*in the voice of the internet meme* Yeah, that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation....
This is what burnout looks like.
The picture on the right was taken a month or so after I was finally made redundant (more on that later) The picture on the left was taken about 4 years prior. Look closely at the eyes of picture on the right. There's nothing there is there? They're absolutely dead. It's as though you're looking at a waxwork figure of a person or one of those creepy photorealistic paintings. At the time I thought it was a nice photo. Now I see that my face was crying out for help.
How it all began
This isn't a short story so buckle up and get yourself a brew.
I moved to London in my late 20s when I got a job as a graphic designer at a startup company. In the beginning it was wonderful. I got the job two weeks after the guy I thought was bringing a ring home from his parents house, walked in the door and broke up with me out of the blue instead because he had decided he didn't want to settle down and told me to get out of our house. This came three weeks after I handed in my notice at my previous job because it wasn’t fulfilling and web design was not what I wanted to do with my life. He had encouraged me to leave. Suddenly I was faced with no home and no income, and having to move back in with my parents.
I saw this company as my saviour
It gave me a distraction, a bunch of really positive, intelligent, go-getter-can-do types who had fun and worked their arses off for something they believed in. I spent my days ducking nerf gun bullets and mini footballs being flung around the office while sat in a bean bag wearing a sombrero and thanking my stars that I was too busy to sit around feeling sorry for myself.
It was a lot taxis home from London to Surrey at 3am only to be up again at 5 to head back into London to take a train out to Bristol in order to be at a meeting that morning. Rinse and repeat. It was exhausting and I was running on caffeine, cold pizza and adrenaline. I had an incredible amount of responsibility dumped on my inexperienced shoulders - My manager was nowhere to be found 90% of the time because he was focussed on filming and I was left to brand this company by myself with absolutely no experience and I was on a 3 month probation period to prove myself before it was confirmed the job was even 100% mine. It was a case of swim or drown. I rose to it and swam so well I was promoted after a few months. I was extremely proud that lil 'ole me was working at a company winning tons of awards including branding.
Any sensible person would look at this and see someone standing on a track with a train rapidly approaching. Working like this is not sustainable.
The company grew extremely rapidly, things settled into a rhythm, the hours were not quite so long but I still rarely left the office before 8:30pm and never had lunch away from my desk. My workload increased, I just got better at managing it as I improved as a designer and was capable of working extremely fast - I once had to bash out 58 illustrations in 2 days. I had my wrist in splint for the next three months but I met that deadline.
The more the company grew, the more it tried to be ‘professional’, which meant hiring in experienced corporate people. The difference in the environment was night and day.
There were no more nerf guns, the bean bags disappeared. The fancy dress box vanished. Spontaneous laughter stopped. A million totally unnecessary but ‘vital’ meetings started. Performance reviews and goal setting became intense, and for me incredibly stressful because my entire job was reactive - how was I supposed to set ‘smart’ goals and achieve them when I never knew what was going to hit me when I walked in the door? One day I’d be doing branding, the next day brainstorming an interactive event design, the day after I’d be packed off on a bus with a camera that cost more than a years rent terrified I'd be mugged because I'd been instructed to photograph the ideal home show. The day after that I’d be creating a giant press wall for a government conference.
If you’re going to make my job reactive don’t penalise me for it.
I thrive with variety like that, but don't deprive me of my bonuses because I can't set goals to work towards because that is not how you have structured my role, even though I save your arse on a daily basis by pulling off the impossible in record time with very little complaint because I don't have time to complain.
Despite having 21 days of holiday allowance every year I used only 15 days in 3 years because there was too much to do and nobody else to do it, and too many people depending on me. Yet when I tore a ligament in my wrist and couldn't work easily for a few weeks, suddenly my job was on the line with calls from HR. I thanked my stars I'm ambidextrous because I would have been out on my rear if I wasn't. I was slower, but I managed.
Then the office politics started. Before, people were pretty up front and what you see is what you get, but the corporate culture was taking over in a big way. I have no interest in ‘playing the game’. Every conversation had some bizarre hidden agenda. As far as I’m concerned I go in, I get through my in-tray, I hit my deadlines, I go home hopefully before 9. I have no interest in climbing any ladders - I'm a designer because I'm good at drawing stuff - I have absolutely zero interest in managing other people and filling in forms. Pay me more and give me more important things to draw, fine; but I'm an artist not a bureaucrat.
Work-life balance is important. But in corporate culture putting your wellbeing first is not looked at favourably.
Setting boundaries like not receiving work emails on my personal phone and not taking work calls on weekends is not ok, and forgoing drinks with people you spend 90% of your time with on Thursday night in favour of seeing your actual friends who have a social every Thursday apparently makes you not a team player. Even though you are there for the Friday drinks instead. Bear in mind these Thursday and Friday drinks are held after work and you're not paid to be there.
If work 'officially' ends at 5pm and yet I'm still there past 8 every night for no overtime, helping people out by taking on extra projects, doing things that are absolutely not part of my job like copywriting, or prop hire for marketing events, and doing last minute 'emergency' briefs more times than I can count; come over here and tell me again that I'm not a team player, I dare you.
I grew up in an opera conservatoire.
My dad was an opera singer and worked in an opera conservatoire. I grew up knowing diva sopranos and bitchy tenors, director tantrums, stage managers ready to throttle anyone who breathes too loudly, overworked wardrobe mistresses with wild hair and mouths full of pins they're tempted to stick in someone, egoes clashing left right and centre, incredible amounts of bitching and dramatic feather boa flinging. But at the heart of it there was a show to put on and my god it was going to be put on no matter what. Everyone had their roles and they may not have agreed about everything most of the time, but a soprano is a soprano and there's no grey area about it. Your voice falls within a certain range or it doesn't. If you're cast as Carmen you're cast as Carmen. If you're cast as an understudy for Carmen you suck it up and pray she gets the flu. You don’t have a 2nd violin trying to sleep with the director even though he's gay because she wants to be Carmen. Theatre politics I understand.
Corporate culture is like being in an aquarium on a high diving board overlooking a tank full of sharks thrashing around trying to eat each other and being told to jump in or you’re not a team player.
I didn’t want to be eaten by a shark! I didn’t want to be a shark trying to eat another shark either! I don’t even know how I got into an aquarium situation in the first place- It should have been signposted. What the hell dystopian nightmare have I found myself in?
I told myself to rise above it. To just keep my head down and keep swimming. Stick it out. If it changed into this it can change into something else. This is just a shitty phase that's part of growth. It was great once, it could be great again.
Plus I’d built that brand from the ground up, I'd invested so much of myself and my time into creating the brand it was my baby and I didn’t trust anyone else to not fuck it up. I’d been there since it was a startup and I felt a sense of loyalty to the place. I couldn't just leave... too many people relied on me and there was nobody else who could do my job!.
If I just keep my head down and work harder it will be ok. I will be ok.
Then things got worse.
The restructuring began. There were not enough managers. Everyones workflows were stuck in a bottleneck. Everyone was getting in shit for things that weren't their fault or responsibility. Morale was so bad that nobody smiled any more. People were being fired, made redundant or walking out at an alarming rate. I said goodnight to a team of 80 dev guys one Friday night, and I came back on Monday to find only 20 left. I was calling and emailing someone trying to get through to them to get sign off on a project I was working on for them when someone walking past overheard me and said ‘oh didn’t you hear? he walked out last week. Just got up and left and never came back’.
A new project manager started
and the whispers started and secret meetings started. I’d be sat with my headphones on my head on mute while straining my ears to try and find out what the fuck was going on in my department. Asking questions straight up never got straight answers. One by one people left. They switched teams, They resigned, or walked out or were fired or were made redundant. The people who were hired in to help me with my workload jumped ship to the UI team and I had to absorb all the extra work. Aside from a freelancer who always seemed to be on holiday, I was the only one left on the design team. I walked in every day for a year and a half doing the work of 6 people for no extra pay or overtime, not knowing if my head was on the chopping board that day or not. All I was ever told was that they were looking for a design director to help me. It sure as shit didn’t feel like it. Anyone they hired lasted less than a week.
If your instincts tell you something smells like bullshit, that's usually because you are smelling bullshit.
Trust your gut.
If you write a list of pros and cons about your job and the only thing in the pros list is 'free breakfast' what the fuck are you doing with your life pal? Why are you still there??
I did this though. I was that idiot clinging onto some false hope things might get better.
To anyone looking on, this train crash in slow motion is obvious. However I realised too late that working in a corporate environment with insane hours, constant restructuring and horrendous management was possibly the most toxic place a highly sensitive creative soul like me could have put myself. Working til 3am was no longer an interesting diversion, it was just plain old exhausting. I also found out that adult bullying was a thing and it was happening to me at work. Every morning I woke up with a panic attack jolting me awake twenty minutes before my alarm. Every night I went to bed and spent half the night staring at the ceiling.
I started fighting back
I started actually taking the lunch hours I was entitled to which I never took in the past. I sat in Hyde Park with my overpriced sandwich and caffeinated sugar-loaded soft drink, and wrote battle plans for how the fuck I was going to get out of this mess, or I sat in Starbucks redoing my portfolio and trying to find some jobs that paid me as well for companies who had values I actually agreed with.
One thing I was absolutely clear about was that I didn't ever want to work for a corporation again. I'd worked in two, and both were clinical, de-humanising environments to be in, where people emailed instead of speaking - despite being sat right next to each other, and everyone was fully aware they were viewed as a replaceable cog in a machine instead of a person.
I wanted to be somewhere that actually did some good in the world. But nothing I found came close to matching my pay, and if a substantial pay cut was the only option, I was not unwilling to take it, but it would mean I would have to move. I'd already moved 14 times in 4 years and I was sick of moving. So I stayed.
Living in London was no longer exciting and, as much as I loved all my new friends, my social calendar filled me with anxiety. I had numbed out and shut down so much from the emotional stress of being bullied and overworked that I felt like the most boring, inferior person in the room. I was so drained I had nothing left in my tank to give anyone else, so I began isolating myself to spare them from having to endure my company.
I also suddenly found myself redundant (finally) after being told that my department was being shut down because it was cheaper to hire freelancers than it was to actually pay a human being a reliable wage, holiday (which I hardly took) and sick pay (which I also hardly took). As an afterthought kick in the proverbial balls on my way out of the door I was told that I was 'too creative anyway'.
TOO creative?!
Sorry, what? What the hell does that even mean? I'm a designer for fucks sake, how can you be 'too creative' in a creative job? Why was I even there? What's the point of me if not to be creative?!?!'
Well that was a lovely existential crisis right there which threw me into an absolute black hole of insecurity and creative block and a shitload of other ugly feelings that I'm STILL working through several years later (thanks for that C, if you're reading this, what a wonderful gift I have to remember you by).
I struggled with creative block for 5 years until drafting this post, and hearing something Jamie Kern Lima said. More on that in the next post about how I healed.
On top of that I had put on 50llb, and was in a relationship that, however wonderful, was fundamentally not working and dragged on for another full year before I had the courage to mutually let go and he could have the life he deserved without me using him as a human life raft.
So I lost my job, my home and my relationship. Again. Back at square one again. Having to start my life from scratch. Again.
And while I didn't 'lose' my friends I isolated myself to such an extent that I may as well have. My ex then married someone in my friend circle during the pandemic. So at least the pandemic had a silver lining for me because otherwise that would have made every single social event horrendously awkward and made me hide away even more because I didn't have enough in my tank to deal with that on top of everything else.
I spent the next few years floundering around with stress-caused vitamin deficiencies that left me barely able to function, sleeping 16 hours a day and with awful gut issues - there was no way I could have held down a job with that- thank GOD I had savings!! When the vitamin deficiencies were fixed, and corrected the extreme fatigue, I developed insomnia instead. I also had severe burnout, anxiety, and depression. And then a head injury that led to more physical issues that robbed me of a normal life for the last 2 years.
What a fun cocktail to take to a party eh?
True burnout is not what you read about on social media
'oh I had burnout I needed to sleep for a whole weekend and now I feel ok'. No.
This is what burnout is:
Feeling absolutely numb
being unable to process even basic information
not being able to focus on anything
not being able to think one thing at a time
extreme mental, emotional and physical exhaustion,
even small tasks feel overwhelming
regular panic attacks
morning anxiety / morning panic attacks
constant headaches
crippling brain fog
feeling unsafe
feeling extremely anxious around people
withdrawing from social interaction
tummy problems
feeling hungry all the time or not feeling hungry at all
feeling like you have no control over anything and you don't even care any more, you don't give one single fuck about anything - not in antagonistic way, but in the sense that no part of you has the capacity to feel any more because you've been feeling so much of everything for so long that you totally shut down in order to survive.
You don't get over it in a weekend or even in a month. It can last for years and for me it has. You feel like a shell of a person and it leaves you with a lot of physical and mental anxiety about doing anything even remotely connected to the situation that led you to burnout in the first place. Many people who have suffered burnout face long term health conditions and leave their industry because of it. I can put my hand up and say I too am part of that club. I haven't had one single day of good radiant health since. It has been one problem after another - aside from the injuries, all stress-related.
I’ve tried in various fits and starts over the past few years to get back into design. I have no intention of ever becoming a full time career designer again - I’ve wanted to be an actor my entire life and that is where I’m guiding my ship to right now, but to get me there I need money. To earn good money it would be stupid to turn my back on a job I have real talent in, and enough experience to dive in at senior level and charge accordingly. However every time I sit down at my computer and open illustrator I can feel every cell in my body squirming away from it and my brain frantically trying to find anything to latch onto to distract myself in order to protect me from that thing that caused me so much trauma in the first place. And I don’t use that term lightly - it was trauma. I'm pretty sure people who experience severe burnout are left with some kind of PTSD.
CAMH defines trauma as: ‘the lasting emotional response that often results from living through a distressing event. Experiencing a traumatic event can harm a person's sense of safety, sense of self, and ability to regulate emotions and navigate relationships’.
I'm not sharing my burnout story because I feel sorry for myself
I don't feel sorry for myself. In fact in a weird kind of way I'm kind of glad it happened because it sat me back on my heels so hard and for so long it's given me the opportunity to realise that I never actually wanted to be a designer in the first place - I have wanted to be a performer my entire life and as soon as I get my injuries under control and raise the funds I will be doing that.
No, I don't feel sorry for myself.
It was a HIDEOUS experience which I would have preferred not to have gone through, but I wouldn't be who I am today without having done so. I wouldn't have had so many problems that make me take my mental and physical health more seriously which will only benefit me in the long run, I wouldn't have learned to listen to my heart and my guts, and my body and my soul. And I am crystal clear on exactly who I don't want to be, because I was surrounded by people giving me stunning examples of it. I am kinder and more compassionate than ever before because that is who I want to be. I am a better listener, a better friend and a better human being.
I'm writing this because I think burnout is something that is massively underdiscussed in a society were exhaustion is worn as a badge of honour, and if we're not so overwhelmed that we're having nervous breakdowns, we're made to feel we aren't doing enough and are therefore failing. We are so stressed we can't function, yet we feel our only solution is to work even harder to get ourselves out of the situation, when sometimes what we need the most is to just stop. Stop drinking poison and wondering why we're feeling sick. To take a step away and see the situation for what it is: toxic and destructive, and something we need to leave as quickly as possible for our own health and sanity.
Society celebrates the grind and hustle culture like it's something positive - it isn't.
It is a culture born of desperation in a world where people are struggling to keep up with bizarre standards set by social media pressuring them into trying to achieve 6 figure salary lifestyles, when only 5.4% of Americans and 1% of Brits make 6 figure salaries. It leaves people thinking there is something fundamentally wrong with wanting balance, with wanting to eat lunch in a park, with wanting to have one evening free to sit in the bath and read a book guilt free, or connecting with loved ones by taking a walk in nature and not feeling frustrated that we're not using every second of our time to be productive.
We feel like we are failing when we are too exhausted to have a side hustle because we already work 13 hour days in a high pressure environment with an hours commute there and back, where we stand shoulder to shoulder with other weary human beings burdened with backpacks full of worries, frustrated that the train is so full we can't put our arms up to be productive on our phones and are forced to endure the commute like cattle with no personal space or air.
We feel pathetic and weak for feeling like we're at breaking point because we can't take any more.
But the reality is human beings aren't designed for this. As Sadhguru said we need to remember that we are human beings not human doings. We are not the problem. We may have collectively caused the problem by allowing it to happen and normalising it, but we ourselves are not the problem.
If even one person reads this and feels like I'm telling their story and feels like they aren't alone, then writing this many words will have been worth it. If one person reads this and identifies with some of it and can see they are on a trajectory for burnout and they decide to adjust course so they don't end up in the same boat, then this was worth it.
If you are also going through burnout I sympathise.
It absolutely stinks and you are absolutely not crazy or broken, and you are far from alone. This is something of an epidemic. There is nothing wrong with you, you are just drained, very hurt and probably angry. The best advice I can give you is to emotionally sever yourself from your workplace and get out as soon as you possibly can. Do not stick it out because of pride, pig-headedness or a sense of duty, loyalty, guilt, or a vain hope that it will get better. Because I’m sorry to say, it won’t.
Get yourself an escape plan, and action it as quickly as possible and get the fuck out. Save yourself, because they sure as shit won’t save you.
Do not make the mistake I did
Of sticking it out come hell or high water for any and all the above reasons until they have taken everything from you and left you with nothing - and in my case they tried to frame me and create a reason to fire me so that they wouldn’t have to pay me redundancy pay.
When they realised they couldn’t fire me because I hadn't done anything wrong and I had been an exemplary employee for over three years and had some protection from unfair dismissal they tried to bully me into handing in my notice: They tried to accuse me of making a mistake that cost the company a huge amount of money and they handled it not by sending me a direct email about it, but by giving me a public bollocking addressed to me specifically and CCing in not only my team but a whole other team who didn't even have anything to do with it. The mistake had absolutely nothing to do with me and I could prove it. The sender of the email had made the mistake herself, and I found out from her assistant weeks later that the incriminating file had been found on her own computer. She never took ownership of her mistake by telling me herself, and never gave me one single word of apology for falsely accusing me and trying to publicly humiliate me.
When that didn't work, they isolated me even further: They physically moved the freelancers that were hired in to help me to another table to help another team, they restricted my workload, and then tried to make out that I wasn’t pulling my weight when they were refusing to give me briefs even when I repeatedly asked for extra work.
I made the catastrophic error of confiding to the department head who had noticed that I was quieter and less smiley than usual (no shit) that I was struggling with anxiety at the moment, but my anxiety wasn't affecting my work - in fact I welcomed the work because it gave me something else to focus on. This was a catastrophic error, because they viewed this as an opportunity to weaponise a perceived weakness.
In the name of 'supporting' me they started hounding me to see the company employed mental health professional who was based the other side of the country, and constantly asking why I hadn't contacted them yet.
1) IF I feel I need to see a mental health professional, that is nobody's business but mine. It is nobody's decision but mine. I will choose when I contact and who I contact, thank you very much. I will choose and pay for my own independent therapist who specialises in my needs and who has my wellbeing at heart - not the company's - at a time and location that suits me.
2) By all means pester me to see the company therapist the other side of the country - are you going to free up my schedule and pay the £200+ return train fare to get me there on a work day when I have no business need to be there? No? Didn't think so. Oh but make out that's still my fault.
3) It is not your place or your business to check up on whether or not I have made a therapist appointment. It is certainly not your place to tell anyone else something about my health that is said to you in strict confidence in a private meeting. This is a gross invasion of privacy and betrayal of trust and confidentiality.
In the name of 'support' they put me on report so I had to have 1-2-1 meetings with them (and by 'them' I mean my department head and the person who was bullying me who had absolutely no business being there and even less business being informed about the state of my mental health) every week to review my work - not my mental health - my work! and they used this opportunity 'in the name of support' to do everything they could to try and dig up any dirt from anyone who even vaguely worked with me to find an excuse to fire me. I had people calling me up asking why these people were asking questions about working with me. If it wasn't so twisted it would be laughable! Incidentally they grossly underestimated how strong and resilient I am because that approach didn't work either.
By that point I was just turning up every day and doing my best ever work out of spite, because I could see exactly what they were trying to do and I wasn't going to let them win. We were locked in a game of chicken where they were using psychological warfare against me to try and make me break and quit, and I was using every ounce of stubborn Scottish defiance, grit and strength I had left in me to weather their shitstorm.
I had worked my bollocks off for them for not one single penny of overtime for years and hadn't put one foot wrong or missed one deadline in all that time and I wasn't about to be manipulated into doing so now for the sake of saving them a few quid.
I was furious that they thought it was ok to treat me like that. I still am furious. When I still refused to cave into increasing pressure to volunteer my notice they realised they had no option left but to make me redundant and pay me my dues and admit that the reason they were getting rid of me was because freelancers were cheaper. And you can bet I took all my holiday days as gardening leave at once and didn’t even look back when I picked up my bag and marched out of the door and into the sunshine.
The irony of all this is that time it took them to try and force me to leave so they could save a few grand was about 5 months. By playing their stupid little mind games until they realised they couldn't break me and were going to have to cough up redundancy pay anyway, it ended up costing them 8 times what it would have if they had just been up front and honest about the situation in the first place. I would have left with my redundancy pay and no PTSD and no hard feelings. All they had to do was be decent human beings and be honest, and they would have had a ton of extra money sitting in their budget to use on freelancers, and screw them over instead. All of this was completely unnecessary and avoidable. But honesty and transparency I guess are not words that feature in the corporate dictionary.
I've spent the years since then feeling like I was weak and a failure for burning out
But when I look back at what I endured and how I endured I realise that I am FAR stronger than I gave myself credit for. Yes I fell apart afterwards but other people didn't even last 2 months in that place before they had breakdowns. A number of people were even suicidal. I may be a faint glimmer of myself now but damn I must have burned bright in order to still be a glimmer and not snuffed out entirely.
If you want to know if you can fully recover, all my research on this says yes.
How long will it take? My honest answer is I don't know - I'm still working on it myself, but I have hope and I believe anything is possible. It has been almost 5 years for me so far (I think? the pandemic has skewed things for me so much I don't know what time is anymore), but I’m not at the bottom of a hole any more. I feel like I am just below the surface and I can at least see over the top and the grass looks green from here. I think with proper support your recovery will be much faster than mine. I have not received any professional help for my burnout beyond getting physical issues assessed by my doctor - vitamin deficiencies etc. I think if the pandemic hadn't happened, the NHS wasn't brought to its knees and I hadn't had an unfair amount of health problems the last few of years (which were all caused by chronic stress from the burnout) I would have already be out savouring the sunshine for a while by now. However for me the exhaustion from chronic pain and long term insomnia makes everything a lot more difficult and makes you a lot more inclined to ruminate because being angry and bitter feels more constructive than feeling miserable about being in pain and scared and exhausted all the time. Even though as St Augustine once said 'resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for your enemy to die'.
This post may not sound like it, but I have, finally, put that place behind me.
I'm not healed, but I have put that place firmly behind me, and finally writing this out to share my story has been very cathartic and has been helped me shut the door on the whole steaming pile, because I have decided that I am absolutely done with feeling like a victim. I refuse to let them have power over me from beyond the grave. I wanted to share my story because I hope it may in some way help someone somewhere. I'm not looking for sympathy because I don't need it. But I am done being a victim. As long as I feel like a victim, they have won and I WILL NOT let that experience define me or defeat me or keep me small or keep me from my dreams.
I am tired and battle-scarred. I have a huge frownline on my forehead now from that place that I look upon as my war wound and a reminder that I survived. And even though I am a long way from having my sparkle back I think the best middle-finger salute I can give that experience and the people who contributed to it, is to be as defiantly creative as I possibly can. To use my 'too much' ness to drive me towards my dreams. And even though it will be hard, because acting is not an industry for sissies and is just as full of messed up weird politics and shady manipulative assholes as any other industry; at least it is an industry that allows me to tell stories that touch people, and may even allow me to indirectly help a stranger in some way.
I don’t want to spend my life hidden away in an office having my gifts exploited to make rich people richer at the cost of my health and emotional wellbeing. I want to be out there in service to the arts, honouring my creativity, using my gifts to help make peoples lives richer and their hearts fuller, lifting people up, helping people feel seen or just providing an entertaining escape - a place they can forget their troubles for a while- to the best of my ability, and be a peddler of inspiration, hope and dreams rather than a slave to faceless inhuman corporate machines.
Know someone who is feeling burned out? Share this post with them to let them know they are not alone.
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