The Art of Burning Out

3 days ago

4 min read

The stretch of time between summer of 2019 and the end of 2023 was an actual nightmare for me.

I was working at a 24/7 crisis inpatient psychiatric hospital at the time, meaning we did not and could not shut down when Covid happened. Just like all of the nurses experiencing their own trauma during this pandemic, it was a really heavy time to be a healthcare worker in the mental health field.

Let me set the scene for you:

Girl graduates college in May 2019 - has all of the hope and trust in the world that her future is wide open for her to explore. That she's safe to dive head first into it, and see where the current takes her. She's passionate about mental health, and is determined to use this next year as a chance to figure out what she really wants to do with her life.

She finds a psych job almost immediately - working closely with patients at an inpatient facility, something she was considering doing in the future. Her preferred population was young people struggling with eating disorders, but the exposure to other disorders will be valuable.

It's so fulfilling for the first 5 months - she makes connections with patients easily, she's finding her confidence, she's even leading some groups. "She's so nice!", "She's such a team player!", "She's so reliable and hard working!". She feels good; she's settling in.

Like a ton of bricks, Covid hits and shuts down the US in March 2020 - and in tandem, the acute, violent cases escalate. She's the one that has to respond to codes: a 6'3" man charging staff, a child with a pencil stabbing themselves, a 1:1 patient with psychosis yelling and destroying their room, holding down a woman for over an hour who's spitting, biting, kicking, punching, screaming while we're waiting for the police to arrive, lots and lots of B-52's (nurses, you get it). Her body absorbs the trauma, her mind dissociates, her soul leaves her body, just to get by.

Staff start to leave - on top of her normal 40 hrs/week, she starts working at least 2 16-hour shifts each week, sometimes back to back. Sometimes the 16 hour shifts are unexpected, where she works 3:30pm-midnight and then gets told that there's no one coming to cover her. She stays until 8am, comes back at 3:30pm the same day.

Her body breaks down - she's not eating, not sleeping, not doing anything outside of work. She finds herself falling asleep standing up, she sits down for the first time in 12 hours and feels her body shaking, fear at work becomes normal. She's sitting with her 1:1 who is actively trying to self-harm the entire shift. And during that shift, the most disturbing part was the lack of empathy she felt toward any of her patients. She had traded trust, understanding, and kindness with resentment, hate, and a short fuse for bs.

She waited too long to quit - she became a shell of a human before she got sick.

There's a lot that happened after, but I just want to take a second to hold space for anyone who experienced anything remotely traumatizing during this time - working at a hospital, working at schools, working in mental health. That time was absolute hell, and if you find yourself no longer in that field, I see you and I'm glad you did what was best for you.

My light was gone. I had completely burned out any glimmer of hope, any future I saw for myself, any motivation to get up the next day. It was so dark. And it took years to begin to feel human again.

What I learned during that time though, is that the emptiness, the darkness, gives you a chance to actually grieve. When your sparkle, your healthy body, and the future you envisioned for yourself are stripped away, the entire universe inside your head is no longer alive... And you need time to accept that, and ultimately let it go.

But what the burnout really gave me, was time - time to rekindle my light.

It was the tiniest of moments that brought it back: The relief I felt when I heard myself really, truly, laugh for the first time in years; The brightness in my face returning, the gold flecks in my hair and eyes twinkling; The ability to think clearly enough to write, the dwindling fatigue that gave me opportunities to do anything but sit and nap.

When I thought I lost myself, and I felt her coming back, I realized you can grieve who you once were and embrace who you're becoming at the same time. Losing yourself over and over again can be agonizing at times, but rediscovering yourself not only brings rejuvination and life, it brings your light back. Your sparkle.

For anyone who has lost their sparkle over the years, I carried all of your sorrow with me during that time. None of us were alone, because I think there was a collective falling out of our identities, and a movement to pave a new path for ourselves to return home. It was horrible, and it may still be for some - still lingering and haunting in unfair ways. Just know that continuing on is the only thing we can all do, and we're all very brave for doing that.

Over the years, I've liked to look at living as an art. We're the painters of our wold, and it's a craft you have to practice and hone in on every single day. The things that muck up the bigger picture only informs our next stroke.

But the more time that passes, the more beautiful and free we as the artists become.

So I guess what I'm trying to say... is that the burnout sucks. Having to grieve the life you thought you'd have, sucks. Not having any light whatsoever inside your soul? Sucks, for sure. But, there's a beauty that comes with re-sowing and re-blooming when the time is right. When our roots become strong and our colors return bolder than ever.

Life is so messy. And over time, let's believe that the mess reveals the masterpiece.