What I Learned From My Breakdown...
First and foremost, I learned I am not alone. In helping professions (these are pre-pandemic stats), 20% to 30% of our nation's teachers have moderately high to high levels of burnout. These rates apply also to humanitarian aid workers and university professors. Among medical professionals (think about this - this is pre-covid) the stats are grim - a whopping 52%.
I did some research and tracked down some experts and asked them about what they thought the percentage of burnout would be for someone who spent their whole life trying to get families riddled with substance use disorder and mental health challenges the resources they needed to heal. One laughed and then suggested I read a book on burnout. So I did. But she also shared a perspective that I clearly had not considered. She said that gender makes a big difference in the study of emotional exhaustion. More on that later, but first, let's break down emotional exhaustion.
The first element of burnout is emotional exhaustion and its negative impact on our health, relationships, and life satisfaction - especially for women. Now, before you say to yourself, "Yeah, women are just so emotional." Don't go there! You'll just embarrass yourself. This is NOT about women being more emotional. Again, more on that in a bit. Emotions at their most basic level require the brain to release neurochemicals in response to a stimulus. This morning, at sunrise, my son Scott and I met at a lovely park in our area so that he could take pictures for a new website he's building for me. He asked Pete, my husband to come along. Pete assumed he would be there to watch our granddaughter Norah. He was quite disappointed to find out he was there to try to make me smile and carry the camera bag. Nevertheless, the experience was indeed more fun with the three of us. And Pete did fulfill his responsibilities with flare. The guy still makes my heart beat faster and my joy blossom - even after decades of marriage. Scott expects that to help with the photos, but we also know it also changed my brain chemistry. That's emotion for you - it's automatic, instantaneous, and happening all the time.
Emotions come and go, on their own. They just stop. When they do NOT go, if we get stuck in an emotion, we will experience exhaustion. This problem could be as simple as too much exposure to a stimulus that keeps eliciting the same emotional response - like a stressful job, or ongoing family conflict. Sometimes we get stuck because the most difficult feelings like rage, grief, despair, helplessness are so terrifying that we cannot move through them alone. Finally, we may get trapped because we are not free to move through them.
Are you exhausted? Could it be that you are stuck in an emotional storm?
