Living the dream after burnout

After spending the past few months in Italy, thanks to gaining the Digital Nomad Visa (I talk more about that here), I’ve been more deeply reflecting on the journey of life after burnout.

It’s well documented and understood that burnout has huge emotional, mental and physical effects. Our whole system gets depleted beyond its ability to keep up.It also isn’t something that a week off will ‘fix’, we have to go to the causes of burnout and address the issues that got us there.

But beyond that, I think there’s a more sinister residue that especially affects high-achievers and big dreamers…

We lose our capacity to trust ourselves.

Which means we stay smaller than we really want to be and don’t know what inner voice to follow when we look ahead to our future.

Whilst we can do lots to heal physically, this disconnection from the part of ourselves that lights us up, creates, dreams and visions can cause the greatest harm.

I know this was certainly true for me.

Not only did I suffer burnout, but I realised I had been living in it for far longer than I knew and it was mostly founded in a fawning trauma response.As I questioned everything about my identity and how I had made past decisions, I felt lost and alone in the desert. All I knew was how to keep moving forward but I had no compass, no direction and a toolkit that I didn’t know if it was serving me or harming me.

I discovered that the burnout itself is merely one breaking down, we go through a whole other one as we question, heal and reconstruct our very identity.

But I honestly believe that this is what burnout is ultimately calling us to do.

It’s also why I am so passionate about supporting people through this journey. No-one can take the fire away, but they absolutely can walk through it with you knowing that what’s on the other side is worth the temporary pain.

This process went deep for me. I spent days in crippling pain as I allowed myself to break into all the pieces I needed to. I was prepared to walk away from everything, including my marriage, if that is what my soul needed (to add a note here, there’s no part of me that wanted to do that, but I had to be that open for the ‘real’ me to be fully known).

To the outside world, life pretty much carried on as normal. All of the time, I was processing and healing so that I could trust myself and my decisions again. I needed to be able to dream big and create. Burnout had deprived me of all of that.

It was about 6 months after my discovery of burnout that I dared to start dreaming again. It’s when I started planning my European road trip in my van and I started to step forward in trust, of myself and life, again.

Being totally transparent here, forgiveness of my past self took significantly longer as I journeyed with resentment as a companion for quite a while. It’s not the most welcome travel guest but I believe it was one of the last things to heal because it wanted to make sure I wouldn’t go back to that old self that had abandoned herself so catastrophically.

That’s one of the most amazing realisations about the healing process. We don’t need to be ‘perfect’ before we move forward. We can embrace all of the parts of ourselves, sit with them around the camp fire and still know that we are worthy and enough.

And that was the point I reached which allowed me to take the steps forward that honored myself. Little did I know at the time, but that decision would lead me to realising a dream that has been beyond what I could have ever imagined- a life here in Italy.

Allowing everything to fall away is the hardest and yet most profound part of the process. I’ve never spoken about it in depth before, but, the people who are ‘true’ in your life, will remain.

I vividly remember the night I broke down with my husband telling him I no longer knew what I wanted. I was so broken that I didn’t know whether I needed to walk away from everything in order to find myself again. I’ll never forget his ability to stand in that pain with me and not try to change it, but accept that if this is what I truly needed, he would support me (despite it being the last thing he wanted). In that moment, something shifted in me. Being able to get to that point meant I saw clearer than ever what I did want and I knew beyond any doubt that I wanted us to be together.

The people who see the ‘real’ you, the ones who truly love and care for you, will always want what is best for you. They embrace your quirks and celebrate your growth.

You may not always agree, but that doesn’t shift the core connection that exists.

Will some people fall away as you go through this process? Very likely.

But I promise you this, the ones that don’t, will emerge as stronger, deeper and more fulfilling relationships than ever before.

I will explore this more in a future blog post, but during these past few months, I’ve felt a bit like Bambi as I walk this path with a new identity. It’s like seeing the world anew and making different decisions to what my ‘old self’ would have chosen. Stay tuned for more :)

And if this resonates with you, know that you deserve support on your journey and I would love to connect with you more.

Find out more here.