Last week I was standing in the kitchen talking to my husband about returning to work after his paternity leave.
He mentioned hundreds of emails, a slew of urgent deadlines, and the unfinished attic upstairs.
Sighing and scrubbing a baking sheet, he said, “I just can’t picture a world where it’s possible for me to do everything I want to do.”
Wowza.
Raise your hand if you can relate!
(Sidebar: Can we celebrate how awesome my husband is? He not only does the dishes, he sees them as something he wants to do.)
What my sweet partner modeled so well is something I see all the time, especially in conversations with new and potential coaching clients.
I see a person with a generous heart, high standards, and the best intentions…
…careening straight for burnout.
Burnout is a sneaky thing. When it hits you, you tend to feel like it came out of (nearly) nowhere. Yes, you had a lot on your plate, and yes, you were working hard… But what, exactly, was new about that? What tipped the scales into flat-out exhaustion?
But from the outside, burnout looks like a slow-moving train wreck. It feels predictable, even inevitable. When a high-achieving person runs themselves ragged over and over again, you know it’s only a matter of time before they max out their superhuman bandwidth.
High achievers tend to perform under pressure so often it’s like they’re wearing burnout blinders.
They can’t see the warning signs of impending meltdowns or hear the movie theater audience shouting “Don’t open that door!”
I’m not saying that high achievers WANT to experience burnout. For many, it’s the price they think they must pay in order to be successful.
We live in a world that applauds our overwork. When we’re getting down to business, ‘more’ feels like ‘barely enough’. Hyper-productivity isn’t just chemically addictive, it’s culturally imperative.
For all these reasons, avoiding burnout requires radical awareness of our own limits.
It requires seeing ourselves and our behavior differently—with enough time to pump the breaks.
I asked my husband if he thought he might be experiencing burnout. To which he replied, “Honestly, I have no idea. All I could say for sure is that I feel overwhelmed.”
In my experience, overwhelm is a recognizable precursor to the wham-bam shutdown of burnout.
Understanding and managing your levels of overwhelm helps you recognize and work within your limits.
I’ve helped enough people navigate overwhelm to know its many faces.
I actually think you can break the idea of ‘overwhelm’ down into three separate stages, all of which may precede burnout.
As you read through this list, ask yourself which stage of overwhelm feels most familiar to you. Do you often experience one or more of these sensations?
Stage 1: Acute
This is the stage most people think of when they say “I’m so overwhelmed right now.” It’s the wave of anxiety that hits when you look at your epic to-do list, receive unexpected bad news, or try to squeeze just one more appointment into your jam-packed schedule. Taking in all that information at once evokes a flight-or-freeze response and often feels paralyzing.
Example: that feeling you get when you open your email inbox after a three-month hiatus and see thousands of unread, but presumably important, emails
Stage 2: Chronic
This is the stage of overwhelm where you don’t even bother looking at your crowded to-do list. Your head is buzzing and your nose is down to the grindstone because you don’t have a choice. You spend your days putting out fires while trying to make progress on an alarming number of high-priority tasks. You’re busy from the second you wake up in the morning until you fall asleep at night.
Example: that feeling you get when you’re burning in the midnight oil after a jam-packed day because you absolutely MUST finish this project before its looming deadline
Stage 3: Systemic
This is the stage when feeling overwhelmed becomes your default operating system. You believe that your value at work depends on endless productivity, and your success / professional security is measured by your hustle. At this point, bring overwhelmed feels like part of your identity. It’s hard to imagine a life where you don’t experience constant anxiety and the crushing pressure to perform.
Example: that feeling you get when you’re scrolling through Instagram at the end of a very long day, trying to distract yourself from your feelings of guilt, shame, or fear because you’re barely holding it all together
Whew. Okay. That was a lot.
Let’s all take a deep breath together.
In my next email, I’ll give you some specific suggestions for how to support yourself at every stage of overwhelm.
For now, drop a comment and let me know: Which stage of overwhelm do you most identify with?
