How do I recover from burnout?
I just got the official notice from my boss that I've been let go due to performance reasons. This wasn't a surprise to either of us at this point, as I'd been struggling to improve without sufficient improvement for a while up to this point. Can't really even blame my boss, as she really did try to gently help me get back on track over the last year. I think the likely culprit has been burnout all along -- I've been feeling like a fly stuck to fly paper for months at this point. Before getting fired I got some burnout leave started with my GP (it's not super hard to get medical leave for burnout here in Germany) but I initiated the process too late for it to make a difference for this job.
Luckily between my severance pay and eventually unemployment benefits, I'm not in any financial risk due to this change (advantages of moving to a country with a real social safety net). I can even get some free job training courses paid for by the state while I'm on unemployment. But between now and when that sort of thing starts, I'm wondering whether I should do something specific to help myself rest and recover from burnout. I'm planning on going back to therapy and talking to a professional about this, of course, but I'm curious whether anyone else here on Tildes has advice for how to recover from burnout other than just "take time off", since I've got that bit covered.
I’ve taken to very deliberately blocking time out in my calendar that is specifically called Recovery Time. I make sure that I’m not going out, and I don’t do any kind of housework or adult-responsibility-based activity (beyond the reasonable minimum). So if I spot that I have plans 3 out of 4 weekends, I’ll block out the 4th one for personal time and say no to whatever comes my way.
Beyond that, I find that taking inventory of how I’m spending my time, and the routines/habits/systems I am in, and reevaluating their usefulness to be really helpful. What assumptions am I holding on to that might have been useful for my past self, but aren’t any more? Why am I working/playing/living in a given way that is so counter conducive to my burnout? What things can I specifically change or shake up to try and jolt myself back into a healthier state? etc.
I think part of what contributes to my sense of burnout is a feeling of a lack of control. And for me, letting go of things that I don’t need to have/do and focusing more on the ones that I do need to have/do helps me recover faster. I tend to stop half-arsing so many different things and just whole-arse a much smaller number. So far so good, and it’s good for me to be in the habit of constantly tinkering with my life.
Oh, this part definitely speaks to me. Thanks for the advice. I haven't actually gotten much of anything done outside of work for a while now, my schedule was badically just work or veg out recovering from what little work I did. So I think whole-assing a few things during this time is a good idea.
I'm not sure I ever really recovered from burnout, so take this with a grain of salt, but my succint recommendation is to do other things, even if it's things you want to do rather than just things you have to do. It's not necessarily about time off or where you are. You can cook your own food, because that's definitely a new thing that is under your control, or you can do all sorts of other things you may never even have imagined. Don't rush back to the same line of work. I've been working on a programming project but it took me years to be able to do it for more than a few days without becoming panicked and frustrated (and there's still a bit of that), so don't be discouraged if things move slower than you expected.
This is orderly and excellent wisdom.
As someone less organized, I tried an approach like this with some useful results. I also found that I benefited from a... let's call it "messier" approach:
Burnout is trauma, plain and simple. Trauma is complex. Deconstructing it is challenging.
Psychedelics.
I found that they helped me explore that trauma differently. Yes, occasionally, it was terrifying. Yet even those "bad trips" were educational. In ways, it's like dreaming but where the trips tend to have clearly deep significance that, on reflection, can lead to catharsis.
The two combined were a powerhouse of healing. It felt as though I made many years of progress in less than a year.
I'm not sure I can agree with that - or at least not without broadening the definition of trauma until it's not particularly useful anymore. Even just going by the Wikipedia pages, trauma is "...an emotional response caused by severe distressing events that are outside the normal range of human experiences," while burnout is "...an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed."
That's....basically how mental breakdowns and PTSD occur. UN-managed stress. Sometimes from one-off events, but also from perpetual unrelenting stress. If you've been gaslighted by an abusive spouse for years, when you finally leave them, odds are you will have a trauma response to somebody gaslighting you.
My therapist has told me one of the key distinguishing factors between an anxiety attack and a trauma response is that anxiety attacks generally do not have a triggering event.
Burnout absolutely manifests itself as a trauma response against work-related activities. But I will be sure to ask my therapist the next time we meet, to try to get a better understanding (he keeps on top of the latest research in a way us techies follow tooling updates).
Just because it's incredibly common (aparently 42% of the workforce) , doesn't mean it's normal for the human condition. It means the workplaces are overly stressful and somewhat incompatible with normal human functioning.
And while I'd say it's not "the same", there are definitely overlaps
I take your point that the workplace is often not suited for the human condition.
If we consider anxiety a trauma response, then I suppose by definition there's overlap with certain cases of burnout. I have to wonder if that's a useful conflation, though. Trauma and burnout are different conditions, treated differently. Even the link you posted about overlaps (which was interesting, thanks) mostly talked about the differences. There's even an anecdote in there about a doctor who clearly was dealing with trauma and not burnout.
Your example of someone who suffered spousal abuse illustrates the differences more than the similarities, to me. Yes, both that and burnout can result in anxiety... but it seems self-evident that that's about all they have in common.
Huge disagreement here.
Like other mental health things, you can be doing everything right and still burn out. Burning out is not a failure, and not burning out wouldn’t mean “successfully managed”
since you asked specifically about other than taking time off
How's your diet recently? Those meal prep box things are more expensive than doing your own shopping, but if you're stuck in a rut and you've only been eating the same types of meals, give them a shot for just variety's sake. After that, eat well for the nutrition, and cook for the mental stimulation.
It's become trite to say go touch grass, but I'm suggesting you make actionable goals outdoors: Today I'm going to find two kinds of fungi. Today I'm going to draw a kind of bug I found outside. Today I'm going to look up what kind of shrub this is on iNaturalist or something. How many segments on their how many legs? How do water roll off of them? What's the texture of each of their parts? Can you draw them from memory or describe them in a short haiku or take macro photographs of them? Watch one critter/organism for a good half hour or more. Really take the time to see how literally every other type of organism than humans on the planet spend their time today. They chill. They work on their tiny things. They just exist, and it's okay.
Spend time with human beings you like. Spend time sitting at the mall food court observing them. If you want to watch some Dropout.tv with me let me know in a PM.
When ready in a couple months. Way too fresh right now. How are other human beings in your community who don't work / can't work spend their time and find value? How do we add value to the lives of others, instead of adding value to [expletives] shareholders?
Pretty much all of this is stuff I definitely haven't been doing well enough on for a long time -- I have social anxiety and that combined with working from home, plenty of cash, and delivery services? Suffice it to say I've been eating takeout almost every night and not leaving the house for weeks at a time. So yeah, this advice is stuff where it probably should be obvious that it's stuff I should be doing, but sometimes you just need someone to tell you to do it, y'know? Framing it as being part of recovering might help give me more motivation for it.
I see that you mentioned not leaving the house for some long stints there. While work could be a trigger leading you to do that, I would consider exploring other reasons that enable work to have that effect on you. I say this because I don't think that's a typical manifestation of burnout and to me, a non expert in anything relevant, this suggests something like anxiety or depression that could be treated.
Oh yeah not leaving the house enough has been a problem due to a combination of my social anxiety and ADHD for way longer, I just think burnout exacerbated it. It's a rut that my personality is particularly suited for, it seems.
Back in 2019, when I was still doing my master's, my therapist at the time and I were focusing on getting me out of the house more, doing things like going to cafés and coworking spaces. You can probably guess what put a stop to that plan. I'm seeing a different therapist now, so I should bring this up with her.
Glad to hear it's something you've made some progress on. I work remote too and have a variety of thoughts on its detrimental effects on my anxiety when outside. One example is how often I encounter people with social skills that are lightyears ahead of mine which makes it hard to even keep up. Another is how distracted I am by things like people walking by or new noises. Nonetheless, it's an overall huge boon for my happiness and well-being.
I've also had ambitions to work outside but unfortunately it's just impractical most of the time. It takes time, makes calls difficult, and is super inefficient for work that benefits from large monitors like spreadsheets. With some strategic prioritization, I suppose one could create a day of the week where the workload is cafe friendly. Like you, any amount of work stress would completely eliminate my desire to try this.
Fortunately, I feel like job searching has many sub tasks that can be done casually in a variety of environments. It could even be good mental preparation for when you land a job and want to work outside.
Towards the end of my last job I mostly worked while lying on the couch, which isn't much different productivity-wise from working in a café with internet and outlets available. But I also may look for hybrid roles when I start applying for new jobs, to try and strike a better balance when it comes to leaving the house.
You can come back and tell me about these small things if you want.
:) yesterday, in the garden, there were some of these very small tiny little floating buggies that are a soft glowing blue dot. If they land on you you can see they have a little soft pale blue fuzzy bum and tiny wings. They're like little fairy lights and I only ever see them once or twice a year around this time. They're apparently called blue fairy aphids.
I wonder what you'll find outside :)
100%. To add to this: sleep well too. I find that my mood and stress are hugely impacted by the amount of sleep I get. Especially if it's multiple nights in a row where I don't get enough sleep.
@chocobean already mentioned this but I think it's worth it's own top-level comment: volunteer and do something with meaning. I learned about this from a pretty decent podcast about work called WorkLife. In this episode I link below they talk about burnout. The punchline here was that the "antidote for burnout wasn't less work, but more meaning". Hence the solution for one of the guests/case study's on the podcast was a burnt-out teacher that started a volunteer weekend tutoring program.
https://www.ted.com/talks/worklife_with_adam_grant_burnout_is_everyone_s_problem?subtitle=en
I felt something very similar recently. I'm in a field I'm passionate about, but this job has lost all meaning this past year. I became demotivated and started falling behind. I was also thinking of volunteering earlier this year but unfortunately I have a language barrier that I have not yet overcome. After a lengthy job search I found a role that fits me even better and honestly the conditions couldn't be any better. The day after I signed, my mood instantly improved. At first I thought I should take a month or two off to take a break and reset, but honestly, I can't wait to start my next job. I'm actually already brainstorming the next potential projects just for fun.
This hits very close to home, as this is why I haven't looked into volunteering much. I hope I get as lucky as you!
During your time off I would strongly suggest you engage with intensive language learning. Grab a grammar book, download LingQ, sign up for intensive language courses (min 4hrs per week), and find a local speaking group. They’re often free and volunteer basis. You’ll find a community there for sure, and it will help you integrate.
not certain this is true in every state in the US, but in WA, unemployment benefits only last ?3? ?6? months, and that timer begins the day you're let go. If you burn through your severance for awhile and think you're gonna have unemployment to fall back on... you might not.
back to the burnout - taking 4 or 5 days and leaving the city I live in can be a huge recharge for me. Back in my single days, I'd just get in a car, pick a direction and start driving, figuring out where I was gonna sleep that night right about the time I'd had enough driving for the day. Something about breaking as many of my routines/ruts as possible for several days grants me new perspective upon my return. I can tell when its time to get back when I've found myself starting to make plans for what projects I'll engage in upon my return and have plans for the first day/week of return that I'm actually feeling some excitement about (whether its simply b/c I now find the projects exciting or I'm excited to no longer have those projects hanging over me).
I live in Germany, so unemployment works quite differently here. I get a month of "garden leave" where they're paying me but not asking me to work because they can't legally fire me without giving me that much notice (and while that meets the legal minimum, I've heard it's more common in Germany to have even longer notice periods). Afaik based on my age and how long I've paid into the pension system, once I register as unemployed, I get a maximum of 12 months of paid unemployment (which pays me 60% of my gross salary beforehand, minus some deductions for public health insurance and the like).
The severance is presumably to sweeten the pot so that I sign a termination agreement that means I technically quit, since I have to wait 3 months before I'm eligible for unemployment in that circumstance. They offered me 2 months' salary, after all, which is suspiciously just a bit more than 3 months of 60% salary. I'm going to try and get some advice from a lawyer on that part, though, just in case there's something unexpected lurking there.
I don't have a car, but I do have a public transport pass in a pretty damn big city, so just going out and doing something totally new somewhere I've never been is a good idea! I think breaking my routines is something I need right now.
If you want to be extreme about it, I learned from Jet Lag that Deutsche Bahn is unreliable, but when they eventually arrive you could probably safely take the train to locations in most of central and western continental Europe! There are a lot of cool unique cities in other countries within your reach.
Deutsche Bahn is definitely flawed lol, but compared to growing up in Ohio, I'm pretty well-connected! Even visiting other parts of Germany might be fun.
Somewhat off topic, but where in Germany are you? My wife and I recently moved to Mainz, and I have a mostly remote job in Berlin that I travel to once a month. The DB is... not perfect, but in the few times ive used it, ive gotten to my destination within a half hour of when the schedule says. We came from Fargo, so its leagues better than the Amtrak train that came through once a night at 2AM...
I'm in Berlin myself! Mainz to Berlin every month is a lot of train time, so you probably have more experience with Deutsche Bahn's quirks than I do! I've had some small delays and annoyances when I've used it, but nothing too awful. Being from the Midwest always helps give me perspective, since Amtrak may as well not exist compared to Deutsche Bahn on that front.