Burnout: the sequel

 

I am burnt out. Hardly the most shocking declaration given I have been saying it out loud for a while now but here we are. This isn't my first run in with burn out nor will it likely be my last. Not only am I working in a stressful job, a social care worker in residential care, which is no stranger to burn out but also I am autistic so its like I know a secret short cut to getting there. I think as bragging goes this is up there with declaring how many times I have managed to catch covid. Which is 4 at my current count and they say there are no benefits to working in Health care.

If you are lucky enough to not have experienced burnout then I can tell you its not an experience I would recommend to a friend. If you have friends working in social care then you probably wont need to. 

Some of the things I have been experiencing are random bouts of crying. Given high sensitivity is part of my autism profile, I am no stranger to crying and the first time I experienced burnout it took me a while to make the connection between the fact that I was crying excessively and my job. This probably says more about me than anything. Anyway it turns out the normal amount of crying to do at work and immediately after you come off shift is none. I am exceeding expectations in this regard. Feeling overwhelmed and bursting into tears over something small has been a common experience for me over the last few months but I am doing my best to hold it together. I am also crying fairly regular off the clock. Ideally I'd prefer not to as it really is letting capitalism win but this matter is out of my control.

The compassion fatigue and generally not caring about my job in the way that I should. When you are burnt out it is hard to care about things in the same way that you used to. You feel that you have given everything you have to the job and there's nothing left for you. This doesn't mean I have turned into some uncaring auto maton at work but I am definitely not giving it my best, barely going above, never mind beyond.

Not being able to switch off. I think I sometimes spend more time thinking about work and worrying about it than I do anything else in my life right now. This is not a conscious choice. I don't pick where to focus my anxiety. I can spend a lot of time after work worrying about things I didn't get done, that might happen soon or that may not get done in my absence. Its neverending and its exhausting.

There is also the feeling of just being in survival mode. I am constantly feeling if I can just get through these next few days it will be ok and then repeat over and over. This makes discussion about much further into the future intensely stressful. I don't know about six months time, I am literally just trying to make it until the end of the week.

Also in this work setting my autistic brain is constantly in overdrive, overwhelmed and overstimulated and this means I almost never get a good nights sleep after I come off work and when I work two days back to back then the second one has me exhausted almost crawling through the day.
A lot of my free time is spent recovering from work and I have even less desire than usual to socialise.

Also constantly explaining that I am in fact still burnt out is almost as exhausting as the burnout itself and herein lies the crux of the issue. It is impossible to heal in the environment that hurt you so long as I remain where I am career wise, I will stay burnout and also its incredibly challenging to form some sort of future plan when you are stuck in survival mode.

The future from here looks uncertain but I am slowly forming a short term plan to ease some of the pressure and I have reached out to someone who specialises in career guidance to see if I can get some help on where to go next.
I can only hope it gets better from here.

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