Episode 100: The Danger of Burnout
Have you ever been tired? And not just tired, but more like exhausted? And on every level? Did you know that emotional exhaustion can lead to burnout?
Burnout isn’t something that comes out of the blue. It is a slow process that has been happening over time. Catching it and being proactive about dealing with the symptoms helps to build up resiliency, giving you a collection of tools that you can used in case the problem resurfaces. We are not God where we know what can tip us over the edge. However, we can get to know ourselves better so that we can know our limitations, and prevent the entire process itself from unraveling. For the podcast on the Gift of Limitations, you can check that out here. If you missed the last podcast interview with podcast host and ministry of music Christen Clark, you can catch up on that here.
Podcast Topics
- My Emotional Exhaustion
- Elijah’s Emotional Exhaustion
- What Are You Noticing About Yourself?
- Solutions for Dealing With Burnout
Scripture Reading to Focus on:
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
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Podcast Transcription
Part 1A
Speaker 0 00:00:11
Speaker 1 00:00:55 This is the Healing Our Brokenness podcast where we dissect problems and solutions that exist among broken people, living in a broken world. And we also believe here at healing our brokenness podcast, that we are going from broken relationships to resilience and flourishing.
Have you ever been tired? Not just tired, but more like exhausted and on every level, did you know that emotional exhaustion can actually lead to burnout and burnout Isn’t something that just comes up out of the blue? It’s a slow process. That’s been happening over time, catching it and being proactive about dealing with the symptoms helps to build up the resiliency.
And it gives us a collection of tools in our toolbox that we can use in case the problem resurfaces. Again, we’re not God, and we cannot know every single time what’s going to tip us over the edge. However, we can get to know ourselves better so that we can know our limitations and we can prevent the entire process from unraveling like a domino effect.
Part1B
Speaker 1 00:02:22 For further explanation on limitations, the podcast called the gift of limitations, would be a great resource. And that one goes into more detail on being able to understand our limitations and to respect them.
It was about four years ago, I guess I would say really five. When I think about it from the period of 2016 to 2018, I had maybe four episodes of being emotionally exhausted. And, these episodes occurred because of a combination of compounded trauma, my own trauma, my kids’ trauma, supporting them, the trials I was going through at the time, etc. A lot of it being financial.
And what happened was, there were several nights in a row where I had not slept well, and when I say not sleeping well, two to three hours of sleep, four nights in a row. And I knew by night number three, I had basically maxed out.
I looked like I was depressed. And when my daughter saw me, she said, are you okay mom? And I said, yeah, why not? You ask? She said, Oh, you just look like you lost your best friend. And so I went and looked in the mirror and I was like, Oh wow, I look a hot mess. Even when my son came in the door, he said, man, you look jacked up.
” Oh, thank you.” And I laughed it off, but I really was not in a good state at all. Yes, grief had gotten backed up. And so between the grief and the insomnia together, it was just a bad mix. It was straight from the pit of hell, literally. And so we all know that when we don’t get enough sleep, it ripples down to other things, it can lead us to be more emotional.
Part two
Speaker 1 00:04:30 And then on the other hand, when we’re more emotional and we have all of this stuff built up in our system, particularly grief that can also lead to sleepless nights because once we max out, our bodies are going, “we’re done”. We’re not going any further until I get enough of it out and then you can rest. And so that’s exactly what was happening too. I mean, just emotional exhaustion.
It did not lead to burnout, but yeah, could have had I not paid attention to my body and kept going due to all of those issues that I was dealing with at that time. And a lot, the people that I’ve heard speak on burnout, particularly ministers have mentioned about the spirit of cynicism coming in when burnout is approaching. A friend of theirs noticed and mentioned something to them about them getting depressed about some of the things that they would normally do.
Part Three
Speaker 1 00:05:30 They were not satisfied with anything. They found themselves feeling unfulfilled and just being cynical about everything being the beginning of it, along with the emotional exhaustion and the inability to rest. What I did when I felt the extreme emotional exhaustion coming on is this: I followed through the script, the one that Elijah did, basically, just to be honest with you.
Because of all of that in my soul and the despair and fear set in, I rested, poured into scripture, Bible studies, podcasts, sermon messages, music nonstop all day long for several days in a row to help me get back up. And even though I eat healthy, I made sure I ate extra healthy, and doubled and tripled up on teas those days. I was able to get back up within a few days and I was just like myself again. And with Elijah, he had been in battle.
Part Four
Speaker 1 00:06:37 He had gone through miracles. He performed all these miracles, killed all of these false prophets and had just run and run and run and run. So he ran himself out. So he finally sat down. It was like, ah, and he finally realized that, I guess I would say, realized the state that he was in. And then that’s when his soul expressed the despair, “Oh,, God I’m ready to die!”
And that’s how I knew I was not myself because inside I was like, “Oh, this is horrible! I can’t take it any more!” And it’s like, it’s one thing to be angry or bitter or resentful about something. Those are different emotions/feelings. So I knew something was off. And with Elijah, God told him to eat, eat, and then sleep and rest and then eat and then sleep again because he was going to need to be rested up for his journey.
Speaker 1 00:07:37 And sometimes we want to just do a quick fix and go on. And sometimes it is a quick fix, but sometimes it’s not. And, we have to give ourselves grace those types of situations. The way the Holy spirit works is really something else. Because after I dealt with this, might’ve been no time after emotional exhaustion occurrence number two, I saw someone else. And as soon as I looked at their face, I knew what that particular person was going through. And like I had the screaming voice inside, their outer voice said,” Oh, this is happening again!”
Part Five
They were filled with despair. And I responded, “you know what? Rest for about two weeks. And then we’ll talk. ” I had to set that boundary. I knew how I was in that condition. It would not do me any good to try to reason with someone who’s in that state, the state I had already been through and knowing what the end result was of being in that state. And I did empathize. I’m so sorry you’re feeling this way. I hope you feel better, but this is when we can talk.
And so, when we’re not sitting still long enough, outside of having emotional exhaustion, giving ourselves margin, we don’t have the capacity to tell something is off, to know our limits, to question what is going on inside our souls. We just keep pushing till we can’t push anymore. Then Burnout!
Speaker 0 00:09:14 Sometimes we need someone else to notice like I did with my friend. Just saying, “You know what? You don’t look so well. And so in that case,
Part Six
Speaker 1 00:09:28 Listen to what they say. That’s when we know we have to set up boundaries and we have to take preventative measures for the sake of our own wellbeing. Resiliency happens when we are resting on a regular basis as part of our rhythms. If we are not giving ourselves margin, saying yes to everything that everybody asks us to do, not saturating ourselves in God’s word we will max out. Computer networks only have a certain bandwidth. So do we. In different seasons, different trials, and different ages and stages.
Speaker 1 00:10:08 Our abilities and goals and responsibilities can change off and on. They can change from one day to the next. We just never know.
what could be the tipping point, but we want to be able to bounce back with resiliency, and that way, each time emotional exhaustion hits, it will be less intense.
Speaker 1 00:10:20 Your brain and body will thank you and say, “I know what to do. Been there. Done that.” After healing, If we get stuck in, “Man. I can’t believe that happened. Oh my goodness. I can not believe that happened”, we could just sit in that forever. Kind of like when I would wake up late for work. And I’m just like 20 minutes in the bed because I am stuck in “I can’t believe that this happened. “
Finally, I snap myself out of it by saying, “Ok Tina, you overslept. Now what?” Then, I get up and get moving.
Speaker 1 00:11:16 With our souls will be joyous and glad that we did that. And so, God gave Elijah his next steps when Elijah came out of his near burnout, it was like, “okay, what do I do now?” And God was like, “you appoint this person. You appoint that person. You appoint this person.” Basically Elijah was not going to be doing all those things on his own anymore.
Part Seven
And a lot of times we get to the point that we get to because we’re trying to do too much and try to do too much on our own. So we can either take three days of rest or two weeks of rest to bounce back and become resilient, or we can take the whole year off. And the end of the day, it is up to us how we want to take care of ourselves and how we want to continue to flourish in our relationships. I am so preaching to myself right now. I promise you.
Speaker 1 00:12:09 Whether it’s at home, church, work, in ministry, wherever it is that we’re doing, we want to be able to continue to flourish. We want to be able to continue being resilient with self-care, yielding, and resting in God is part of that resiliency, those are parts of the formula. And we cannot leave that out. So I hope something said resonated with you. And I just want to thank you so much for listening in to every episode. I’m at one hundred episodes.
This is number 100 episode and I praise and thank God. I’m kind of in shock. You know, I know that it’s been a road getting here, but still the fact that it’s the 100th episode. I praise and thank God! And I also want to give a shout out to Timothy Horton for bringing the intro and outro music to us every week.
Speaker 1 00:13:03 And that song is entitled Valley of Grace. And it can be found wherever music is sold. Healing Our Brokenness podcast is on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, and on Amazon music, etc. So if this is blessing your life in any kind of shape, form or fashion, if you could please give a shout out to your friends, your neighbors, your family members, and ask them to follow us.
Until Next time.
Valley of Grace music.
Speaker 0 00:14:03 , .
