Burn out

[harasgenster]

Hi
I seem to suffer from constant underlying anxiety but it definitely peaks about once a year due to "burn out".

I work very hard all the time, even when I don't have a job I find something to do and burn out because of that.

At the moment I have a job that is incredibly stressful and this month I have worked at least five hours of every weekend day and around 12-14 hours of every working day.

I know fine well that the reason things have got so out of hand is because I'm working so often I am getting slower through exhaustion thus having to work longer to get it done and it becomes a vicious circle!

Right now I can't avoid work because I have a huge amount to do by Tuesday because I was off with a virus this week.

However, after this I want to change things.

The main problem is that I have a very clear idea what I want to do with my life but I'm not doing it because I either need to work very hard at something else (like my job) that just needs to be done, or I procrastinate by doing other things because this dream is so important to me that trying to do it terrifies me! (What if I fail?)

I have overworked (at other things) since I started university (six years ago) and have managed to have several minor breakdowns since then due to overworking myself. At one point I dropped down to a size zero and ended up agoraphobic because of the massive strain I was putting myself under and tried to learn from what I had done but I just keep repeating the same behaviour!

What I want to do is learn to relax - about everything. I want to stop overworking on everything that's not particularly important to me and take a risk by having a go at the one thing that means the world to me. Ridiculously, I've dipped my toe in to the field I want to one day work in and found out I'm good at it, but I'm still terrified that I'll turn out to be too stupid!

Has anyone else had similar difficulties or is a workaholic? Has anyone found any good techniques to try and get out of this stupid pattern?

Thanks

[jothenurse]

Have you received some counseling on this? I tend to be very busy, especially at work. Do you think you work so hard because you are afraid you'll become anxious or start thinking about things when you're not busy?

[harasgenster]

Hi
Thanks for the reply.

I have seen many professionals but most of the ones I've seen have been stand-in mental health workers while you're waiting for a psychologist who just gave me leaflets about burn out and working too hard (that I was too busy to read!)

When I actually got to see a psychotherapist his style wasn't really my thing and at that point I wasn't overworking because I wasn't sleeping and it was all a bit of a waste of time because I couldn't engage with therapy when I was so tired!

Not sure what makes me work exactly. Had a couple of confidence knocks doing my exams before uni and ending up going through clearing so worked hard to prove I was clever when I was doing my degree.

Then the not sleeping thing started when I left uni and ended up in admin job which didn't require me to use my brain. When I get bored I get possibly more stressed than when I burn out but its a different kind of stress - a friend recently told me this was referred to as "rusting" - a term I kinda like. As in not being challenged or pushed at all when you're used to high levels of mental stimulation.

I swing between the two because I get too ill to work then get so bored I become extremely depressed - I start feeling like my life is going nowhere.

Then again, I feel like my life is going nowhere when I'm working hard because occasionally it occurs to me that I'm throwing all my energy into something I don't want to do instead of working on what is important to me.

If anything, I work hard to 1) save myself from the chance of being bored and 2) to give myself the impression I have direction in my life so I can pretend its the direction I want to go in. In reality this only works temporarily because I sometimes see someone else do well at the thing I want to do and I know I've got ideas that I think are better - then I get really depressed that I'm wasting my life and don't have the guts to go for it.

[Oddfish]

Isn't it funny how we react in different ways to similar stresses. It's interesting that you say you work hard as you fear getting stressed by boredom and want to convince yourself that you are going in the right direction when you know you are probably not, but you end up burning out.

I seem to be the opposite. In the past I have suffered burn out through boredom and repetition in a job, but these days it seems that I never ever get bored, even when I have absolutely nothing to do. Consequently I burn out because I feel over-stimulated by even 'normal' levels of work, especially if it is in something I don't want to do. You throw yourself into work to escape 'nothing', I want to run away from work to embrace 'nothing', yet both of us feel that life it going nowhere and we're on the wrong track from what we really want to do.