Reconceptualizing Burnout

"She better watch out. She's going to burn out."

When it came to burnout, all the narratives I heard for the first sixteen years of my career revolved around avoiding it. The underlying message was that it ended careers - a sense of a point of no return where people would burn out and leave the profession.

I knew burnout all too well but didn't have the luxury of leaving my career in order for my life to feel more sustainable.

Instead, when I reached the most challenging season (to that point) juggling the demands of career and family, I relied on my narrative inquiry skills to dive into my own story to consider implications to gear up for another academic year.

My family deserved it.

My students deserved it.

I needed to figure something out because I felt like I was at my breaking point without a pivot in sight.

Through the process I realized the narratives I was familiar with were not accurate.

I began to wonder: What if we shift the narrative to expect cycles of burnout and highlight opportunities for growth inherent? What if instead of viewing the potential for burnout as something to avoid at all costs, we expect variations and provide tools to persevere and navigate the process well?

I developed a construct for growth through cycles of burnout that acknowledges that at any given point of time, we engage in our contexts with certain expectations that shape the way we view our circumstances. We employ the tools we have to mitigate stressors that build towards burnout.

Nonetheless, we reach those points of time in which the strategies we already know are not sufficient to navigate the unique complexities of given seasons -- even though we fight so hard to find one. So many times I clung to the belief that if I just found the right system or fine tuned enough, I would finally figure it out. Eventually, I accepted the reality that life is not really set up to "figure it all out."

Instead, over time, we reach those moments where we are called to persevere without having an immediate solution that will resolve all the tensions. Through the process of enduring, eventually we come out on the other side with revised expectations and additional tools to draw from as we navigate new challenges in our lives.

Having a more realistic understanding of how to view the complexities of motherhood and career (especially all those layers beyond my control that impact my day to day) has made all the difference.

It does not alleviate the challenge of navigating seasons of burnout, depletion, and exhaustion; however, it does increase my capacity to hold on to hope.