Burnout is not always visible

Throughout most of my corporate career I tended to be one of those first to arrive and last to leave the office sorts of people. I also had a young family to go home to - so self-care was non-existent (beyond an occasional bubble bath). I’ve had a history of ignoring my own self-care needs because I thought I could do it all, and mistakenly prioritised myself too low on the list.

About 7 years ago (about 3 years before this photo) - I was working full time, my kids were finishing school and I was invested in visiting my father 550km away every few weeks as he was declining rapidly with Alzheimer's. I still hadn’t fully healed or processed the loss of my younger brother, my son was acting out, my relationship with my husband was suffering and I was losing my motivation for work for the first real time in my career.

I was surviving on stress produced cortisol and adrenalin and had been for a LONG time.

I hit a point where I was overwhelmed and burning out and still not taking care of myself. When I realised I’d fallen out of love with both my hubby and my work I realised I had a problem and on reflection - I was in this state for far too long before I started to address the imbalance and put self-care strategies in place.

Burnout affects ALL areas of your life.

When you force yourself to work through your exhaustion, you will burn out; and your work, your quality of life and your relationships will start to suffer. And you also lay the foundation for health problems (like cancer, heart disease and other neurological problems) to take hold, even though they might take a couple more years to really impact you.

It is now November and this means the end of the year is coming.

However for many people - particularly parents - this doesn't mean life is slowing down or a time to start easing up. It actually starts speeding up. There are end of school events to be scheduled and attended, there are friend and family events to both attend and plan for, there are work projects that must be completed before taking that time off. In addition to completing every other daily task that adds to the load of overwhelm.

This is the danger zone.

It's time to take care of your mental, physical and emotional health, especially if you have any of these thoughts playing in your subconscious:
• “I can’t remember the last time I had a good night’s sleep.”
• “I give in to others because it makes me feel needed, important and worthy.”
• “When I’m overwhelmed, tired or stressed, I rarely think to ask for help.”
• “I often feel like I’m living my life for everyone else.”
• “I hate disappointing people.”

Now is the time to incorporate weekly, if not DAILY, blocks of time to help you replenish and recover so that you can get through the last leg of the year and not crash in a heap.

Now is the time to look at your routines and tasks both at home and at work and shed all the bits that are unnecessary, are time consuming 'nice to haves' or are adding to your load.

There are heaps of Self-Care resources available, but if you need a hand to tie it all together and come up with a self-care plan that is individualised to you - I have a great resource you can download.