TILL I COLLAPSE

“But the boy began to enjoy the daring flight,
and forsook his guide, and drawn by desire for heaven,
soared higher.”
“The blazing sun softened the fragrant wax;
the wings slipped, and he beat the naked air.” - Ovid, Metamorphoses

Let me tell you the story of my burnout.
It all  started about a year ago. I found it increasingly difficult falling asleep. The pressure from the first exams of my master’s, combined with my emotional restlessness on various fronts, kept me awake - my brain was always thinking. At first I didn’t  take the problem too seriously, resulting in occasional and feeble attempts to “fix” it. From acupuncture to supplements and some self therapy. Even some of my newsletters were an attempt to address some core issues of my illness. However, I was never able to distinguish nor reach the root of my morbus. I lived in this state of half-misery for months, waiting, eternally waiting like the young officer in Dino Buzzati’s The Tartar’s Steppe for death to come.

My pain was partly alleviated during the last part of the summer when I embarked on a series of adventures and relaxing journeys throughout the United Kingdom with friends and my brother. That period reinvigorated my zeal for life, which had been worn down by some disappointments in school, friendships, church and romance. Riding this idealistic wave, I sought even more responsibilities and gave myself extra goals once I was back home. I blindly rode toward my demise. Soon, after recollecting all the events that I’ve described in my previous newsletters, my aspirations, my high standards, my objectives, my roles all became a burden, exacerbated by the new lack of sleep phase which had reemerged with a vengeance. I felt like my body, my heart, my mind and spirit were being consumed day by day, whether I rested, had a wonderful conversation with a friend, or succeeded in my endeavors. I would be motivated for half a day, or maybe even 1 or 2 days, but then I would collapse again. The stress I was bearing was crushing me. My sense of inadequacy overwhelmed me. I was trying to do as many things as possible, coming home tired and empty handed repeatedly. I had no control over the result of my efforts. I felt suffocated. I couldn’t hold on to joy. Life felt empty, full of threats, and gray. Any attempt to improve felt futile. I felt so disconnected from people and God. My existence felt heavy and meaningless.

My demise culminated in December, when I struggled intensely with depression, exhaustion and an overbearing sense of meaninglessness. I indulged in many maladaptive habits, scrolling constantly on Social Media, binge watching, binge eating, porn, negative rumination, self-pity, irritability, pessimistic cynicism, slippage of my spiritual practices, and more. Nothing and nobody seemed to help me. I felt like an observer, witnessing my collapse, like a derailing train, totally aware of the unsafe speed, its trajectory, the instability in the gears, and its inevitable demise, all while being unable to stop it. On the outside I put on a good face, but inside I was ravaged with existential desolation. Just getting out of bed felt like climbing a mountain. I lived my days dragging my broken soul, unable to stop, till I collapse.

I wanted to fly among the stars, but I flew too close to the sun, burning out my whole vital spirit, falling into an abyss. 

BURNOUT 

“Burnout is not a psychological problem within the individual caused by something external to the person—namely their work environment—but that burnout can be understood as an existential breakdown of one's relation to the world, which renders the person unable to engage with their environment in a meaningful way" - Lisa IJzerman, Annemie Halsema, Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, Burnout as breakdown of one’s existence in the world

Before I delve into the second part of the story, (spoiler, things get better), allow me to introduce a more formal framework of the concept  of burnout and its relation to the main topics I’m discussing in my newsletters (The Good Life, Deconstruction, and Meaning).
Burnout appears to be a growing phenomenon in our society, especially among young people. Identifying the forces at play in our cultural and societal setting is no easy task, yet some underlying problems to which I have already alluded in my previous letters include hurry, busyness, self-induced and social media corroborated insurmountable expectations, lack of true rest, anxiety and stress disorders, insatiable desires; in other words, the life draining sources of our modern day. We might add, or specify, the nefarious virtues of consumerism, Social Media and the hustle culture contaminate our minds and souls, promoting perfectionism, workaholism, overstimulation, and more. Yet, these are not the foundations of the exhaustion epidemic.
Perhaps a more specific and ad hoc wording and contextualization could prove useful by borrowing from clinical research and spiritual physicians whose names and books are listed in the bibliography. By definition, burnout is the total consumption of one’s vital fuel, the extinguishing of one’s inner fire, and the exhaustion of one’s will to live. It’s the suffocation of one's ability to connect with oneself, others, and the world. It’s a state of detachment from meaning, indulgence in coping mechanisms, and just a lesser version of existence. Reorienting our focus on the quote above, burnout is the breakdown of one’s existence in the world. An existential exhaustion.

There are many paths toward this catastrophic state of living, and there are a plethora of states of burnout. Indeed, in as much as there is a general recognition of the phenomenon, both in the academic and clinical world, its precise characterization is not trivial. Yet, the most general causes, keeping in mind the uniqueness of each personal experience, from the research I’ve done, seem to be:
(a) High stress, Low Control, Low Reward work environment;
(b) Increase in workload - value mismatch - crippled sense of reward;
(c) A felt sense of isolation and lack of support;
(d) Undealt with, acute or chronic, stressful and discombobulating events;
(e) lack of access to holistic rest.

To better understand this inchoate and vague list, I will give a personal illustration , but first let’s look at those who are most at risk of experiencing this existential exhaustion: caregivers, social workers, emergency responders, teachers, and project managers. You might recognize a pattern within these roles from which one can come to the conclusion that burnout is the disease of those who care. Indeed, the main instigator of this malaise - beyond the relentless workload, long and difficult hours, poor pay, often poor peer support, often difficult work relationships, being deprived of the opportunity to deal with one’s own personal life difficulties and rest at an emotional and physical level, which play a big role depending on the context- I believe rises when the sense of significance of one’s efforts plummets. It seems almost ironic since these jobs should provide a deep sense of satisfaction. An assumption founded on the premise is that one’s efforts will surely result in the betterment of the people who are being cared for. When people you are trying to save die, or the sick worsen, or the children you are educating and caring for embark on self-destructive journeys, you feel powerless, regardless of how much time, effort, and good-heartedness were invested. This can leave one with a sense of injustice, inadequacy, insecurity, anxiety, exhaustion, or insignificance,  and possibly with a hole in that little part of your soul that was poured into them, only to be ruptured and snatched away.
This phenomenon, which I’ve described here to an extreme, by itself is not sufficient, but when coupled with an incapacity to recover, the primary cause of burnout abides in the “High Stress, Low Control, Low Reward” environment, where the first component impedes rest and tires the body and mind, and where the lack of control and reward drains the heart. Parallel lays the sense of a value mismatch from what the expectation of work, or just life, and what it actually is, in a forced and draining context. To summarize, burnout is experienced when we pour out our vital energy without our soul to be replenished; nonetheless if you are a healthcare provider or a teaching professional, or a naive 23 year old maximalist, or anybody else whose soul has been fragmented and consumed.

Allow me to illustrate through my personal story. During the latter semester the workload from my nuclear engineering studies grew intensely. The challenging subjects and projects left  me with a sense of inadequacy, especially next to my superiorly successful classmates. I became insecure, and increasingly stressed from my sense of perfectionism. Moreover, I lacked a feeling of value in what I was doing. It was as if I wasn’t doing  what I had signed up for and it all felt somewhat meaningless. All the time I was investing, along with money and energy, seemed like vapor in the wind, bringing futile results. I felt this in every area of my life: school, romantic attempts, sports, church, and also this newsletter.
To exacerbate this feeling, while I actually have an abundance of friends, although most are scattered around the world, I felt lonely. I lacked a brotherhood or a tribe with whom to live life daily and  work toward something together. Lastly, life threw me some punches from which I haven’t quite recovered ( again, see my previous newsletters), perhaps thinking that I had, which crippled my sense of joy and spark of life. I was carrying an invisible burden, which felt like chains that dug into my flesh. My soul felt porous and brittle.
I should also add that I was sleeping very little, partly tormented by what  I listed above, partly due to being a professional overthinker and ruminator. This issue made me much more inclined and sensitive to the symptoms of burnout, leading to a very severe case.

The road to burnout isn’t linear; indeed, many factors are interconnected with others in a series of positive feedback loops. If you are stressed, you are less likely to sleep, which makes you less emotionally available and causes you to see the world through scarcity lenses, hence feeling little love from others and even more stressed, less productive, and detached from a sense of reward, and then you cycle back, adding to the eventual contributors. Understanding the symptoms are of utmost importance as I’m going to depict in the next chapter, otherwise you might embark, like me, on infernal circles, ringing you increasingly closer to the cold, dark, desolate pit of Cocytus.