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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The darker side of romance

Image
  For some reason I felt compelled to write about a corner of my past that hasn't been part of my blog before. a heads up to anyone who might be upset by this topic I will be delving into emotional abuse so feel free to stop reading now if you don't feel able to carry on. When I was in my late 20's I met a guy on a night out. He was a few years younger than me and honestly looking back threw up a couple of red flags early but I didn't trust my own intuition plus I was only a few months away from finishing college and planned to move to Edinburgh in a few months so it wasn't like it was going to be anything more than a brief fling. However as time went on I became more infatuated with him, there was an intensity there and he seemed sweet but damaged. Like a perfect modern fairytale I thought I would be the one to fix him. somehow plans changed and he was going to follow me over to Edinburgh, get a job there and we were going to live happily ever after. at this point
Read more

Help, I think I'm autistic

Image
 So I, at the age of 41, have come to the realization that I am autistic.  Growing up I always had a feeling something about me was a little bit off. I never quite fit in and I wasn't sure why. It was like everyone had been given a book of rules of how to exist in society but no one had thought to hand me a copy. Looking back with hindsight the signs were there. I was a super sensitive kid, a sensitivity I have not lost in adulthood, I cried very easily and felt every emotion very deeply. I was a picky eater and very particular about the textures of different food. I was very sensitive to light and noise and the feel of different fabrics. I was never a hugger. all of these things are as true about me now as they were when I was younger. I am socially awkward, I don't make friends that easily and will joke I am an acquired taste. Eye contact is something I have to actively work on and small talk feels like torture.  I thrive on alone time, I am incredibly sensitive to the moods
Read more

Sometimes I open my mouth and my mother comes out ..

Image
I have been told on more than one occasion that I'm sarcastic. Often that I'm too sarcastic (as though there could be such a thing) and I have retort up my sleeve for such occasions which is if you think I'm sarcastic you should meet my mother. No, really you should because my sarcasm is but a pale imitation of hers. Every so often though I come out without something that makes my friends or other family members pause because sometimes when I open my mouth, my mother comes out.  It's funny how people always take the words you are turning into your mother as such an insult because the reality of the matter is it's a both a good and bad thing. Obviously there are certain qualities I am perfectly happy to emulate and others not so much and on the whole I am not entirely sure how much control I have over it. It's not quite a pick and mix counter here. I think there are some habits you are not even aware you have picked up until someone else kindly points it out.
Read more