A gift with a cost.

Emotional Burnout After Big Life Events

I’ve spent years trying to understand why big life moments, including the joyful ones as much as the painful ones, they leave me utterly and completely wiped out. I’m not talking about stress, but the intense stuff: milestones, crises, celebrations, the kind of life events that are loaded with adrenaline and expectation.

The pattern/cycle is always the same. Once the dust settles, I crash.

It’s not dramatic. I don’t fall apart in front of people. It’s a quiet drop into exhaustion, like someone’s pulled the plug on my energy. I want to withdraw. I don’t want to speak to anyone, I don’t want to be around anyone. I just want to be left alone. And after years of emotional crashes, this morning I finally felt able to name it for what it was and its

Emotional Burnout.

We live in a society where people praise and admire compassion, commitment, emotional investment. They call it strength and that’s ok, that is until it isn’t.

You see, when I care, like many other women I know, I don’t do it half-heartedly, I’m 1000% in. I pour myself into people, I feel their wins as if they were my own, special moments, projects.

I am great at holding space for others, I’m good at anticipating other people’s needs, but what I am actually doing is carrying emotional weight that isn’t mine.

But the thing is for me, is that caring deeply means I absorb more. And when the moment passes, my system drops. The same qualities that make me strong in intense situations are the ones that knock me flat afterwards.

It’s like a double edged sword. A gift with a cost.

The worst part is, I still haven’t fully figured out the warning signs, I still miss that elusive fine line and when I’ve crossed it, I have no other option but to slow down and try to crawl back.

It only lasts a couple of days, but it’s a pattern I can no longer ignore, when the event ends, my nervous system drops hard. It feels like running a marathon on adrenaline and then stopping dead. Fatigue, fog, irritability, detachment, classic symptoms of burnout.

Previously, I’ve judged myself. Why can’t I bounce back like everyone else? I’ve lived this pattern following countless recovery months, book launches, recovery roadshows, Scotland’s national recovery walk, even my granddaughter’s christening, which turned into a surprise wedding. I held myself together through all of it, because I had too. But once the adrenaline faded, the familiar heaviness arrived: not sadness, just exhaustion. I was drained, couldn’t think straight, every action felt like a massive effort, my body ached, all I wanted to do was sleep, my body craved food that I would later regret eating.

But by this Tuesday morning, instead of denying it, I named it, and instead of seeing it as a flaw. I now realise that me caring deeply isn’t the problem, it’s the lack of recovery afterwards.

So, on Tuesday I made a pact with myself, to prevent caring deeply biting me in the arse, I was going to slow down, rest and let myself come back to baseline and give myself the same permission and compassion I give everyone else. because whilst caring deeply might be part of who I am. Recovering deeply has to be part of who I am too.

Today is Friday and over the last couple of days, I have gone back to basics, which looks like

• Slowing down
• Returning back to my morning journalling routine
• Stripping life back to basics
• Gentle movement – walking instead of taking the bus
• Resting without guilt
• Letting myself be quiet
• Letting myself be enough

These aren’t indulgences. They’re necessities. And guess what? I feel half human again, I have found my mojo and there is a new spring in my step.

For me naming this pattern has helped take the shame out of it. I am coming to realise that emotional burnout doesn’t mean I didn’t cope. It means I cared. It means I showed up. It means the moment mattered.

And I’m proud that after years of denial, I have finally found the courage to name it

Here’s a reflective question for ya ‘What have you recently found the courage to name?’

Love Fordy

 

#unapologeticwriter
#haveawordwithyourself

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