Burnout wasn't something I saw coming.

I was excited about having a change in direction when my CAMHS work finished last summer. I was motivated to try new things, to build my online therapy business. To explore new ways of working and living. I was trying my best to pivot and make the most of the opportunity that had presented itself. 

Despite not always being happy in the last CAMHS role towards the end, it was something I had done for 4 years. It was in my capacity to do it and it had offered me a way to live a busy life around the 3 days I worked. 

I’m not sure if I’d have left if the funding hadn’t ended, I would moan about how the system was working, how I believed young people and families were being let down, how we as a service were often just pathologising human experiences and not giving the opportunities for people to find their own understanding of their difficulties but telling them what was wrong and what they had failed to do to stay healthy. 

But the income and flexibility it gave would have likely just kept me going. I was somehow used to this busy life and didn’t realise the impact of going against a lot of my true values, forcing myself to “suck it up" when I felt such injustice over some of the practices I was accepting that over-riding my body's energy reserves as a normal thing. Being busy on my days off made me feel like I was making the most of life. 

But I can now see that what was really happening was a slow burning decline in my well-being. The days that I collapsed on the sofa and binged telly, unable to even make a decision about what to eat, was just seen as a “self-care” day. Giving in to the fatigue for one day, then the old niggling thoughts of “I must be productive” would drive me off the sofa and either back in the gym, a packed filled day of meeting friends or getting jobs done which left me  running on fumes and caffeine. 

Social calendars bulging at the seams, no time for just doing nothing, for having space for stillness. That was only really offered to my system, when it had pulled the handbrake on and made me fall into complete shutdown. 

According to Mental Health UK, Burnout is a state of severe emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged, unmanaged chronic stress, most commonly related to work. It manifests as overwhelming fatigue, feelings of cynicism or detachment from responsibilities, and reduced professional or personal efficacy. It often feels like "running on empty" and requires active recovery.

I wouldn’t have thought that I was stressed, I was busy, but I wouldn’t have said I was stressed. I now believe that my baseline of being in balance had greatly shifted. That returning my nervous system back to a point of stillness was actually much further up the scale of activation then it needed to be. So where once I would have returned to a point that offered much more restoration, my point had become one that was still in the range of deregulation. 

Spending too long there distorted my sense of stability, what had become my new normal was a place that didn’t allow for complete rest and digest. I never returned to the place that my body needed to be in to heal. 

Our busy lives often make us go faster, act quicker, be more than we are designed for. We will be told and sold that busyness equates to success. That to work hard means that you are doing your best and that it will be rewarded with recognition and praise. We become experts at juggling many balls and spinning numerous plates. Comparison and competitiveness seep into our subconscious without making themselves known. But they keep the pattern growing, slowly pushing us to do more or go faster. 

The fear of not being enough or of missing out becomes so big in our thinking that it somehow just becomes the set point of our lives. A constant hum playing in the background that we become so accustomed to we don’t even register it. We may begin to say to ourselves, that we are ok with not going, whilst spending the time over thinking what will they be thinking of us, and scrolling on social media to see if we can get glimpses of what we are missing. All of this is just eating away our confidence and self-esteem. 

So my burnout creeped up on me slowly and behind the scene, eroding my capacity and turning my health down to its minimum setting. Sleep had started to evade me, nights spent lying in bed with several stories and picture shows running at once. Colds that wouldn’t shift, and fatigue and weariness beyond what was expected. 

The sudden change in my life last summer left a hole where the busyness that I had maintained in my life had space to slow down, and it did, eventually, dramatically to the point of collapse.

Even when I hit the floor, my mind still wanted to keep going. Making excuses, playing it down, convincing me (or trying to) that I should keep going to the gym, that I can maintain being busy and still get better. Despite being diagnosed severely anaemic, my thoughts drove my body to keep going. 

I would hide the feeling of anxiety from people, only cry when I was alone. Not wanting to share the real thoughts that were running around in my head. Not repeating the mantra of “Who the fuck am I anymore” out loud so people could hear. The sense of failure was real. 

Over Christmas I slowly began to recognise that actually I may be burnout, that feeling what I was feeling was real and not something I could just push away or override any longer. I began to listen to my husband's words of support as validation and not criticism, I had up to then dismissed his concern as him trying to tell me what to do. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say, as I didn’t want to admit that I had ground to a halt. To me, admitting that would make me look weak and stupid. 

Understanding my anaemia made me see what I was doing as stupid. The constant fighting against myself was just prolonging my recovery and I finally sat with myself and listened to what I really needed. 

I needed to stop, rest and recover. 

I paused my gym membership for a month, I ensured I ate well, I would get into nature every day. I would sit without distractions and allow my body to speak to me and I would listen. I heard the words that it had been trying to communicate to me for a long time. 

I was open to hearing from my bones, telling me they were tired of carrying all the old pain and patterns that they had been dragging around. They told me they wanted to let go of the stories of needing to be the strong and capable one. That the weight of being the responsible one was too much to bear. They warned me if I continued to demand that they did then eventually they would crumble and give way. 

I offered them the sense of being held so they felt safe to let them release into the ground the weight that was no longer theirs to hold. I saw how I had developed the role of the responsible one, how I had made it my truth that I had to respond to people’s needs over my own. I began to realise I wasn’t obligated to act on everyone’s behalf and that it was safe for me to say “no” as a full sentence.

Next, the fluids of my body took the space they needed to speak, informing me that they were made to be flexible and have the ability to flow naturally. That my need to always have it worked out or known, was hindering them. They needed me to release the grip so they could find their own way of responding to life. Reassuring me that they wouldn’t let me lose control if I loosened my fingers slightly.

Now I had begun to see how much the sense of busyness had been rail rolling over my real sense of being. I was busy so I didn’t need to listen to the patterns that were driving me into burnout. I thought I was living a good life, and I was but it may not have been the life I truly and deeply really wanted. 

I’d begun to see that I actually enjoyed going slower, doing less. I found that missing out brought with it a real sense of doing what was right for me. I didn’t want to be lost in the crowd of faces I didn’t really know. That doing less gave me more. More time to sit and enjoy being in my own company, to write and be in nature. To see and understand what my true values are and how I can meet them. 

I recognised more how I needed to honour my own resources, my own body and my own energy. That this was my responsibility and something I needed to take seriously. 

My mornings are now slower, weekends quieter. The shoulds have become less and the word “No” spoken more often, and the guilt that would follow is slowly becoming non existence. 

Changing isn’t easy, acknowledging our patterns can be hard, they are what we have built our personalities on, how our lives are lived but they can be modified and changed and a new way of living can be created. 

I am grateful for my burnout, for the crumbling down of my system. I am grateful I had the support of an understanding and supportive husband. 

I am grateful for my training and experience so I could support myself with techniques and tools that allowed for this transformation. I can see how easy it is for burnout to occur, how it can slowly burn outside of our awareness or be disguised as busyness or success until it slaps us around the face. 

I really would recommend we all slow down at times, to sit and be with the questions of what are we doing that isn’t supporting us, what can we stop doing that can offer us some ease and space in our lives. 

We have a lot of expectations of us as humans right now, the world is intense and we can be burning too bright without realising. Having a tool kit of ways to put out the flames before they engulf us completely, is vital and necessary. 

Understanding your own nervous system, the clues it gives you that you may need to adjust or rest. Recognising your own individual blueprint and default ways of acting and responding can be the change that turns things around. We are all different, we have all experienced different life stresses and have adapted ways of coping, what works for one doesn’t work for us all. 

Part of my work now is supporting people through burnout, helping them recognise that they are in it, offering them and their own bodies the safe space to let go and rebuild. Having the container placed around you, is paramount for the healing to happen. We don’t heal in isolation. 

All my offers and ways of making contact are found on my website; www.juliannealexander.co.uk