burning this candle at both ends meltdown — Karen Harvey
The burnout is an accumulation of intense and chronic stress and impacts our capacity to remain patient, optimistic and at ease in coping with the day-to-day parenting. It brings an acute sense of guilt for both the parents. We, therefore, must open conversation and shine light onto the observable outcome in first-time parents and childcare professionals.
Burnout is almost inevitable for nurses. With long hours of work, missing meals, and having to hold one’s bladder for hours, that’s really not surprising. Burnout can even make nurses quit and that’s not even shocking, particularly with the environment they are working in.
This sound familiar to me and you?
In lack of awareness and active intervention and support, burnout can seriously affect our mental and physical health, sleep and cognition. It may lead to job loss, negatively parent our children impacting their wellbeing and slowly slip in depressive isolation. Like any other unseen afflictions, people around have a hard time to realize the seriousness of the issues that can lead to burnout, it is, therefore, vital to be aware of the precursor signs and be able to open communication and set strategies in place.
Do not rush into resolution. Burnout did not settle overnight; It is a process, not a race. It will take as much awareness and gradual changes to find balance in one's life again. In fact, it reveals some deeper behavioral issues than just patching some one-day self-care here and there will not suffice to process healing.
Very often, individuals in counseling or therapy discover that their burnout roots deeper and find traits in constant self-demanding behaviors such as a need for compensation, a sense of not feeling/or doing enough, a necessity to give more than receiving, perfectionists and controlling personalities who have a hard time to delegate.
Burnout usually affects both parents and symptoms will be expressed differently in men and women. Raising awareness and taking stoke of both physical and emotional manifestations are a starting point to recovery and balance. Men tend to take more obligations in the workplace and remove themselves from the house responsibilities while women tend to withdraw in guilt, resentments and overly compensate.
Burnout can affect every one of us, and very often, it goes undiagnosed and uncared for. La Magie de L'Instant workshops and classes are the results of my last thirty years in self-growth practices and experience in parenting and highly demanding professional childcare. If I were to end this post with a minute-awareness take-away memo, here is what I write down for you.👇🏻
My Minute-Awareness Take Away Memo
The Signs --What to look for
Sleep deprivation
Intense fatigue
Increasing parental neglected and harm
Thoughts about escape
Low energy
Bodily aches
Memory loss
Mental distress
Overly sensitive and reactive
Feeling of guilt and shame in your roles as parents, spouseIsolation
Being irritated
Hypersensitivity to mild stress, comments from closed ones and strangers
Sense of helplessness
Thoughts of giving up and withdrawing from responsibilities
Dreading from parental duties and couple relationship
Feeling of not being able to "fill up the cup" of energy
Chronic depletion
Feeling misunderstood
Blaming others
Overly doing for compensating for the lacks
Being negative and critical with oneself, children and others around and at work
When you are not the priority
First-Step Plan of Action
Take inventory by making a list of all the situations that raise your negative feelings and aches
Next to each item on your inventory, write down one or two ways that would modify the situations
👉🏻 Be kind to yourself and be realistic; consistency in routines will slowly show improvement.
Communicate clearly about your feelings and your needs to your partner without resentful blame and restraint
Get people on board and start delegating
Schedule time for yourself that does not involve errands or chores on your own time. This is time for SELF CARE!!!
Invest in counseling or therapy or supporting group or both, so again you are not alone. Be consistent; it takes time to make all these changes and find a flow that brings results as a couple and a family.
DM me to learn more about La Magie de L'Instant workshops /classes and the parenting coaching I created to answer problems of burnout, overstressed, tired parents and professionals for them to experience methods and develop skills to disengage from negative loops of parenting.