BY JENNIFER HANKIN, MUSICIAN AND VISUAL ARTIST
I want to talk about burnout. Specifically, when you have to work through burnout. Unfortunately, it’s pertinent to my mental state at the moment and has been, on-and-off, for many years.
To me, burnout feels like molasses. It’s an all-encompassing feeling that makes me feel physically and mentally slow and gluggy.
The pit of anxiety and overwhelm likes to rear its ugly head. And I tend to become withdrawn, irritable, and flitter between too much and too little sleep.
For those who have experienced burnout before, this may sound really familiar (that being said, your feelings and symptoms may be different).
If I worked a normal job? To cure these feelings, I would take a few days off to de-stress, cut down on my commitments, and focus on doing things I enjoy.
However, this becomes twisted when big parts of your job already make you feel good and help you de-stress.
For example, I find the pre-gig responsibilities and post-gig aftermath pretty stressful sometimes. But the act of playing a good gig takes away the bad feels like nothing else. I also rely on the gig for income, further complicating the situation.
More often than not, this leads me to working through my burnout. I know it’s not healthy, and that it probably keeps the sads around for longer. But the alternative for me, which is immediately cutting back on creative projects, is far scarier.
There have been periods of burnout that have ended in spouts of depression, during which I’ve been unable to work to even 50 per cent capacity for (seemingly) endless months. It’s almost like once I loose the momentum, it’s 200 per cent harder to return to my fullest productive self.
Over the past two years, I’ve experienced a couple of periods of burnout that I’ve worked my way through, without slowing down. As such, I’ve developed a couple of coping mechanisms. My favourites are:
1. The brain dump.
This is basically a to-do list, but it also includes human things such as ‘take some time out’; ‘don’t forget to breath’; and ‘you don’t need to worry/panic’. For these lists, I also assign different tasks to different days so I don’t feel like the full list is one day’s work.
2. Talking to friends and making last-minute plans.
I cannot stress enough how important friends are. I’ve recently reconnected with my closest buddies, and found some amazing new friends after a really awful breakup earlier this year. Without these people to hang with, I would find myself staying in and wallowing much more frequently.
3. Making a conscious effort not to beat myself up about productivity.
This has been my only New Year’s resolution, and I’ve been doing pretty well at it. One of my mantras has become ‘you can only get what you have done today, done today’. Whenever I feel myself slipping into work-guilt I say this, either in my head or out-loud. While it doesn’t immediately solve the issue, it does help to calm my brain and make the feelings less strong, and easier to work through.
Along the same vein, every time I do a thing that’s not ‘feel sad’ and ‘watch YouTube’, I give myself a proverbial pat on the back. Whatever I’m trying to do may be small and insignificant, but the fact I did it feeling like this is an absolute miracle.
4. I try to remember this feeling isn’t forever.
This helps to keep the burnout sads from becoming existential (which is a whole other layer of weird).
I’d like to conclude with something positive, but it’s hard for me to think positively when I’m stuck smack-bang in the middle of burnout. Every time I ‘recover’ from burnout, I tell myself ‘this is the last time’. But it never is.
I suppose I’m scared that this cyclical feeling will continue my whole life. I’m also scared that one day the feeling will just swallow me whole. That being said, I see so many people who are older than me, functioning like humans should. I’m sure they’ve all been through periods like this, and look at them!
Mental health. It’s certainly a thing.
If you would like to connect with someone about your mental health, we’d recommend visiting the headspace or beyondblue websites.
Support Jennifer when she performs at the Newcastle Music Festival this 17 August. Jennifer’s story is published on her artist website The Emerald Ruby.
Disclaimer: This blog is a personal story and should not be considered medical advice.
Images supplied.
