Burnout.

“Burn out” is such an interesting term, thrown around far too casually in my opinion. Burnout does not just mean you are sick of your job, or tired of going to work everyday. It is a psychological change that occurs when people give too much of themselves in work that is highly relational, a constant outpouring for others; when we light ourselves on fire to keep those around us warm. Burnout is the draining of your own energy supply to a dangerous level as you relate to and serve others in their time of crisis or trauma. It is a silent threat, slow and then all at once, not one you see coming or even recognize until you’ve been swept up in its unforgiving grasp. I wish I would have known the moment when I crossed into the hazardous territory of burn out - the moment I could have hit pause and turned back before hitting the rocks. I’d like to warn the others.

Burnout doesn’t mean I didn’t continue to love my work, I never stopped loving the work I was doing, but the way in which I did it was compromising my self. Burnout looks different for different people in very relational work, but for me it looked like anger. It looked like a tunnel-vision kind of bitterness. It looked like an absolute, soul crushing sort of hopelessness. Like seeing infants, one after another, coming into my office barely alive, and not having enough hope left to want to fight for them, because I have seen the story end in tragedy too many times. It looked like days, then weeks, of barely being able to get out of bed, but not being able to sleep, and nightmares that haunted me when I did. It felt an awful lot like worthlessness, a stripping away of identity and purpose. It tasted like beer - too many, too often, and for all the wrong reasons. It felt like panic attacks and crying spells, inconveniently timed and all consuming. It sounded like fighting with my neighbors and not having the energy to invite kids into my home when they would show up looking for solace and friendship, something past experience told them could always be found in my apartment. I couldn’t find it now. 

I have been known in the past for my joy, my childlike excitement and the ease at which I could see the good in life, even in the midst of the bad. I couldn’t find that joy anymore, searching the depths of myself it was nowhere to be seen, and that truly terrified me. Burnout, for me, looked like losing myself only to find myself in things unfamiliar; anger, judgement, despair. And fear. All the time, fear. In any circumstance, fear. Burnout is not a casual thing. It is not a term to be thrown around haphazardly. It is a bitter, ugly threat to the livelihood of anyone it attempts to conquer. In the most terrifying ways, burnout truly changed me, to the core of my character. 

I’m home now.  Well, one of my homes, on sabbatical. I’m surrounded by peaceful things and have nothing but time for yoga, reading, walking, all the healing things. There is no trauma happening during my days here, no life or death scenarios and urgently needed help. No riots or burning tires. I can freely drive on any road, go to the store and know I’ll find food, and go to the gas station to actually find gasoline. There is no threat to my physical safety and I am surrounded by loving, healthy friendships rather than conflict. I am out of the battle, and yet, my body doesn’t believe it. The symptoms of burnout I felt recently while working in Haiti; the panic attacks and physical tension, the nightmares and quick responses of anger, it’s all still here and holding fast. I like to picture that my body - convinced I was in danger as it saw me using up the last pieces of myself for others - used the solid, impenetrable bricks of burnout to build a wall around my true self, to lock all that good stuff up where no one could take it, or more likely, I couldn’t give it away. Now, within the safety and peace of my life in America I am painfully, slowly dismantling the wall. Telling each symptom of burnout, brick by heavy brick, that it is no longer needed here. Thanking it for its protection but assuring it that I am learning how to care for myself better now, I see what I’ve been doing to myself and the threat is gone, this wall isn’t needed anymore. In this, I’m holding onto the few strands of hope I have managed to find, that I will start coming back to myself. That by doing this work all those good pieces of myself will start coming into view again.

Over the past 4 years in Haiti I have encountered many threats to my physical, spiritual, and mental wellbeing.  But to be clear, the death and trauma and conflict and loss we feel so often, that wasn’t what harmed me. I am burned out right now because over the past 4 years I didn’t realize what it meant to care for myself; no one told me that I should be loving, valuing, and serving my own needs as much, if not more, than what I do for those I serve in my work. That when I sit in the trauma of others and offer to help carry that weight, I then must seek help for the trauma I am sitting in too. I fell into the pressures that come with the title of missionary and the idea that Jesus would give me all the strength I need, as if I held no responsibility to put in effort of my own, and couldn't utilize the tools God has given me to care for others for myself, too. I want to scream from the mountaintops this lesson I have come to learn the hard way: those of us that are seen doing the hard jobs, the people being praised for following God’s call into the dark and heavy places, we are just that, people, in dark and heavy places. We are finite beings, experiencing the pain and suffering of this world in deeply personal ways and we need to seek care for the traumas we continuously bare witness to and live within just as much as those experiencing the trauma for themselves. We cannot help others when we are empty.

My life here is easy right now; it is slow paced and most days a little boring to be honest. It is also all that I can handle in this season, and exactly what I need. When I ache for my work in Haiti and for the parts of Haiti I love and still cling to, I remind myself that certain things can only be revealed to us in stillness and that this, right here, is the work. It is what we are each called to do within ourselves; tearing down the heavy bricks that we build unknowingly to protect ourselves and building ourselves back up differently, using the knowledge and experience we have gained in our battle, terrifying and ugly as it may be, to rebuild stronger, healthier, and more in tune with the needs of our own spirits.