Burnout, but make it seasonal
When rest becomes another thing to manage…
August is here, and while the annually trending Taylor Swift bop has us envisioning whimsy, running through fields, breezes, and naps - you’re opening emails, frantically prepping kids for return to school, anxiously awaiting the fall increase in work, while trying to “prioritize rest and self care”.
While we’ve been somewhat programmed to think of summer as a reprieve from maximum capitalism and burnout (thanks to the school calendar year that my 34 year old brain continues to operate by)…summers have become another period of jamming in “as much fun and sun” as we can while knowing the inevitable shall return.
Rest feels hollow when nothing else has truly shifted.
Burnout shows up in your body before your brain even realizes it -> Irritability, decision fatigue, doomscrolling, exhaustion, thirst for distraction, avoidance of anything resembling responsibility
Taking care as a lifestyle, not a lifeboat
The reality is, so many of us wait for “self care” when we are drowning. Which…hey, don’t drown. Do what you have to do there.
AND
We need practical ways we can take care of ourselves, as a lifestyle - still building in more elaborate breaks (a day off, a staycation, a fancier dinner or coffee out, a night with friends), but these tend to require more time, energy, and resources. We need moments and practices that we can do regularly, and daily. For some of us this looks like:
Cookie dough breaks (they make the edible kind, not the kind the news repeatedly warned us about) between meetings
Taking a walk around outside for 5 minutes
Taking a long shower or bath with the fancy soap
Making regular plans that we follow through on - having that thing to look forward to
Saying “I have plans” even with that means, plans with yourself to not have plans
Listening to that fun and random audiobook while you’re doing all the adulting things
Finding random free activities around town
You Deserve Care.
Find you practice. The world is - doing whatever this mess is. Yet, you still deserve care..
Need support? Ask us, ask your therapist, or ask a friend who has a healthy practice of their own.
Rest is something we all deserve, not something we have to earn.