I am putting it out there and being open and raw with how I have been feeling. After the blog a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about how everything felt overwhelming, I reached a level of exhaustion like no other. Timely with World Mental Health Day last week.
Whether I slept for 6 hours or 10 hours a night, I felt the same. I didn’t want to go out and meet my friends, I cancelled social engagements and all the work I needed to do felt too big. I couldn’t use my normal strategy of chunking the big workload into smaller manageable sections.
A couple of things went wrong, such as my son was sick one night, and I dropped a glass of water on the kitchen floor and both of them made me cry. I felt anxious about him being sick again, in a way that I knew was unreasonable and I felt like I was on edge.
In addition, my body hurt and I didn’t want to exercise. Exercise is my go-to stress management plan, and yet the idea of it felt like wading through treacle.
So what did I do? I took myself to bed 2 hours early, three days in a row. I asked for help, I opened up and I talked. I accepted help with my son so I could go to bed, help at work by sharing tasks with my team and an arm round me when I cried. I didn’t have a drink, I stayed off alcohol and I ate well. I didn’t exercise, I couldn’t, but the healthy eating helped.
And you know what… it took me a couple of weeks, but by admitting to myself I was near burnout, accepting the help and taking all the non-urgents out of my life, I got myself through it. I have revisited my work agenda and changed my diary to give myself breathing space going forward. Uncomfortable as it is, I have to say no sometimes. It’s a new way of working, and I know it’s important. I have understood I need to read the signs.
I read this article this week on burnout and it resonated. I could tick the things on the list, and it helped me apply a ‘label’ to how I had been feeling. I almost blamed it on the flu, but I wasn’t unwell in that way, I was just exhausted. Totally and utterly exhausted.