compliments of
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creating sustainable results in growth and performance
I came home after
the end of the working day when all the staff had gone, my head pounding as if
there were men tunnelling in my brain. The pain was horrific. The next day, I
had absolutely no energy. I felt like a car which was operating on one cylinder.
Whenever I tried to make a phone call, write a letter or make a decision, my
brain simply ground to a halt. It was a No Go area.
The ghost in the
attic: It transpired that this was the start of a long-term health and
energy breakdown, and that these symptoms were to continue for many years. The
things I now found impossible to do were those I had never enjoyed - the
administration, the decisions, the endless letters and phone calls, all of which
had increased exponentially with this new project. For years after I burnt out,
neither my aching brain nor my exhausted body would let me do this work: they
seemed simply to go on strike. This work ate up energy I didn't have.
Yet, in a limited
way, and by taking lots of breaks, even at my most burnt-out I could still do
therapy and run my training courses, and even managed to direct sessions in
Greece. This was the work I had always loved; it was my soul work and it
nourished me.
In my groups, when
we took turns at finding images of our lives, a typical one for me was: 'I am a
ghost in the attic.' When there was a break, or at the end of the working week,
I'd stay in my room, close the shutters or pull the curtains, and just close
down. Even light felt like a demand.
After I recovered
significantly from the worst aspects of this, I could still only be active for
two-thirds of a normal day. I had to rest in bed either all afternoon or all
evening. But neither my colleagues nor my students and clients guessed how bad I
was feeling. I appeared okay in public, and just hid when my energy fell way
below zero and I was desperate.
I did let my friends see what was going on. As a result,
for the first time I began to develop what I had always wanted during those
driven years, a group of friends who really loved and cared for me – and who
would come out to play. Apparently they needed to see that I was vulnerable
before they could fully open their hearts to me. Or maybe I
needed to see this before I could open
my own heart. Anyway, I now had time to walk in the park with my friends because
I couldn’t do much else.
What do you do? It
was more than seven years before I had my full energy back. Even s o, I have
suffered relapses more than once, and old symptoms still trouble me when I put
the wrong kind of pressure on myself. In fact, it is hard to say whether I ever
got my full energy back in the sense of being able to live the life I used to
live - because I no longer want to live the life I used to live. It seems
impossible even to conceive of doing so.
During the years
since my original moment of burnout, I have made wide-reaching changes in my
life. In the process, I have let go of most of my old work, commitments and
identities and have suffered more than one 'dark night of soul'. I no longer
know what to answer when people ask, `What do you do?' I can only say what I am
doing right now or what I used to do. Yet once I had so many answers.
What did I gain in.
return? The following come to mind:
