Butterfly Elephant: badger

Monday, August 8, 2016

I wrote about burnout at the start of the year, and I think that was just the beginning of things. In that post, I talked about how fighting burnout just doesn't work because there's nothing to swing at, and I still believe that is true. But guess what? I tried to fight through it, anyway.

I didn't even really realise that was what I was doing until recently. I felt like I 'should be better by now' and that maybe I was just being lazy, or pretending, or just wasting everyone's time... Yeh, a lot of old stuff started coming up for me, and I somehow convinced myself that it might be true this time. So I told myself that that was what other people in my life were secretly thinking (untrue) and that I needed to "get my act together" (not even sure I know what this means). So I pushed, did more chores, started looking for a new place (Xin and I are moving soon), started freaking out about our cat (she was a bit sick recently) and trying to fix her by myself, all the while ignoring all the symptoms that were popping up, or the warning signs that indicated I needed to just slow down.

This has happened so many times before, and I really felt like I ought to know how to deal with it properly, but even this time it took a few conversations with Xin for me to realise what I had been putting myself through.

The thing is, burnout doesn't just go away when you are ready for it to be gone. It can sometimes be a ridiculously extended process - especially when you push yourself to get more things done - and I'm afraid that with all my experience of burnout, the main thing to remember is to let go. (Sure, go ahead, sing the Frozen song. You know it's already in your head.) Find your balance again. Forget about forcing things to work, and take some time to just be.

Right now, I am going to drink some more bubble tea (okinawan brown sugar milk tea!) and read some more of the book I am loving at the moment (Nevernight by Jay Kristoff) and chill out for a while. Any links to burnout recovery are welcome below!

Love to all who read.

2 comments badger, blah, health, mental health, thoughts

More notes on Badger-state.

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Winter is in full swing here in Australia, although if you were to be able to look out my window today, you might doubt that. The air is cold, for sure, but the sun is shining and the skies are pretty darn blue.
Either way, I have been hibernating a fair amount the last couple of days. I have been sleeping a lot more than usual (often going back to bed after Xin leaves for work, usually sleeping til lunchtime), and I have been craving comforts like there's no tomorrow (evidenced by the chocolate in the fridge, the marshmallows in the cupboard, and the english muffin I am thinking about toasting in a minute...).

I have been wondering for weeks what is up with me, trying to fight through the desire to keep sleeping, trying to remind myself of all the fun things that I have to do, and also remind myself of my return to studying Buddhist texts (seems short-lived now...). But I seem to just keep on going to bed, reading when I can, and generally trying to stop myself from buying things that we can't afford.

Over and over I have asked myself 'why? why is this happening? am I just getting lazy?', and then inevitably the 'shoulds' will kick in, to make me feel kind of bad, leading to long discussions with Xin about how we decided I should take some time to just be me for a while, without Centrelink and other stuff breathing down my neck.

And then I remembered today, and I started laughing.

See, the thing is, sometimes I forget that I have chronic illnesses. It's not like I ever completely forget that they're there, because I have pain every day and oftentimes have to deal with random symptoms popping up whenever they feel like it. It's more that I forget that having a chronic illness (or several) kind of means certain things - such as, when I have pushed myself hard for a good six months or so, slowly wearing down at my own resilience and depleting my energy levels significantly, I can end up pretty exhausted and lethargic. During these times, sometimes I have trouble getting out of bed. Sometimes I have more symptoms than usual which have one main treatment - rest. And sometimes, doing things that I usually find super fun, are actually more depleting than usual.

I had started to think that maybe my depression was coming back to say hello before I remembered the second half of 2012, where I had trouble even going to the bathroom unassisted, after spending the first half of 2012 studying part-time and working part-time (which had complications) and driving myself to the point of complete exhaustion. I haven't pushed myself that hard this time round, but having just finished a second degree at the end of last year, and then planning a wedding and a honeymoon, and then doing said wedding and honeymoon, I was a little worn out.

Recovery is a strange thing to me. Sometimes you feel like you've entered a state of limbo where you can't seem to move forward at all, and you wonder if you are in fact recovering at all. I am learning, always learning, to trust that maybe that state is just a place your body and mind puts you in, to try and heal you. Like how in science fiction movies (or, you know, Dragonball Z) where people are placed in a tank where they have to stay pretty still so they can heal everything - sometimes stasis = healing.

So I am investigating my badger nature, and my badger-state of hibernation/stasis, and I am trying to be patient. I may try and write more notes soon. For now, have a picture of a badger performing my favourite past-time of late...