Embracing Burnout: A Journey to Self-Care

I wanted to take a moment to share something important I’ve learned the past 4 or so months. People often think once you hit all those “firsts” and a year goes by, you start to come out of grief. That is one of the most detrimental and devastating lies we tell as a society. The fact is once that year hits, you start to come out of the survival mode fog and the reality that life has forever changed becomes glaringly clear. A year after my husband had passed, I was burnt out, suffering, depressed and telling myself that if I laid on the couch longer, if I cut out extra work, if I slept more, if I stopped doing hard things I would at some point get my energy back. I told myself I needed to rest and I couldn’t keep up with life anymore. Rest was my priority.. but it wasn’t helping me. Now, while lounging more, cuddling up and resting  can be important during some stages and we do need to wallow in our feelings “feel to heal” so to speak, it doesn’t work forever, or honestly, for very long at all. I reached a space where they definitely didn’t do much to help me feel better, and were creating a hard cycle in which I dreaded getting out of bed, and crawled back into it every chance I got. Life was not being lived, healing also wasn’t happening.

It’s easy to think that treating burnout means doing less, and in someways I think that can be true, but for me, at least as I see it now it’s about doing MORE. More for myself.

I have started prioritizing nourishing meals that fuel my body and soul again after a year of widow casseroles and whatever I could do with minimal energy and thought. It took me exactly 2 days to realize that the more effort I put into feeding myself well, the more alive I actually felt…. Even with the sugar withdrawal headaches rolling in. Cooking has now once again became a form of meditation, a way to express love for myself and my family again. I am still a busy mom but I am surrounding myself with fresh ingredients, and making the time to eat proper meals more often. I’m literally feeding my life and providing myself with energy.

But this has just been the starting point. Once I started my new meal plan, I realized I needed to be an active participant in my own recovery, no one was going to take care of me, it was 100% up to me to make myself feel good. So now I dedicate quality time to myself again. Time that isn’t laying in bed hoping I’ll wake up feeling better. I started listening to uplifting audiobooks again. I also decided to leave my house and get out into the world a bit more, with a goal to genuinely compliment one person every time I left the house. Caring for others, showing kindness gives that REAL dopamine that endless scrolling cannot replicate I promise you. I dove back into my meditation practices, and it truly has had the biggest impact on my daily mood and overall mental health… and by that I mean I started slow with guided meditations because let’s be real, my soul was exhausted and I didn’t feel like being left alone with my thoughts, but it felt good to follow someone else’s suggestions and talk positively to my mind. I’m just now able to work on some mindfulness on my own again.

Let me reiterate this has been a slow process I didn’t just wake up and snap out of it. I started by trying to pay more attention to how I was feeding myself, I talked to people as even decided to see a pharmacist about some vitamin supplementing. Then I slowly started stacking things on little by little. Just the last few weeks I’ve started purposely enjoying doing my skin care daily (mostly) and trying to stack that onto my daily habits of taking good care of myself. (Not so fun fact, turns out if you cry enough you can literally wreck the top few layers of your skin and burst all the capillaries on your cheeks so that they feel awful and dry and could yes, use some help taking care of. I mean it when I say the act of getting yourself better takes some work because neglect just makes things worse). That’s what I was doing.. I was neglecting my actual needs while thinking I was allowing myself time to heal. Doesn’t that sound backwards?

I have also began setting boundaries that protect the little energy I am building back up. It’s okay to say no! I may not be up for big gatherings, weddings or events, or even sometimes a phone call, (sorry little brother for hitting decline on one to many video chats just to text you back “I can’t right now” ). However, I no longer go a day without breathing in some fresh air. I have surrounded myself with the people who encourage me and let a lot of relationships go.

Another big part of that was putting away the phone. My screen time on my phone was getting ridiculously high. So I turned off all the little dot notifications on my phone, I reorganized the Home Screen to take all the socials off it. And after a few weeks I even set limits on apps and have zero screen time an hour if not two after I wake up. I also put the phone away once the kids are home from school and try and leave it away as much as I can unless I have to manage their appointments or check in with their teachers etc. I find the less time I spend starting at the screen or getting lost in the endless updates of the world the better my day goes. I now try to dedicate specific screen time a nd on my computer if I can into things that teach me, TRULY connect me or help grow my business. Other than that, the scrolling is something I try not to mindlessly do. It’s harder than I care to admit. It’s also more worth it than it’s not.

Perhaps the most important thing I needed to remember is that self-care takes intention and follow through. I find that often we think, if we just give people time, if we let them rest, they will be okay. Let’s get a spa day, take a weekend off and we will feel better right? Wrong. I mean those things are nice, but they aren’t a cure. At least when true high stress/ burnout level exhausted is involved. If you are booking massages, reiki sessions, yoga classes for an additional weekly support they are amazing tools. When utilized as a one size fixes all approach you will fail 100% of the time and as a practitioner I will stand by that. I don’t discredit the effectiveness of the practices, obviously I believe in them deeply, but the intention should always be as PART of your self care, not the entire plan. Not to mention burnout is not something you are going to snap out of. You have to slowly work your way out of it with consistent care and attention.

We need to realize that self-care truly means caring for yourself every single day, and caring for yourself means taking steady, continuous action. It won’t look the same for everyone but I assure you no amount of sleep, or hot baths are going to break you out of a cycle of stress, burnout and depression. Small daily acts, manageable routines, tangible tools/ practices, and a fierce set of boundaries are just some of the ways I am learning to TRULY support my wellbeing. How are you going to start supporting yours?