My Burnout Moment - The Darker Side of Burnout

Burnout. A topic often talked about with a touch of glamour. Work ‘til you drop. Burn the candle at both ends. Never give up and just keep going; you’ll be successful in the end.

But burnout is far from something to be glamourised, envied or to tick off your bucket list. I want to share the darker side of burnout. And for a moment, forget about the influencers. 

I also recently started sharing the story of My Burnout Moment on LinkedIn, and it resonated with lots of people.

Where it all started

In 2018, I had been working in a role for four years and was dying to try something new. I had also been yearning to experience living and working in London full-time. So, in my usual style, I went full-throttle on the job hunt. A month or two later, after a few interviews, I had a new job offer in Canary Wharf, no less. The bustling financial district of London is famous, even as a New Yorker.

Without thinking, I accepted. I found a room to rent and before I knew it I was living in London, all alone, and with a disability, which made commuting a nightmare and agonising. That was the first red flag, which I should have seen coming. But this was the least of my worries, from what was to come over the next two years.

A bad sequence of events

The next red flag, which turned this positive life event sour, was something I hoped would never happen. Just two months in, I was mugged. It was something I had worried about happening, and it happened. I still remember every moment of that terrifying incident. 

In the aftermath, I was offered some time off from work to recover. But I decided to just press on. I was still the new guy at a company and still had to prove myself. 

Yet from that moment, my dream was ruined and it changed how I felt about my new role. I still remember defending London, whenever my old colleagues would mention crime in London rising. How naive I was. Denial is a defence mechanism, I guess.

I didn’t realise it at the time but the fear and anxiety that I had as a result of the mugging tormented me in other areas of my life, particularly affecting my performance at work. In a way, I had formed a relationship with the muggers.

I didn’t want to accept it but from day one in my new role, things started going wrong. I wasn’t fitting in and I was struggling with the intense pressure. Every day was a battle of stress and imposter syndrome. But the most difficult thing of it all was not taking the time to process the mugging.

Only now, two years later and having left the role, am I able to start accepting what happened.

What does this all have to do with my burnout moment?

As I was approaching two years into what was meant to be my dream role and lifestyle change, I was done. I was a physical, mental and emotional wreck. There had been times in those two years that I nearly left and looked for a new role, but some stubbornness was holding me back. 

I was taking days off due to stress, finding other ways to not log into work, and hoping it would all become better and I could make things work. 

When I realised it was burnout

One morning something inside of me broke. The sheer exhaustion of the constant stress over a two-year period had caught up with me. I felt numb inside. I didn’t care about my work and became tearful over the smallest things. But that one morning it wasn’t just being a bit tearful. 

I was uncontrollable crying whilst looking at my laptop as email, after email was coming in. I had cracked. I was done. I like to note that when I say crying, I wasn’t crying like we know it; it was just tears streaming out of my eyes without any control from me. I had never experienced anything like it. Right there, was My Burnout Moment.

After that, I knew something had to change. I had been changed forever after being mugged and am still recovering from that today. I had nothing to prove and no reason to stay. The dream was over.

So after realising I had to leave for my own health, I started up the job hunt once again. I applied to a few roles but where I wanted to be was in the wellbeing space, which is how I came to 87%.

They saw something in me, which I could bring to the team and I saw something in them, which I hadn’t seen before in a company. A company, which cared about its people. A company that saw you as a person and not a robot. When I was offered the job, I cried on the call. I was free from my old role. I was also told to take a month off to recover from my previous role. A month! I had never heard anything like it before and wished more of us did it. It was exactly what I needed to recover from my burnout moment.