Burnout is honestly such a mild word for what people use it to mean. I’m not experiencing “burnout”, which sounds so casual and routine that some face masks and a little rest is going to fix it.
My body and mind and even nervous system are stretched to the point that it’s going to take a lot more than just a “break” or a few self care tips to recover, and even then, my recovery is just so that I can reenter the spaces that contributed to me being this way in the first place. I’m a little bit more than just burnt out by this.
Workplaces and educational institutions aggressively overwork us, expose us to all kinds of discrimination, which they overlook and gaslight us out of acknowledging, and then constantly ask us to ignore our mental, emotional, and physical needs so that we don’t inconvenience them.
We’re not burnt out. We’re borderline traumatized. Burnout is always talked about like something transient and mild that a little rest and relaxation will fix.
But we’re exhausted. We need deep rest and healing. We need new systems. We need new ways of being. The language around burnout just seems like a way of upholding these current violent systems and downplaying their impacts.
People who have symptoms but no official (or unofficial) diagnosis are just as welcomed into the Ouch Community as anyone else. I don’t care if you’re in the “tummy hurted for too long” or the “i have no arms or legs, my skin is made of paper, my bones are made of glass, and I have the most advanced Disease ever” category.
Caroline Louise Flack was a popular English media celebrity, but who commited suicide at the age of 40 on valentines day 2020. She was born in Enfield north London, an was a television and radio presenter. She began her career as an actress, starring in Bo’ Selecta! (2002) and presented various ITV2 spin-off shows such as I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! NOW! (2009).
She won the 12th series of Strictly Come Dancing in 2014 and the following year began presenting on series such as Love Island and The X Factor. In February 2020 she was found dead at her home in East London, with the media reporting her death as a suicide.
shout out to all the people who identify with gifted kid burnout syndrome who are probably just neurodivergent but werent diagnosed as a child, who used to devour books like it was nothing and never really understood why the protagonist would leave their cool fantasy world behind to go back home at the end of the story, and who are now extremely disappointed in reality and use escapism as their primary coping mechanism. how’s that bisexuality and deep-rooted anger at the school system going for you?
Like, intellectually I understand more or less the process of… capitalism and poor decisions and whatnot that led us here. But do you ever feel that way?
1999, I was sitting in a college classroom debating… something. I don’t remember. All I remember is some smarmy jock-type guy setting my hair on fire with his ignorance, and losing my temper at him, saying something like he felt that way because he had no perspective, that all our parents and grandparents remembered where they were when Pearl Harbor and D-Day happened, when JFK was shot, when we landed on the moon, when the draft was announced for Vietnam, and “What does our generation remember? When the OJ Simpson verdict came down?”
(I was in high school, but I was home sick, laying on the couch. The “special report” cut into, IIRC, one of the Beastmaster movies. Something of that ilk, anyway. At my school, someone was running down the hall screaming “NOT GUILTY! NOT GUILTY!” but I wouldn’t know that ‘til later.)
(I remember 9/11, watching the towers come down over and over and over again, thinking about that class and thinking to myself I did this even though I knew rationally I hadn’t.)
the stuff I learned today about my brain and addiction was really interesting
if you were to scan an addict and a nonaddict’s brains, they would be lit up differently. the frontal cortex of our brain controls who we are, our morals, our decision making and reasoning skills, etc.
our mid brain handles life or death survival processing. there is no consciousness at this level. it’s only ability is to try to avoid death and keep us alive
in an addict, the drug of choice triggers the mid brain while damaging/shutting down the frontal cortex. it feels like we have no control over it because in a way we really don’t; the part of our brain that makes logical choices isn’t functioning. our mid brain that thinks we’re dying is functioning, and it sees that drug as the only means to survive
i also learned that we each have a certain dopamine (the chemical that makes you happy) threshold. we have a “bar” that must be reached chemically to make us able to experience joy and pleasure. if you’re over the bar, you’re happy. under it, you’re sad
addicts have set the bar so high that it frequently is the case that nothing can make them happy unless they are high first and foremost. they need a much, much larger amount of dopamine to feel joy because so many dopamine receptors have been damaged and shut down
you know what other group of people have extremely high dopamine thresholds? children in abusive or otherwise high stress environments
addicts and abused children both require much higher amounts of dopamine to feel happy compared to “normal” people. this is a huge contributing factor as to why a lot of these kids turn to drugs: for the first time in our lives we have the amount of dopamine we need to feel genuinely happy, and we never want to go back to being sad
yes! the longer you go without using your drug of choice, the lower your dopamine threshold becomes until finally it is once again at normal levels. the broken dopamine receptors will heal themselves, and with therapy and medication the frontal cortex will gradually strengthen so the survival-focused midbrain has less control and actual decisions can once again be made
yes, please do. please help spread awareness about the disease of addiction and end the stigma against it
[image 1: reply by neat little notebooks: “Is there a way of ‘resetting’ during recovery? Like do the nerves eventually heal? (Non-addict, just like learning)”.]
[image 2: reply by amazed-adventurer: “Can we reblog this?”]
add “people with ADHD” to those with additictions and those with PTSD
we can all learn healthier coping mechanisms by understanding what goes on differently in our brains; being aware of our moods and what’s driving them (chemical, psychological, circumstantial); then working on the root issues by talking with others facing similar circumstances, doing therapy, taking breaks from our chosen (harmful or addictive) chemical or behavioral stimuli, and if needed finding healthier replacements (often proper psychiatric meds)
awareness and acceptance of what’s going on at the root of our behavior and how we’re responding to it in harmful ways is the first step
Celebrating Christmas/Hanukkah or not, the holidays are a great time to take a break on working/studying and just dedicating a time for yourself. Remember to take care of your mental health!
