Burnout beginnings PART 2

The origin story of my fatigue: the triggers that set off my burnout

(This is an audio version of this letter, recorded by me, imperfectly and without editing. I hope you enjoy listening.)

Hello, I’m Philippine and to be honest, I feel like a beginner at life – I am forever trying to make sense of it. You can find my attempts at this, plus reflections, musings and experiences right here, in my newsletter. Subscribing is free! For everyone who feels like a beginner at life, and wants to connect in some way.

In PART 1 of the story about my fatigue I tell you about my almost lifelong buildup towards burnout. Today I continue and take you along the route with the final triggers that lead to a burnout super-deluxe. Here we go.

The first few months of my little adventure were, in between the ‘oh my god this is so cool, I live in London’ moments, kind of terrible. I had moved to London to do a master’s, but I always felt behind. Behind on my coursework, behind on the language, on my personal to dos and my part of cleaning the flat that I shared with two others, on exploring the city and having fun, and on making friends. I wasn’t sure if the course was really for me and worried I’d never find my people.

It was only just before Christmas that I felt a small beginning of friendship, and then during the second trimester those friendships actually started to flourish. This is also when what we were doing at uni felt more exciting to me, plus constantly speaking English finally started to feel more natural. And yet when my dad visited me over Easter I felt how tired I was, sometimes being unable to execute our plans, even something calm like going to a museum – instead we spent the afternoon reading at a cafe.

That summer (2019) I needed a significant break very badly, yet I needed to push through just a little longer. Moreover, this persistence was joined by a whirlwind of big changes – I mean think top of the list of most stressful life events kind of a thing. I was in the middle of graduating, which meant that even after I’d finished the practical part of my dissertation – devising and directing my own play – I still needed to write the theoretical part, which I did not feel like doing, nor know how to go about.

Around the same time I met my very first (and serious) boyfriend. And to be honest my headspace was nearly completely taken up by this and all I truly wanted to do was spend time with him. Of course this was a wonderful thing, but a big change and all-consuming nonetheless. And as if graduating and starting a new relationship on top of normal life things weren’t enough, moving house and searching for a job were also thrown into the mix.

I felt tired a lot of the time, but didn’t think too much of it. Soon I’d be moved into my new flat and have everything set up there, water, wifi, washing machine fixed, the whole shebang. I’d have graduated soon, that would give me more headspace. And I’d start my new job, something simple, so it wouldn’t ask much of me, and I’d finally be done with all that stress and hard work, I’d properly have free time, where I didn’t constantly feel like really I should be studying.

So, sure I was tired now, but everything would come together and it would all be great. My life could finally start. I was living my own life in London. I was going to be completely done with uni, and I was going to just work and have fun – enjoy being in a romantic relationship at last. I felt like I’d grown a lot and I knew better what mattered now. My life was about to truly begin.

But then, one day I realised that my level of exhaustion had reached some sadly significant low. I was now so tired, I felt, that I was a less nice person because of it, and a less nice girlfriend. Of course it’s natural that when you’re tired you become perhaps slightly less attentive, empathetic, patient, etc. but this was different – much more profound.

Still, when I handed in my dissertation not much later, I thought I’d have plenty of time to rest before I’d start my new job. But even that evening I didn’t have the energy to go out and celebrate this happy moment, and the very next day my tiredness hit me so hard that it made me homesick.

I went home to Amsterdam for a few days to celebrate my twenty sixth birthday. It didn’t help. I postponed the start of my job. It didn’t help. I simply didn’t seem to be able to rest and regain energy. I continued to feel pretty much equally tired. And stressed, because unlike what I had hoped and expected, things weren’t exactly all in order.

That summer and early autumn I spent many a day in a lovely little bakery on the other side of Brockwell park, walking through there from my new flat to sit at one of their tables and make use of their wifi – okay, and to eat big slices of cake. Yet their cosy atmosphere and delicious food weren’t what I came for, it was so that I could do lots of lifeless life admin, that I couldn’t do at my still internetless flat, where by the way the washing machine still wasn’t fixed, and the sink was so blocked that we had to do the washing up in the bathroom.

Mid October I started work anyway. What other choice did I have? None, is what I thought; I had to pay rent, council tax, and buy food. But I don’t think I really thought about it like that, I didn’t even consider the idea of having a choice, of having something to decide. I simply didn’t question it. It sucked that I felt very tired, but surely that would sort itself out, maybe having the structure and activity of a job would even help, and get me out of this slump.

The reality, however, was that I struggled on many different levels from the very beginning. Even the night before my first day I went to sleep too late, and to be honest I can’t remember whether that was because my boyfriend and I were so in love that going to sleep was pretty much impossible, or because we were arguing. Either way, I was anything but rested when I arrived at a school on the other side of London the next day.

I had never been to that school before, because I hadn’t been hired by them, I had been hired by an agency. I was going to be a supply teaching assistant (TA). This, however, was probably the worst job I could have chosen. It didn’t fit me, but most of all it didn’t fit me in an utterly exhausted state, which was my permanent state at the time. Groups of loud children that you need to make do things they don’t particularly want to do. It can be amazing and rewarding, but when you’re beyond shattered, it’s a challenge that will destroy you.

Moreover, being a supply TA meant that I never knew in advance where I’d work, how to get to the school, and what the building’s layout was like. All I got each morning was a quick briefing over the phone from my agency, which sometimes included things like ‘don’t wear jeans’ (can do) or ‘wear smart shoes’ (can sort of do, but it means I haven no choice but to deal with the discomfort of a bump on the inner sole of the boots I should probably already have gotten rid of).

I had no idea what was expected of me, I didn’t know the teachers, the children, nor their names – and if I actually did know a name, then I didn’t know whether and in what way to enforce a rule, since I didn’t have a clue what the rules actually were at that school. I constantly had to wing it and improvise – the absolute opposite of my strong suits.

I thought that if only I could get a permanent position at a school (so I worked extra hard), and if only I got my routine around work down (so I worked extra hard at home too), I’d be okay and my energy would come back. I’d be able to do things outside of work that mattered to me, and that would eventually get me work in the theatre (the subject of my MA).

I just needed to make sure I slept enough – which maybe in theory was possible but in practice turned out not to be, both because I had so little time to get the basic things done like showering, cooking, and prepping lunch, and because I was too in love, unable to go to sleep early when my boyfriend was right there to talk to endlessly.

I tried to get into a rhythm. On Sundays I cooked enough for another few workdays. When I got home from work I immediately popped that food in the microwave and hungrily ate it in bed with a tv series on my laptop. Then I prepped everything for the next day: laying out my clothes, preparing my lunch, filling my water bottle, packing my bag. I got pretty efficient at this routine, but I never seemed to get efficient enough – because of my (at the time undiagnosed) autism I basically only work on thorough mode.

I barely had any time left to do anything else. And so I continued to live an out of balance life, with too little sleep and play, and way too much stress at work. This continuously drove me closer and closer to despair. Yet still I thought it would somehow work out. I was happy – in love – and so surely it would work itself out. I wasn’t overworked, I thought, I was just not quite sleeping enough. If only it were so simple.

I think that my naivety speaks directly to the severity of the situation – I spent virtually all of my time in my room to avoid my lovely flatmates, because I was unable to deal with a simple smile or ‘how are you’. Precisely because it was in fact very severe, I was so deep in survival mode that I had no idea of what was really going on. That I was burning out multiplied by a million.

In January 2020, only a few months after starting my job, my exhaustion and despair had grown to an almost comical size. I was constantly trying to get a grip and constantly failing, like one of those grabby machines on a fairground, where it seems impossible to actually hold on to any of the prizes.

There was this one moment on my way to work when I was simply sitting on the train and it just all felt so surreal. I knew that this wasn’t good, to feel like that, and yet I continued on my journey to work, where I had to try harder every day not to shout at the children (I didn’t, but in my mind I pushed it all away, all of the chaos and noise).

And then one day it’s like my mouth just moved in a way so that the right words came out, the words that needed to come out. That I couldn’t do this any longer and I needed to stop. Stop temporarily, I thought. Temporarily, yes that may be correct, but it would last much much longer than I guessed at the time: three months off work should prevent serious burnout and have me rested and ready – yeah right.

Two months in, at the end of March 2020, I was in Amsterdam with my parents and boyfriend. My boyfriend and I were going to move there properly that summer. But then the pandemic hit. And around the same time I realised that I hardly felt any better.

I googled ‘burnout’ and recognised all of the symptoms plus I met the criterion of having struggled with these things for at least six months – yep, that would have been around the time that I realised that my tiredness led me to be a less nice person. Since then of course my fatigue had only increased, and I now knew I was in fact burnt out.

How bad it was became apparent at that moment when I could finally fully give into it, let go into utter and complete exhaustion. The world was in lockdown; I was in lockdown – shutdown and meltdown all at once. I was beyond empty, beyond wired, beyond tired: truly and wholly burnt out to my core.

What triggered your burnout, or other crisis? And what made you realise that it was happening?

If you liked this post, you may also like:

Welcome to Beginner at Life

What to do with the in-between?

The doom of doubt – am I on the right track?

The grief of chronic fatigue