Ask The Flytrap: Will Burnout Fuck Me Up Forever?
Everything is on fire everywhere all the time. I'm worried it will cost me the job I love.
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Let's get into it:
Dear Ask The Flytrap:
Like many people, I am supremely burned out. I’m noticing it most at work where I am, for lack of a better word, just STUPID. Simple instructions don’t parse. Complex problem solving just causes me to BSOD. I hate it. I KNOW I am better than this. Plus I am worried I will fuck up so bad I get fired and I love this job.
Any advice?
Burned Out in Baltimore
Hello, Burned Out in Baltimore! Thanks for being the first-ever Ask The Flytrap letter-writer. I have some thoughts.
It's been a long time since I heard "BSOD," so thanks for giving me a real elder-millennial throwback chuckle. Put that on your resumé, regardless of whether you lose a job you love for the unspeakable crime of being an eminently normal-ass person trying to survive burnout in this hellscape.
Because for real, though: You're asking about burnout in general, but on my read, the question implicit in your last line about work is both urgent and actionable. You're worried you're gonna get canned. From a job you love. For no reason other than: Everything is on goddamned fire, apart from which you would be pretty good at your gig, I expect. Right? Like, if you hated your job and didn't give a fuck and could get some other job easily, you wouldn't be ~ Asking The Flytrap ~ even if you were burnt out. I mean, you might still feel burnt-out and fucked-up, but the implicit question of maintaining this particular employment probably wouldn't have sneaked its sneaky little way in.
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I see two paths to pursue here. One is more difficult than the other, so let's start with the easy one: addressing your fears about fucking up so bad you lose your job. Maybe this is simplistic, even obvious: Do you know how you're doing at work, according to the people who make such determinations? Have they signaled that they feel you're not giving your usual effort, or delivering your usual ... uh, deliverables? I think you can and should find out the answer to this.
If your workplace has an apparatus for exploring your performance these days in a check-in with a higher-up type, I encourage you to straight-up ask! It doesn't have to be "Hey I'm bonkers and the worst, tell me how bad I am?" It can be: "I'm working on my usual, but I want to make sure you're happy with my [things]." No need to get into the details of BSOD brain; lord knows disclosing even the barest mental health ish at work can be a minefield. But you can and should absolutely get clarity on how your performance is being perceived, and that's an entirely normal thing to ask at work! Even if you've never asked before, or never had to ask before: "Is there anything I can change or improve?" (If they think it's weird, say you're doing a new ~ productivity journaling ~ project or some shit. The project can be "Trying not to spin out forever until my own gravestone hits me in the goddamned face." They don't need to know!)
The answer might be "You're doing great." Get that shit in writing! Refer to it when the anxiety brain starts spinning out about getting fired. Or the answer might be, "Actually, we've noticed a couple of things you can improve on." Get that shit in writing, too! Either way, you'll have concrete tasks to tackle—either maintaining your current level, or working on those improvements. I suspect having such concrete tasks will help settle the BSOD brain and offer you opportunities to focus on real outcomes that are at least a little bit under your control.
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Because woof the worry-brain can be such a problem. You see every ball you dropped, but maybe your boss and your colleagues only see you juggling, and think you're the Circus Mayor! Or they think, "Ok, they're a decent juggler, could be better, but we don't hate it." If you ask, you'll at least know what you might be able to change or improve. But if you keep beating yourself up with worry over your BSOD-brain's worst-case anxieties, you're for sure in for a bad time whether you get canned or not. That kind of anxiety—fueled by imagination rather than hard data—is the fucking worst-worst, and could legit become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Better to have information that says "Yeah, we could do with more/better XYZ," than spend your time imagining an entire alphabet of ways in which you've screwed up that your colleagues hadn't yet even conceived of.
The more difficult task is, of course, addressing the burnout BSOD brain itself. How do you take care of yourself—a person who is good at their job, who loves their job—amid the world's fuckery, such that you can keep being the talented, thoughtful colleague you surely are? More importantly, how do you maintain your sense of self outside of who you are at work? Because that person matters a whole hell of a lot, even though the capitalist hellscape would have us believe they don't.
You already know what makes you feel stupid; I bet you also know what makes you feel like your smart-self, even if that stuff feels far away or undoable right now. Can you pursue those things, even in small doses, with curiosity and generosity toward yourself? Not with an eye toward "must fix myself now or else I'll have failed at that, too" but with real openness toward just giving it a try and seeing what happens.
Some ideas: Make coffee dates or Facewine appointments with your beloved people. Throw your phone into a pile of pillows and do a puzzle instead of scrolling. Go to the playground before the kids get there and kick dirt at that asshole teeter-totter horse-thing. Do shit that requires NONE BRAIN. Hell, fuckin' finger-paint some ugly-ass nonsense and toss it in the recycling after a minute. Take a long goddamned shower, on purpose. Do it again and again. Hot this time, cold another time. Surprise yourself. Experiment.
You are doing your best. You wouldn't be worried about any of this if you weren't.
I also have some recommended reading, if that's your thing: Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle is one of the best books I've come across for really, truly figuring out how to love yourself and live through a burnout period. (Largely because it has a ton of interesting, evidence-based info about brains and burnout, and also doesn't just advocate for, like, "just take up running" or some such facile nonsense.)
Most of all, try to be kind to yourself. I know that's easier said than done, and I hate that phrase because I don't actually think "done" matters. Fuck "done." When are any of us gonna be "done" with laundry and dishes and cleaning the bathroom and picking up the dog poop and making dinner and and and and and? Never-the-fuck-ever. The pressure of that shit is always a straight shot to BSOD, under the best of circumstances.
None of that will fix the world, and it won't fix you either. But that's because the world is broken, and you, emphatically, are not. You are merely trying to operate. You are doing your best. You wouldn't be worried about any of this if you weren't. You are having a normal, reasonable reaction to fuckery. Your brain-BSOD isn't any weirder or wronger than a computer blipping out when the OS or coding or what-have-you isn't immediately able to operate smoothly under circumstances it wasn't built to experience.
You wouldn't bang on a keyboard at random and expect the BSOD to resolve; don't do the same thing to yourself.
— Andrea
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