I had to take a break. I hated taking a break. My brain put me into a spiral of – you’re not producing; therefore, you have no value, thus you are failing to human, everyone hates you, it’s all your fault, you are a fraud – I love it when my brain lies to me (sarcasm).
I forced myself to rest. I reminded myself that my value is intrinsic. I have value because I exist. No one can take that away from me. So why am I so hard on myself?
I could blame my star placements. My big three is Leo, Virgo, Leo – which is a heady combination that leads to a tendency of being REALLY hard on myself.
I could blame it on my upbringing. The 90’s were a wild time of focusing on achievements instead of effort. It did not matter how hard you worked, unless you got that top grade, trophy, milestone, degree etc.
I could blame it on society and the late-stage capitalism that leads to that ridiculous outlook in my childhood (lets make factory workers by indoctrinating school children shall we?).
But blame does not solve anything. Bottom line, I must face the narrative and intrusive thoughts in my brain that have kept me paralyzed in apathy. But not really apathy, I still care about things, and I want to move forward but the executive dysfunction and the ‘what does it matter’ brain traps kept me stuck. Crystalized in a perpetual motion machine of wake, walk, eat, sleep, repeat.
Throw in wanting to listen to what my body and brain are telling me, with a journey of unmasking a lifetime, and you get a person who does not know the line between when to push through and when to rest. My husband often comments that it sounds exhausting being me – and I can’t argue with him on that.
I tried to do a group reading of “The Artists Way” to unlock my creativity – and found that it was impossible for me to move forward due to how it was impacting my mental health. I think I made it through week 3 of 12 before my therapist and I decided it was best to pause on that journey. I tried a different story telling journal and planner structure – which lasted a whole 2 weeks before that fell apart.
Nothing I did worked, everything I did sucked, and I stayed unmoving in the same place as I had been before. I had plans, dreams, and motivation- but no ability to move forward. So this blog has sat - languishing – half a year with no updates. I have sat questioning my self-worth and my validity as a mother, witch, house-spouse, and daughter. Not being able to engage in hobbies to the point that I questioned if I even enjoyed reading and research anymore (I do). I wondered if I was even a witch as I felt incapable of the simplest of candle spells.
My therapist and I decided to just wait it out. See if I found a way to move forward after some time had passed. To stop putting pressure on myself to “fix” the block I had in my creativity. Months went by, and I'd not moved forward, and I’d not moved back.
Then, slowly, I started being able to do some fiber crafts. An embroidery project that has sat un-started in my desk for a year. A little at a time while reels played in the background and progress started to be seen. It’s not done, but each time I sit and doom scroll a little more progress is made. It feels like an analogy for the last few months of my life.
Tiny, incremental stitches of progress moving forward. Each day not enough done to actually make anything – but looking at the progress from a lens of months you can see a distinct shape start to appear. I started to figure out that I was going through another cycle of burnout.
Something I had experienced in 2022 when I left the corporate world and thought I had recovered from. However, life is cyclical and as I started to work through the therapeutic process and deconstruct my life I ran into another bout of it. This time seemingly out of nowhere.
Upon reflection it appears it is due to unmasking the longest, most intricate, version of myself that was presented to the world to survive. The high achieving, always on stage, constantly moving version of me that is certainly a part of who I am but is not the whole picture. It is the mask I put on that says, “Please like me, I’m a neurotypical human too”. The problem is – I’m not neurotypical and that mask is very heavy. Of course, I would collapse once I finally set it down. It was a release that led to a much-needed rest.
So What Is Burnout?
Burnout seems to be a buzzword that has been floating around since 2020. It has existed for far longer than that, but the term became commonplace about 4 years ago.
The World Health Organization states that:
“Burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” (World Health Organization, 2019).
This is the definition most of us know and accept, but personally I find it to be a bit narrow. I don’t have a “workplace” any longer – so this definition feels like it it doesn't really fit – even though it does. While most of us recognize that stay at home spouses/parents work hard every day, the commonly accepted terminology of “workplace” is a job outside of the home. Being more inclusive in the language is something that we can work on as a society. Now- navigating away from the soap box, we can still resonate with the fact that burnout occurs due to stress not being managed successfully.
So what is stress?
“Stress is how our body responds to life events” (Harper, 2022)
This means that stress is in the body (physiological) and is a response to things that we perceive as important. We only stress about things that matter to us and if we have the resources in our body to manage that stress, we are fine. Once we run out of resources, we enter a state of distress. This is when we need those around us to support and help us because we can no longer continue by ourselves.
This is why we often define things as good stress (we have the resources) or bad stress (we don't have the resources). Doing something we enjoy can still be stressful. Think about it like this:
Say you love organizing big events such as parties, weddings, or charity functions. You enjoy the challenge of coordinating vendors, caterers, guests, decorators etc. However – at some point the number of events you are organizing simultaneously becomes overwhelming. You are exhausted because the social season has hit, and it feels like you don’t get a chance to rest between.
Every other day is another crisis to avert, another scheduling conflict to resolve, another party to host and clean up after. Soon enough you start to resent your work, or dread having to check your phone or e-mail. You’re tired all the time and something you once loved doing now seems like it is a burden. Your stress levels have been maintained long enough that your body has run out of the resources to manage it, you’ve hit a level of distress and now you are at risk for some major burnout.
This is an oversimplification – but it paints the picture that if you keep going for too long without replenishing your tank something you once loved doing can now become something that you never want to do again.
There are ways to mitigate that such as delegation, boundaries, breaks, and avoiding over scheduling but sometimes things happen outside of our control. Sometimes we need to keep pushing forward because rent is due, and the party industry only pays when you’re planning. It is not always up to us whether we hit that wall, and it’s not always possible to avoid it. We can only do what we can with what we have.
Now – if we replace the word parties with rituals or magical workings – you can see how this can tie into the craft. If you follow the moon cycles, or have a daily practice, you can find yourself running out of physiological resources. While many of these things may have a low energy output at the time – the planning, coordinating (with others or your personal schedule), organizing of items, finding and setting of intentions, and the execution can all add a level of stress and deplete your resources.
When you have the resources in your body, it can be good stress and help you feel accomplished. When you are already depleted, it can become distressing. Not only that, if your schedule gets away from you and you miss the full moon, or you miss the most recent celestial celebration, you may become upset with yourself and further move into distress.
It is possible to spiral and feel like you are not taking your practice seriously. Or perhaps you begin to feel disconnected and as though you no longer belong in the community. It can be even more painful if you are coordinating these celebrations with others, and you push through your exhaustion because you don’t want to let the group down. Your journey is personal, but these are all scenarios I have faced in my time doing witchcraft. Something that I love, and brings great value into my life, can also be distressing when my body runs out of resources to manage it.
This has nothing to do with whether we are good people. It has nothing to do with our competency in our mundane or magical lives. This simply is a case of finite resources and a need to prioritize. Sometimes you just have to focus on the dishes, and the new moon celebration can’t happen that month. Other times you set down your blog for 6 months in order to process deep rooted pain from your past which takes all of your time and effort to sort through. It happens! It’s important to see ourselves as one big whole, and not just the labels that we assign ourselves.
What we can do is learn how to recognize the signs and give ourselves the permission and grace we need to rest. Looking at what we do during the day, re-assessing our time commitments and our boundaries and becoming decisive on what we will be doing, and what we will not be doing can help. It will, at least provide a sense of control over a situation that may simply not be up to us. If I decide that I’m not going to do my daily practice until life calms down, it feels much better than saying I will do my practice daily, and then not being able to. When I decided to take a break from the blog, instead of trying and failing to write, I allowed myself to breathe and focus on the processing I was doing. I set myself up for success by making happenstance a choice.
I will close this psychological dive into burnout by repeating the most important part of this post. You have value because you exist. Period. I am glad you exist, even if we never meet or speak to each other, the world is a much more magical place with you in it.
References
Harper, D. F. (2022). Unf#ck Your Burnout: How to Survive Your Overwhelming LIfe. Portland: Microcosm Publishing .
World Health Organization. (2019, May 28). Burn-out an "occupational phenomenon": International Classification of Diseases. Retrieved from World Health Organization: https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases