Burnout: tapping into your life force
"What costs us a great deal of energy without giving anything back leads to exhaustion. It's that simple. This is the foundation of burnout."
On Friday afternoons, my hands turn white. I wear a harness secured to a rope — to prevent a free fall to the floor of the climbing gym. When I start climbing, I feel motivated and full of energy. My gaze is open, my body relaxed. As I grow more tired and the holds become more challenging, the finish line starts to feel far away. I have to make it! My energy begins to run out. I have to go faster, or I'll fall. I don't want to fail! This panic response narrows my vision and stiffens my muscles. It's no longer about enjoying the climb — it's about surviving. It becomes clear that this fear-driven pattern is not serving me right now. I feel my feet on the holds I can trust and let my body weight rest on them; my arms, neck, and eyes relax. Space returns, along with a deeper breath. Ah — there's my next hold!
The exhaustion
What costs us a great deal of energy without giving anything back leads to exhaustion. It's that simple. This is the foundation of burnout. There is an unconscious pattern at play — one that was once functional, but no longer works. By patterns I mean thoughts, emotions, and sensations that are woven together and triggered in certain situations out of conditioning. For example, the sound of your alarm might produce a contraction in your body, followed by the thought: "Oh, not again!" Then: "But I have to!" And then: the experience of stress.
This is a conditioning in your system that activates when the alarm goes off. It costs us a great deal of energy to keep pushing forward with an ineffective habit. The result we truly long for stays out of reach, which causes us to become increasingly depleted — and we end up having to run on adrenaline and willpower alone. The idea that we might fail generates fear. We keep pushing ourselves a little harder. This means pouring more energy into a draining pattern. We become exhausted.
We can't build on these old patterns, and we haven't yet developed new, effective ones to fall back on. And so here we are — worn out from trying so hard, desperate because we see no way out, and no longer trusting in our own abilities. Congratulations! There is a deep wisdom in you that refuses to keep going in a way that doesn't come from your heart. There is something courageous in you that dares to fall all the way to the bottom. There is something in you making space for something new!
Fear of the tiger
Imagine a tiger standing behind you, growling. Really sit with that for a minute and notice what happens in your body. You're probably not relaxed. You're not open to new information, and you certainly don't feel creative. When we experience fear, enjoyment and creativity become temporarily irrelevant. Survival comes first. That response is entirely appropriate when a tiger is chasing you. But does it apply to your daily life? No.
And yet, strangely, many of us feel that tiger breathing down our necks at work, in social situations, and at the climbing wall. This is a dysfunctional survival fear — attached to situations where survival isn't actually at stake. There is no tiger. Our life is not in danger. Fear doesn't help in these moments. On the contrary: it narrows our vision and our possibilities. It limits our capacity to follow our heart, to stop doing things that aren't working for us, and to build toward things that do.
Somatic Experiencing
Fear is the driving emotion behind burnout. It is directed by the reptilian brain within the nervous system. In order to break through dysfunctional patterns around fear, it is essential to work at the level of the nervous system. Meet your fear — and tap into new life force! If you'd like to know more, visit my page on Somatic Experiencing.
