What if your burnout was the biggest gift of your life? Your body, your heart and your Soul calling you home. Back home to yourself. To a life that feeds you and nourishes you. A life that feels like yours. A place that feels gentle and connected, creative and joyful.
A different pace and rhythm. One with more ease and flow and peace.
Burnout is the most beautiful way that your body tries to get your attention in order to wake you up. It’s your body’s way of yelling at you to STOP. That what you’re doing is the opposite of what you’re really longing for.
And what if there was a really easy, gentle way to answer this call and find your way back to yourself? That instead of struggling, beating yourself up and feeling awful, you could just relax and surrender and let your body’s Infinite Wisdom guide you back to a healthier, happier and more vibrant way of living.
In this blog I’d love to share my experience from almost two decades of helping people come back home to their true selves. Turning their biggest challenges into their greatest gifts. I want to help you to understand…
what burnout is
how to know if you’re suffering with burnout
how to know if your burnout is a deeper calling from your body, heart and Soul
how to answer that call and turn your burnout into a real blessing
how to get the help you really need
What is Burnout?
If you’re waking up feeling totally exhausted, wondering why you should even bother with work, Zoom meetings are doing your head in, you feel totally trapped in this awful malaise of feeling helpless, hopeless and like a total failure and you keep wondering “what is the point of my life?”, then chances are high that you’re struggling with burnout.
“Burnout is a reaction to prolonged or chronic job stress and is characterized by three main dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism (less identification with your job), and feelings of reduced professional ability.”
Simply put, if you feel totally exhausted, start hating your job and resenting work, feel less capable of actually doing your job effectively, then you're showing signs of burnout.
If you feel crippling self-doubt coupled with inner conflict and anguish at the thought of having to complete the simplest work task, then you're showing signs of burnout.
If you feel like your self-confidence has been shredded and you wake up with a feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach, then you're showing signs of burnout.
Burnout is totally terrifying and horribly depressing in equal measure.
But...the deeper truth is that burnout is actually a beautiful way that your body uses to get your attention. To tell you that something is not right. And that things need to change.
The key is to know how to listen and then understand what really needs to be solved. Think 'deeper cause' and not just the 'symptoms'.
How can I tell if I have burnout?
Researchers have developed a very simple way for you to self-assess your burnout. It's called the Burnout Measure. It is not a replacement for a medical diagnosis but just a simple benchmarking tool to help you gauge if you have burnout and how bad it might be.
The Burnout Measure (BM; Pines & Aronson, 1988) includes 21 items, evaluated on 7-point frequency scales, assessing the level of an individual's physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion. In this blog post, a shorter, 10-item version of the BM (BMS) is described that was developed in response to the needs of researchers and practitioners for an easy-to-use instrument requiring less questionnaire space and less time for administration and scoring. **
The Burnout Measure (BM)
For each of the below, answer the question, “When you think of your work overall, how often do you feel the following?”.
Your response should be a number between 1 and 7, with 1 being “never,” 4 being “sometimes,” and 7 being “always.”
Tired ___ Disappointed with people ___ Hopeless ____ Trapped ___ Helpless ___ Depressed ___ Physically weak/sickly ___ Worthless/like a failure ___ Difficulties sleeping ___ “I’ve had it” ___
In order to calculate your burnout score, add up your answers and divide by 10.
a score up to 2.4 indicates a very low level of burnout
a score between 2.5 and 3.5 indicates danger signs of burnout
a score between 3.5 and 4.4 indicates burnout
a score between 4.5 and 5.4 indicates a very serious problem of burnout
a score of 5.5 requires immediate professional help
Do this now. Take a moment to take the test to see where you are on the scale. This will make the rest of the article far more meaningful and help you to recognise if you need support.
How did you do? How are you feeling about what came up for you?
Is your burnout a deeper calling?
Another way to look at burnout is like water dripping into a barrel. Years and years of stress, trauma, emotional suppression and busyness is like water slowly dripping into a barrel. You simply get to a point where the barrel is full. Where just a single drop more water will cause it to overflow.
If you catch yourself thinking “but 3 years ago I could’ve easily managed this, why am I overreacting to the smallest things?”, then this is a clear indication that the barrel is full. It’s time to empty some water out.
And the wonderful thing about bodies is that they will always choose healing. Always. Every single time. You simply have to give them the best circumstances to do their job.
If you cut yourself, the body will bleed and then simply go about the process of healing. Your body doesn’t say, “sorry, Tuesday at 3pm I’ll get to this”. It just gets on with it. This incredible Innate Intelligence takes over and gets on with the job without you needing to even think about it.
This same Wisdom and Intelligence is available to help us heal our emotions. It’s just a case of knowing which door to open.
Think of it as if you are simply taking pressure off the system. The more pressure you take off, the more the Natural Intelligence of the body is able to focus on healing the real issues and not just focus on putting out stress fires.
How to answer the deeper call
The body is the barometer of the Soul. Bodies don’t lie. The mind is very good at getting us to believe all sorts of nonsense, but, if you want to really know how you feel about something, ask your body. Sit quietly and feel what’s going on. What emotions, sensations or pain are present?
It’s like cutting through all the clutter and static and getting to the core of the issue.
The truth is that you can't simply solve your burnout at the level of the mind. If you could solve it from this place you would’ve done it by now. You’re not stupid and you have Google!
The reality is that as we evolve, we are being called to ever higher levels of consciousness. Women (and some pretty great men) are awakening more and more. Success no longer means more “stuff” or status or power but awakening for something deeper, more profound, more meaningful and infinitely more fulfilling.
You’re not just looking for a relationship, you long for a true partnership. To be fully met.
You’re not just looking to make money, you want to create value and meaning and be paid to live your purpose.
You don’t just want to take care of yourself, you want to uplift yourself, your family, your community and powerfully and positively impact the world.
You don’t just want bravado and arrogance, you want true confidence. The steady place to stand your ground and massively own your value.
You want to uplift, to inspire, to nourish and leave the world a better place
This is the gift of your burnout.
Everything in the old patriarchal system tells you that you need to be ‘fixed’. That you need to ‘get sorted and get back to work’. But your body isn’t looking to go back to the old ways. That’s the energy that created the burnout in the first place.
Your body is looking to move forward, to shed old identities and align with what feels truer, more authentic, more real.
So instead of resisting the burnout, pushing against it, hating it, wishing it away and all the while feeling even worse, you are being invited to turn towards it. To get curious about it.
Your burnout doesn’t just contain a gift but a number of gifts. It holds wisdom and answers and freedom.
So right now, take a breath, breathe right down into your body and invite curiosity. Turn towards your burnout for a moment… “I wonder what’s here? I wonder what it’s trying to tell me? I wonder why it’s trying so hard to get my attention? I wonder what it wants to share?”
And then notice what happens…
When we turn towards and invite curiosity, the resistance starts to melt. You start to soften and relax. You take a step towards the pain and ask what it would like to share with you.
And this is where bodies start to heal. This is where surrender happens. This is where the energy is able to start flowing again.
Getting the help you really need
Over the last 18 years, I’ve developed Transformational Healing Programs that combine cutting edge cellular healing techniques, deep emotional release work and powerful practical tools to help you integrate the gifts and lessons that life is sharing so you can find your way to true healing.
Helping you to awaken and step into your true power and welcome joy and vitality back into your life.
What I have found is that it is like a sequence. That when we follow the body’s own rhythm and timing, then there’s a natural opening up, an ease, a profound gentleness. Just like a flower blossoming. You don’t pull the petals open to make it blossom faster, we understand that there is an innate, natural timing that needs to unfold.
The same is true of your body.
Step 1 – Reduce Stress
If you had come home to find an intruder in your home and were suddenly triggered into a massive ‘fight or flight’ response, this would be a wholly inappropriate time for me to say, “so…let’s talk about your childhood…”
Deep childhood healing is not available when the brain is offline.
So, step 1 is to reduce your stress level.
Step 2 – Release Baggage
Once the body is no longer triggered, you are then able to get into the deeper clearing work. To start healing and releasing the fundamental traumas, patterns and beliefs that triggered the burnout in the first place. The baggage that the body is desperately asking you to get rid of.
Step 3 - Re-align with your true values
When the body has released a significant amount of old baggage, you start to feel like you can breathe again. There’s a natural release. This is the time that you can start re-aligning your life with your deeper values. The time to start untangling old, outdated societal influences that you have been living by default.
Step 4 – Radical awakening
This is when the fun starts! This is when you start to connect with your Heart’s deepest longing and you start tapping into the pure potential of what you were born to do.
Step 5 – Re-set your mindset
This is the time that you can bring your beautiful, powerful conscious mind into the process. This the time for adjusting mindset, integrating new beliefs and starting to take powerful, inspired action.
The utter magic of this process is that you can't do step 2 without first doing step 1. Trying to do deep clearing when the body is stressed is like trying to push a boulder up a hill.
Trying to do step 5 until you've done the clearing of step 2, 3 and 4 feels impossible and new beliefs and affirmations simply won’t ‘stick’.
But moving through each step in sequence is like going with the natural flow of energy. It becomes easy and effortless and gentle and so joyful!
Coming back home to you.
Conclusion
Burnout can be the most incredible gift if you know how to use it. Uncovering and integrating these gifts can be easier than you imagine.
The very life you are yearning for is waiting through the very doorway of your pain.
Are you ready to accept the invitation?
About Patti Good
Patti’s gift is being able to ‘light the path’ for her clients. She is intuitively guided to the core of the issue and is then able to connect with their healing path ahead. Like a golden thread gently lighting the way.
She has always worked at a Soul level to help her clients heal their deepest trauma and core negative beliefs so that they can open the door to bringing their true heart’s longings into manifestation and live their purpose.
She is an Accredited Journey Practitioner, a Certified BodyTalk Practitioner, a Doula, Hypnobirthing Practitioner and Reiki Master. She has worked extensively with birth and motherhood helping women move through all stages of Divine Feminine Integration from Maiden, to Mother and then into their Wise Woman.