Burnout: A symptom of career depression
Posted on September 30, 2013 by Amy McGrath, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
You might be burnt out because you're overworked and afraid to say "no" to new projects, but that's not the REAL reason you're unhappy at work.
Let me set the scene. You’re usually the first one in the office and the last one to leave. You naturally take on big projects because you can blast through large volumes of work and understand where all the little pieces fit into the larger picture. You’re dedicated to your work and kind of enthused by it. No matter what position you’re in, it almost seems like you’re running the ship.
Somewhere along the way something shifts though. You move from being fired up about your work to being overwhelmed by it all. Yeah, you took on a lot of stuff, but you also have a lot of stuff that you don’t remember asking for. You’re pretty sure you know why you have so much work. There are some external factors you give credit to like the economy, not enough resources, the inefficiencies of others … your monster boss.
-People were laid off and you absorbed their job duties.
-There’s not enough money in the budget to hire more people and so you have to take on the work.
-The other people on your team consistently turn to you to clean up their messes instead of figuring it out themselves.
-Your boss is too egotistical to notice that you’re overworked.
That’s just how things are. You suck it up and do your work. You try to keep your discontent to yourself.
Eventually, you cave under the load. You forget a meeting. You miss a deadline. You snap at a coworker. You’re normally a very capable person though – in every situation. So when you start to slip up, your first reaction is to come up with possible explanations. Maybe you’re working too many hours. Maybe this stuff is a little bit above your head. Maybe you’re not the person for the job.
The issue isn’t really that the hours are too long or that the work is too hard or that you’ve been given too much responsibility. If that was the only issue here, the whole thing could be fixed by having a conversation with your boss about workload or moving on to a more suitable position. Except we both know that if you had less hours, easier tasks, or less responsibility, you’d be bored as a gourd. It wouldn’t take long for you to pick up an additional part-time job (or two) or decide to do volunteer work or begin a massive home improvement project or start your own business or go back to school.
Negotiating less hours, easier tasks, and less responsibility isn’t the real solution because it’s not addressing the real problem. The real problem has to do with the real reason that you don’t speak up. Why don’t you express that you’re having a hard time keeping up? Why do you keep taking on more work anyway? Why are you afraid to say “no”?
I think the real reason you don’t speak up is because you wanted to see something in your world and you didn’t. In this instance, you wanted to see high achieving you surpass the expectations, pull a rabbit out of the hat, and dazzle everyone with your ability to keep a cool head under pressure. You wanted to do what you do so well. You wanted to turn in the work of five people. You wanted to clean up all the messes. You wanted to complete a high volume of work with speed and excellence. You wanted to have it all together. You wanted to see that hardworking, strong version of yourself … and right now, you don’t. Instead you see a super tired, super stressed, super overwhelmed version of you that has run out of juice. That is not a vision you want to share with anyone else – especially not your boss who you try to impress. So you don’t speak up. You sit in silence with this undesirable vision which triggers feelings of disappointment. If you sit with the vision long enough, the disappointment turns into shame. Shame is the real problem. We always try to hide shame. We will go to great lengths to keep our insecurities entirely to ourselves.
If shame is the real problem, how do you get over it? The same way you get over fear. You notice that it’s there. You address it by looking it straight in the face. And you speak truth to it. You might have noticed that feeling ashamed and trying to hide leads to not speaking up. That’s exactly what shame wants. Shame wants you to hide. Shame wants you to be silent. That’s because shame cannot exist once it is exposed. When the truth is spoken, shame has to leave.
Sure, have that conversation with your boss about how you’re burnt out. Work together to create some breathing space. Use that space to deal with your shame. Take the time to figure out what you’re disappointed about. Think about what it really means if you’re not always perfect and you don’t have it all under control. Be gentle and understanding. Speak some truth about yourself.
