I notice a pattern among clients who suffer from burn-out. In the clutch of demanding responsibilities, people fear that everything will collapse without their involvement. Duties wither their spirits, but they cannot shirk their tasks. “My children need me,” they might say. “The team will cease to function without me.” Thus, they are caught in a wicked dilemma, facing a choice between their own slow demise and the abandonment of what they hold dear. Anything short of unremitting commitment suggests personal failure or moral negligence. This dilemma is a gravitational field from which clients struggle to extricate themselves.
There are vital tasks require our total commitment, duties that only a few can adequately execute. I know of workplaces that are inimical to employees’ wellbeing. Sometimes, however, these situations themselves do not comprise the entire story of burn-out. There can be a part of us that is prone to the dilemma, a facet of our psyche that is given to the allure of burn-out. Demanding responsibilities (raising children, sustaining an academic career, maintaining a high-stress job) often hold psycho-spiritual import. We prove our mettle and burnish our character by rising to each challenge. Skillful discharge of our duties puts us above reproach. Total engagement confers the feeling of our own indispensability. We feel needed, important, valued. Thus, burn-out operates on a seemingly impenetrable logic: toil is tied to our sense of worth, and in exhaustion we feel our weight density. We are not real unless we are spent. This logic makes burn-out feel absolute. In leaving an untenable situation, we also upend an image of ourselves as responsible, competent, upright, and noble.
Victor Frankl once observed that those who give themselves to their careers without reserve often find themselves despondent in retirement. “Sunday Neuroses,” as Frankl called it, describes the uneasiness of those who have no content in their lives apart from their jobs. Labour and toil have totalized the psyche and subsumed the zest for life. Finding no purpose apart from their careers, people experience a rapid deterioration in vitality. The precipitous decline illustrates how duties and obligations totalize one’s identity and purpose.
Just as “Sunday Neurosis” indicate the uneasiness of those who cannot find vitality outside of their office, we see a similar process at work in cases of burn-out, in which the misery of exhaustion exudes its own pull. The intensity of the grind offers a sordid appeal. Exertion, rush of deadlines, perpetual motion, and constant stimuli can spin into a potent cocktail of adrenaline and cortisol served in a continuous loop. This toxic mixture provides a momentary high while degrading our fundamental wellbeing over time. The pattern has its grip on us, and we feel powerless in its clutch. However, upon a closer look, we are often attracted to burn-out because we want to resolve an unexamined need.
To fully understand burn-out, we begin by probing into the unacknowledged needs that we harbour. Those who have felt abandoned often make themselves indispensable. Feeling needed becomes their way of countering a life-long fear of abandonment. Others who have felt unloved often strive for affection, affirmation, and attention. Their tireless effort is an attempt to prove themselves worthy of love. Conversely, people who have excelled in school and career often burn-out because they do not know themselves outside of success. They equate success with their own personal worth. The threat of burn-out is preferable to failure, because the latter upends their sense of self and their hold on what is good. Still, others remain burnt out because their psyche has learned to feed on resentment. They can blame other people’s negligence, toxic workplaces, or unscrupulous colleagues. Hostility toward others reifies the feeling of a righteous self and fuels a bitter form of self-sacrifice. In each of these cases, burn-out is an unconscious attempt to relieve inner wounds that continue to fester.
The counselling process can help clients unravel the ways that they cling to exhausting situations. We claim our agency by looking within, identifying the many ways we persist in (and sometimes insist on) untenable situations. We bring unacknowledged needs into the warm light of awareness, examine the core beliefs that we have built around that need. For example, those who exhaust themselves chasing success may discover this core belief: I succeed, therefore I am good. We can challenge the validity of this core-belief by positing its opposite: I fail, therefore I am bad. Does failure mean that a person is faulty, corrupt and irredeemable? Can we endorse this view without qualification? Would we impart this belief to a child? If not, then why is success so unequivocally tied to one’s value? Following this line of investigation, we discover that the core beliefs that drive burn-out often require revision. A counsellor might ask the client to reflect on an alternative belief. If success is not equal to one’s worth, then one might instead try: I am worthy even though sometimes I succeed and sometimes fail. The process requires that we are honest with ourselves about how we’re hooked to burning out, how the story we tell ourselves serves a purpose in our unconscious psyche. Only in the light of this honest acknowledgement can we liberate ourselves from unsustainable situations.
Once our hold on core beliefs have softened, a counsellor can help clients generate practical ideas to find space and reprieve from burn-out. Clients can make time for self-care, to delegate responsibilities to others. Pragmatic actions are often obvious, but the psychological knots that prevent us from taking them are more difficult to untangle. A counsellor can help clients work through the inner dimensions of burn-out and direct them toward a healthier path.