ABL #4: A framework for navigating burnout

My 4-part system to combat chronic stress on all sides

Sep 26, 2023

Back in 2019, when I was DIY’ing my burnout recovery one Google search at a time, I came up with a system.

I was trying to wrap my head around burnout: what it was, what it meant, and why it kept happening to me, but also how to pull myself out of it and never go back.

And it was turning out to be a lot more complex than I’d bargained for.

I’m a visual learner, so I drew a mind map. I ran out of room on the paper, so I taped it to my wall and kept going, adding Post-It notes covered with stats, glossary terms, risk factors, symptoms, and books to read. Over the next several weeks I kept adding, conspiracy-theorist style, playing a word association game with the neon scatterplot shapeshifting across my wall.

“Let’s talk about burnout. Can we talk about burnout? I’ve been dying to talk about burnout.” — Me, almost always. (*Source*)

Eventually, that sticky-note word cloud distilled and congealed into my Anti-Burnout Framework. It’s a four-part system that strategically combines1 recovery methods, prevention tactics, and management techniques into the following categories:

Research and Reflect
Reframe
Recharge
Reconnect

These categories overlap somewhat because the concepts they cover are nuanced and broad-reaching. Ideas that fit into multiple categories might be more significant or impactful, or there might just be more ways to think about them — a mindfulness practice can help you recharge, for example, but can also help you reframe your thought patterns.

Don’t take this framework as a prescription to cure burnout. It’s just a process I came up with to organize my scattered, fuzzy thoughts. But in the four years since, this framework has grown to guide much of how I live my life, including how I plan content for this newsletter. I’m laying it all out for you here partly because it’s foundational to SO many other pieces I’m planning for this space, but also so you can adapt it as needed for your burnout management.

1. Research and Reflect

Burnout can feel like having blinders on. Chronic stress and overwork don’t just consume time and attention, they also severely impair focus, learning, and memory. All you can see is what’s directly in front of you.

The Research part of this framework felt like taking off my blinders because just the simple act of Googling burnout allowed me to “zoom out” and find perspective. Suddenly I wasn’t the only one feeling utterly exhausted and wondering if this was all there was to life; now there was (and still is) a burnout epidemic going on!

To be clear, I’m not saying you have to drop everything and become a full-time burnout researcher either to heal from chronic stress or for this system to hold value. But I am saying — as a journalist, strategist, and Advice Friend — that research is the starting point for any good plan of action. You can’t effectively heal your burnout cycle unless you know what you're dealing with.

Burnout is easy to generalize about, but everyone’s experience of it (and reasons for it) is slightly different. So if you’re adapting this framework for yourself, focus on the factors that apply to you and don’t dwell on the factors that don’t.

For example, it was easy to find studies of burnout in fields traditionally considered to be high-pressure, like healthcare or law. But I got more out of the studies that looked at categories I actually fit into, like millennials, women, and self-employed people.

I also gave significant weight to the empirical source which is my journal. What better way to ferret out what my own burnout red flags are, or which steps actually work to re-regulate my nervous system when my stress response is activated? You are the expert on you, after all. And the more you journal, the more data points you have about yourself.

But having that data only helps if you refer back to it. I made it a regular habit to review older entries, and over time, this has helped me spot trends2 in my mental health, articulate soupy feelings, and find the edges of what is and isn’t normal for me.

The review helps, too, because burnout impairs learning and memory, especially short-term recall.

You might have a moment of clarity on an issue while journaling, and it might all make sense at the time. But a few days or weeks later, when it’s no longer at the forefront of your burnt-out little brain, the details are fuzzy and you lose its impact. Sometimes there’s a pattern forming that you can’t see when you're in the thick of it, writing a single entry. But when you read back through later you see the same issue popping up again and again for months.

For example, last year I realized I could track my mental health through my camera roll. The worse I feel about myself — externally or internally — the fewer selfies I take. But I doubt I would have made the connection had I not already journaled about that particular selfie-less rough stretch (you could say I was lacking selfie-confidence).

The data points I collected through my research — about burnout and about myself — are the groundwork for every other step of this framework, which has continued to evolve as I’ve continued to heal and learn.

2. Reframe

Learning means constantly reframing your understanding of things through the lens of new information. So this section is about changing your thought patterns based on everything your research has shown you about your relationship with burnout.

It’s a rewiring of your neural pathways to leave behind the internalized capitalism and hustle culture that got you there.

For example, my journals show me that even after years of working on this, I still feel overwhelming guilt and shame whenever I need to take a sick day.

Logically, I know I deserve to take a sick day when I’m sick. I know it’s not my fault I’m sick, and I know I’ll do better work if I take time away to recover than if I try to work through it. And I know those sick days are part of my compensation package — I’ve already earned them by working allllllllllll of the days that I didn’t call out sick.

But the core belief is that I’m only worth what I produce. If I take a sick day, I’m not productive; if I’m not productive, I’m a drain on society;3 if I’m a drain on society, I have to somehow make up that debt just to warrant my existence; if anyone offers kindness or understanding in the meantime, it’s only because they’ve been successfully duped into thinking I have a right to be here, which of course I know I don’t because imposter syndrome constantly reminds me how out-of-place I am in every setting.

Enter the positive affirmations, the therapy, the shadow work, the manifesting, the meditation, and the rewriting of those tired old stories about how we’re fundamentally flawed and can never measure up. That’s what capitalism — and so many other -isms — wants you to believe, because if you believe you’re not good enough you won’t demand the pay, benefits, or working conditions you deserve, and you’ll keep working harder and harder to make it through goalposts that keep moving. Fuck that.

Reframe covers all the lenses through which we can rethink our relationship to burnout culture. For me, this has meant changing how I think about fundamental aspects of my personality, my relationship dynamics, and really, my entire approach to life. I feel like a very different person now than the one who started this Anti-Burnout journey four years ago.

3. Recharge

If you’re already burnt out, you may need to start with this step before you have the capacity for the first two.

It’s hard to talk about recharging without talking about rest, and it’s hard to talk about rest without talking about sleep. In the depths of my burnouts, sleep was the only type of rest I was getting, and it never really felt that restful.

But according to Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, author of the book Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity, there are seven different types of rest we all need, and sleep is only part of one of them.

Physical rest is when your body feels more rested, well, and at ease. It can be either passive, like sleeping, or active, like stretching or yoga. Everybody needs both.
Mental rest is when your brain gets to switch gears and use a different type of energy and focus for a while.
Sensory rest is when your senses finally get to catch a break so you don’t feel so overstimulated.
Creative rest is when you feel inspired, fueled, and get that burst of motivation.
Emotional rest is when you feel safe enough to let down your guard and unmask — when you feel free to be yourself without fear of judgment (from others OR from yourself!)
Social rest is when you get to be with people who fuel you rather than drain you.
Spiritual rest is when you get to feel grounded, fulfilled, and a part of something bigger and more meaningful than just your individual self.

So really, the Recharge part of this framework is about prioritizing the things this list encompasses.

What feels restorative and regenerative for you? What feels like play? What activities or people leave your brain feeling like Pop Rocks (what an exciting new idea feels like to me) rather than a soggy sweatsock (brain fog, imposter syndrome, and self-criticism, obvi)? What/who leaves you without that perpetual headache from clenching your teeth, or lets your shoulders finally melt away from your ears?

What gives YOU energy rather than requiring a lot of energy FROM you?

(If you don’t know right now, you might just be used to minimizing or neglecting your own needs, wants, preferences, and desires. But these are all excellent questions to explore in your journal. Collect those data points, baby!)

Recharge is about all the ways you fill your own tank, pitcher, or cup. Remember, you have to fill your own first. It’s about the things we do to play, especially those that don’t directly hinge on capitalism or consumption — if there is any way around either — about setting boundaries to protect what helps you recharge.

It’s self-care, but less about luxuriating in an Instagram-worthy bubble bath and more about making that time non-negotiable, or scrubbing the grime out of the tub so your nervous system feels safe enough to wash your hair.

4. Reconnect

If Recharge is about self-care, Reconnect is about community care.

Nobody prepared me for how isolating burnout would be, even before 2020’s special-edition, pandemic-flavored layer of it.

With all my time and energy consumed by overwork, I no longer had the capacity to maintain most non-work relationships, let alone nurture them. My attention and focus were spent mostly on the relationships making the problem worse.

But when I was eventually fired for burning out, the shame and guilt over losing my source of employment — a huge part of my identity at that time — meant I didn’t just lose coworkers but professional connections, too.

There’s a common saying that we’re the average of the five people we spend the most time with. But if the people you spend the most time with are focused on extracting as much work from you as they can for as little in return as they can — or are every bit as overwhelmed and depleted as you are — then eventually you’re going to burn out.

You’ll lose yourself along the way, project by project, job by job, until one day you’ll wake up and have no idea who you are anymore or how you got there.

Again and again, I found myself drifting because of burnout, feeling alone and without a community to fall back on.

Humans are meant to exist in packs, tribes, or in some sense of community with each other. Without that, everybody suffers. Research shows that close friendships are key to longer lifespans, while casual acquaintances are a vital part of an emotionally healthy life. But in April, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness an epidemic that’s increasing the national risk of anxiety, depression, heart disease, dementia, stroke, and premature death. As my Co-Star Astrology horoscope two years ago told me, “You’re not your best self when you pull up your drawbridge.”

Isolation increases stress, but community and purpose insulate against it.

Reconnect is about the things that keep us grounded, and I mean that in the way an electric shock moves through the body.

You need anchors — people, practices, a sense of purpose, whatever reminds you of what’s important beyond burnout culture (including the parts of yourself you've had to neglect to meet its demands) — so that when a major stress happens, you’re not forced to handle the shock alone and fry your system in the process.

Or so that when an employer tries to convince you that your job title is your identity, you have people in your corner ready to show you otherwise.

Community development is a burnout prevention tactic. For me, this has meant building new relationships that more closely reflect who I’ve become — or want to become — through this process. But it’s also meant reevaluating some of the relationships I thought I’d lost to burnout. With time and intention — and attention — it turns out you can rebuild even the most charred of bridges.

I feel I should remind anyone reading that this is just a system I came up with to wrap my head around a concept as complex as burnout. It’s not meant to be a comprehensive manual for anyone, even myself.

A tweet from X (formerly Twitter) user @elle91 that reads, "The feminine urge to say 'I don't know if that makes sense' after making the most sense a human can possibly make." — *Source*

I do still wonder if any of this makes sense outside of my brain, despite enlisting multiple people to assure me it does. So if you have lingering questions about how I use this framework, or if you choose to adapt this for your own use, I’d love to hear from you. You can reply to this email or leave a comment below and let me know how this lands for you.

Anti-Burnout Life

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