’t say it in a judgemental way; it was a fair observation. How was I burned out when my time management looked so under control? How can you be burned out when you don’t even have kids? How can you be burned out when you don’t work in a hospital, or commute for two hours a day, or XYZ?
I wasn’t working crazily at all before my burnout breakdown happened. I know people who are round-the-clock lawyers, who travel constantly, who have a huge mortgage and family, who work 10 hour days, who eat dinner quickly at 9pm and are renovating their entire house and they’re not burnt out. Of course, it’s not a competition to determine who is ‘worthy’ of burnout and who isn’t.
But that’s the thing about burnout: it hits us all differently.
So why did I burn out so badly? Leaving me unable to function for months?
On paper, perhaps I ‘shouldn’t’ have KO’d so spectacularly. But something was clearly wrong. Things like, never quite learning how to switch off from the noise. Or because my life was full of so many ‘shoulds’ and wrong directions and harmful moments of people-pleasing that my body suddenly let me know that something had to change. There’s a reason we like having pets, because they remind us that we are allowed to rest, to snooze, to put our phone down and lie in a patch of sun.
Is ‘burnout’ actually the wrong word to use altogether?
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In case you’re new around here, a little intro: I’m Emma Gannon, a writer of fiction and non-fiction and I host creativity retreats all over the world. My new novel (my 9th book) will be published in April. I’m as excited as ever to keep writing about creativity, publishing, wellbeing, travel, and keeping our JOY alive in this crazy world.
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