Burnout Isn’t a Work Crisis — It’s a Soul Crisis
Stress, overwhelm, and burnout run rampant in our culture, especially in startups and small businesses. We are constantly running, doing, and performing, often at the cost of the things that are most important to us, like our families and our health.
We rationalize that all of our running and doing and performing is necessary to get ahead. We say to ourselves that this is the price of entrepreneurship and extol our ability to hustle, unlike the average joe. When the stress mounts, we push it down deeper in order to forge ahead. In the short term, this strategy works. But over time and after prolonged periods of repressing our needs, the stress will catch up. It always does.
Most of the time, burnout is hidden in plain sight. It’s mixed with shame and held in secret, like so many mental health issues. When we’re running with other high-producers, the last thing we want to do is give a hint that things are breaking down. Rather than feel shame because we can’t keep up, we spin the truth and double down on the cultural myth that we are “killing it.” In reality, these toxic values are killing us.
For four years I worked with founders of high-growth companies. I was their shrink. I saw it all — everything from sleep deprivation, anxiety, and depression, to full-blown burnout and suicidal thoughts.
I thought these conditions were reserved for the few among us who were incubating in high stress, but I now see that this is happening everywhere and outside of what we would normally consider “high-stress environments.” The standards for excellence and “crushing it” have infiltrated almost every aspect of our work-first culture.
So what is really going on?
We may intellectually know the right answers: set healthy boundaries; be intentional about work-life balance; practice self-care, etc. Yet, we remain in a slow boil of stress with expectations for ourselves and each other that have crested into a full-blown, science-fiction level of unrealistic expectations. In our attempt to remain polished, perfected, and successful (even to ourselves) our body is revolting. Stress is your body’s very normal and natural response to a very abnormal and unnatural way of living.
But if stress is the symptom, then what is the cause? This is a question we rarely ask. Why are we so stressed and overwhelmed and burnt out?
Let me offer a few explanations that stem from the same source — disconnection.
We are disconnected from ourselves. Our society has reduced success to a list of boxes to be checked: graduate from school, partner up, have kids, settle into a well-defined career path, and hang on until retirement checks can be collected. This well-worn path pushes you in the direction of conformity, but not toward any kind of authentic connection to who you really are.
Author and activist Parker Palmer invites us to get into the truth of our life — who we really are and what we can offer the world when we lean into our birthright gifts. This is a kind of courageous wholeness that allows us to live an undivided life.
When we are more concerned with meeting a prescribed expectation from someone out there rather than stay connected to the true self, then we run the risk of losing our identity into something we didn’t sign up for and may not even believe in. All of this leads to a loss of self where we go looking for meaning and values and peace outside of ourselves. And because this is an impossible task, the search never ends.
We are disconnected from our values. Journalist Johann Hari compares our cultural craving for junk food to our growing craving for “junk values” in our culture. Real values are hard, take time to strengthen, and are refined by sacrifice and struggle. Junk values are easily consumable and have one common characteristic — they are pleasurable.
Hari says, “Junk food has taken over our diets, and it is making millions of people physically sick. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that something similar is happening with our minds — that they have become dominated by junk values, and this is making us mentally sick, triggering soaring rates of depression and anxiety.” I would add burnout.
We adopt junk values and then do the very normal thing that humans do, we look around and begin social norming to this bad behavior. It drives us further from our humanity, but somehow we think it’s normal and everyone is doing it. No, everyone is just drinking the Kool-Aid.
We are disconnected from our needs. Burnout is as much a physical condition as a mental one. While it may begin by carrying the mental burden of unrealistic expectations, it also involves an overtaxed nervous system due to chronic stress. Burnout creates a catch. Your internal engine is constantly revved up to achieve the next goal or milestone in order to live up to internalized expectations, but you are also pinned down, debilitated from the exhaustion and indifference. It’s a special kind of hell between never fully awake and never shut down.
And the usual prescriptions for self-care rarely work. Relaxation can’t come in the form of real rest because the engine is idling in high gear. It’s impossible for someone in burnout to “relax.”
The conditions that lead to burnout require a chronic disconnect between the body and the mind and the soul. To recover, you must intentionally bring them all back into calibration. You must recognize that you are a human being with a long list of emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual needs.
We are disconnected from meaningful work. Meaningful work contains a few essential elements: it serves a transcendent purpose beyond our financial needs, it contributes to the greater good in some way, and it contributes to our individual flourishing. We are engaged in meaningful work when it is enjoyable and challenging and plugs us into something bigger than ourselves.
When our work is futile or meaningless, we lose contact with the personal power necessary to affect our own lives. Work begins to feel pointless, busy, and disengaging. These are subtle clues that we are no longer engaged in meaningful work, and we give burnout the open door to walk through. We may be working incredibly hard, but we are left with an empty feeling and a question, “What’s it all for?”
We are disconnected from each other. When you’re recovering from the heaviness of burnout, the importance of a tribe who share your values cannot be underestimated. We have an intrinsic need for social connection and, unfortunately, when we’re hustling in The Race, social connection is one of the first psychological needs we abandon. In order to get more done, we stack the deck with tasks to be completed, not spending time with people we love and who love us.
There’s a paradox about being in a community — being with other people is how we get to know ourselves best. We can’t fully know our true self until it is reflected back to us. In a community, we can wrestle with our personality, values, and gifts in ways we can’t when we’re alone. A trusted community that accepts us is the perfect place to begin the unmasking process.
In 2018, Cigna healthcare released results from their study on loneliness showing that nearly half of Americans report “sometimes” or “always” feeling lonely. Have we become so tragically independent that we fail to recognize the chasms between us?
What can you do about it?
- Check on each other. Don’t assume that everyone is OK.
- Burnout is the result of our worship of short-term ROI. Encourage the long play as much as possible.
- We need to be connecting! Be intentional about container building — creating spaces that encourage psychological safety and attuning to your needs. Build “collision points” around human connection that move us beyond conversations on business strategy and ideation alone.
- Challenge junk values. Trade junk values for ones that are more sustainable. Adopt an ethic of care in tangible ways.
- Examine the myths that are alive and well in your community. Every community has implied values and “unspoken rules.” What are yours? One quick way to discern what values and rules are operating in your community: observe what is celebrated.
Study after study has shown us that “less is more” when it comes to how much time we put into our work. The results are right in front of us, but our culture hasn’t caught up. The factors for why this happens are more complex than we can take on here, but for now suffice it to say, if you want a clearer mind and less anxiety (and very likely with no less effectiveness), remember that you are not your work. You are well made, and your soul is speaking. The question is: Will you listen?
