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It’s almost Christmas. But this year we find ourselves picking our way between lockdowns, checking the news for pandemic updates, juggling 24/7 childcare with boundary less work. So, instead of watching the Muppet’s Christmas Carol (official best film), I'm doing a thread.
Because I am struggling and I’m pretty sure I am not the only one. And when I struggle, I go full nerd. So hang on…
We have been doing this for a long time. The past year has been one endless cycle of stress, anxiety and an overhanging sense of threat. And when you experience that, constant, prolonged and chronic stress, an exceptionally common next step is the development of burnout.
Traditionally, psychologists talk about burnout in occupational settings, when work is relentlessly taxing or provides us little in the way of control. But in truth, burnout can happen in any situation where we have had to deal with too much for too long.
And when we are burned out, we experience emotional exhaustion, an overwhelming sense of fatigue, constant minor aches and ailments, a sense that we are not fulfilling our potential or that we are constantly failing.
These symptoms are accompanied by an increased sense of cynicism and compassion fatigue. There are theories to explain burnout, which essentially come down to burnout developing when we are experiencing a high level of demand without the perceived resources to deal with them.
More recent research has pinpointed ‘parental burnout’…
Stay with me here...
Stay with me here...
Parental burnout results from an exposure to chronic parenting stress, with an excess of duties and chores that must be completed and a lack of external support. Let’s break that down. We are now parenting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
And whilst we love our little cherubs to their very bones, we are now parenting full time and working full time and surviving a pandemic full time and managing groceries and Christmas and elderly parents… It's a lot!
We don’t talk about these things much, likely because we want to appear to have it all together. But I think that if we are ever going to be open about these issues, now is the time. We have lost our social support networks, we have lost jobs and families and time to ourselves.
Our brains are being asked to process more than ever before and have been for A VERY LONG TIME.
Once the adrenaline wears off (I love adrenaline. Adrenaline once allowed me to go straight from a Norwegian hospital bed to teaching 200 hundred NATO soldiers for four hours and then catching the next flight home), what is left is this permanent sense of exhaustion, teariness,
aches and the sense of simply having done too much for too long.
Research into burnout suggests there are things you can do to counteract it. When there is a cost, it must have a resource to counteract it. Our resources are our support network, time for leisure, compassion for ourselves as parents & a good sense of our own emotional health.
What research also indicates is one of the biggest risk factors for burn out is perfectionism.
That’s right. Say it with me. PERFECTIONISM.
That’s right. Say it with me. PERFECTIONISM.
I stand before you as a self proclaimed perfectionist. And I defend myself by saying that not ALL perfectionism is bad. Self-oriented perfectionism (having high demands for oneself) can be downright useful in motivating us to reach our goals.
However…
However…
The other side of the coin is socially prescribed perfectionism. This is when we find ourselves subject to the high demands of others, be that society at large (think of the ‘perfect mother’ myth), or our social groups.
When we get caught up in a cycle of perfectionism in order to meet the perceived high demands of others, a number of things can happen and, frankly, few of them are good.
Socially prescribed perfectionism is associated with burnout in sports and occupational settings. It is linked with self criticism, high levels of anxiety and an overgeneralisation of failures.
It can feel like impossibly high standards have been imposed by someone else and that you have no means to meet them and no control over them.
Perfect standards are impossible to meet at the best of times. And these, my dear friends, are not the best of times. We are going to screw up. We are going to fail. Our kids are going to live on chicken nuggets and Oreos and go (*counts on fingers*) 6 days without a shower.
Our living rooms are going to be trashed. Our laundry baskets overflowing. We are going to fail. You know why? Because we are in a goddamn pandemic, that’s why!
So, if you find yourself like me, struggling with burnout, there are some things I want you to take from the rich resource of psychological papers. Be kind to yourself. Show yourself compassion for your perceived failings. Give yourself permission to be imperfect.
Talk to someone - and not just anyone, but someone who is GOOD at listening and who will not judge you.
Be aware of social pressures, be that from social media or family or neighbours. If someone makes you feel that you have failed in some way by not being dressed at 3.12pm (*looks down*) - check - tell them that you are conserving your resources to use in a more effective way,
and that living though a pandemic requires different standards of us. Low, LOW standards!
And most importantly, I want you to look back on this past year and take stock of all you have lived through, all you have survived. Because when you calculate your resources, you need to calculate all of those things too.
And whether you have skipped through this year or crawled (YUP!), you have survived. Which likely means that you have more strength in you than you ever imagined you could have.
And now, I am going to take my pj clad self downstairs to where my kids are screaming bloody murder & I'm going to eat smarties & watch the muppets. God bless us, everyone.
