what a ride it’s been.
my last post i wrote about adhd but i didn’t touch too much on the burnout. i thought i was over it, silly me. less true words were never uttered wtf.
when i ask myself now what happened, i think it was just a lot of things put together. an unholy level of stress at work. dealing with uncertainty and parties that weren’t necessarily trustworthy. saying yes to everything because i’m either interested in everything or fomo. overestimating my capabilities and over compensating.
and the lack of compassion to myself oh my god.
i never seriously thought i had an “inner voice”. that was for “quirky”, neurotic manic pixie dream girls only wtf. #judgmental
but one day i found myself crying in my car with nitaya during a lunch meeting we were supposed to have. she gently suggested i ask for help from the team while i get back on my feet.
there was a voice in my head after all. that voice was saying things like useless and redundant and what am i getting paid for then?
i’ve been a bit more mindful of my inner thoughts and workings (which i believe is a step in the journey of healing!) so i noticed these words pop up in my head for the first time.
i know i’m hard on myself but this is downright abusive wtf.
i realized that
i’m so ashamed and scared of not living up to expectations or letting people down or being thought of as lazy when really i think i’m the only person thinking i’m lazy at the moment.
and i’m not lazy tho! i’m always working wtf.
but its this insane narrative that i’ve set out for myself that’s got me thinking that i cannot stop. that if i do, i’m lazy or not good enough or a burden. maybe someone made a comment once because i only do my work at the last minute or that i procrastinate too much. it could be due to the adhd or it may not but i’d internalized the idea that i was lazy or a burden. nobody’s judging but me and i was the world’s harshest critic. i kept piling layer upon layer until i’m too scared to ever do something different. until i don’t even realize what’s happening. until it becomes me.
and i’ve spent my whole life trying to prove i’m not any of those things. that gets exhausting.
(to illustrate how bad it is, i haven’t taken a real day off in seven years. even if i’m traveling, i work while on holiday. the ugly truth is that i don’t want to do handovers because i’m so disorganized i know my handover will be all over the place shit and i don’t want anyone knowing that. so i’d rather do the work myself and ruin my own holiday wtf.)
so yea, i could say its the unreliable working partners or the over loading on work. the goal setting when before it was just complacency. the disorganization and poor working memory and whatnot.
in actual fact, the root cause is none of the above but rather a deeply buried self loathing, a fear that i don’t deserve to rest because i haven’t earned it or that i don’t deserve time because i’m not perfect. and a rigid unwillingness to face those fears of not enough. i plaster and plaster so what everyone sees is a laughing, likeable person with nice hair and a pretty smile. A Barbie.
my dear, you need a real break. If can take a short holiday without work. Just stay lazy and do your reading and your exercise and mute all the work whataspp message. Hope this will helps. I also just walk out from my own burnout. Jia You! You done fabulous as a mother, a wife, a daughter and a superior.