"JOHNNY 5 IS ALIVE" brain and what it's got to do with burnout.
Some of my thoughts about what contributed to burnout and an invitation.
Hello lovely reader,
You may have seen my previous letter about the five stages of burnout. Surprisingly or perhaps not, given my target audience (perimenopausal, neurodivergent women) it has been my most read and engaged with post.
I have messages from women saying how much they related to it, or were able to identify what stage they were at and take action. I can’t tell you what that means, to know my words have been in some way helpful. THANK YOU.
So I thought maybe, it could also be useful to share more on this topic, some of the things that in hindsight, I believe contributed to finding myself in a place where just getting out of bed to go for a wee felt too much (it’s ok, I did make it ; ) and burnout put the breaks on my life.
My work
From the moment I realised I HAD to do something about raising more awareness about perimenopause and menopause, my brain became a busier place. In many ways this was filled with positive thoughts and actions about what needed to be done.
But this was, of course, all whilst I still had another job to pay the bills. I was working, parenting, dealing with hormones AND retraining, writing training, building a website, doing business development and so on.
On top of that, this was no longer just ‘a day job’ that fitted in with school pick ups, this was my all consuming passion. I had finally found the ‘thing’, ‘my thing’ that brought together many of the skills I had learnt throughout life and aligned with the very important purpose of helping others.
I went to bed thinking about it, I would lay there sometimes at 3am wondering if it was acceptable to just get up now and crack on? Not because I was overwhelmed with a heavy work load in a negative sense but it was as though my brain was in Johhny 5 ‘I FEEL ALIVE’ mode, with it’s very important MISSION.
I suddenly understood the whole, when you find your thing, work doesn’t feel like work.
Not knowing about my neurodivergence
I didn’t know, not an inckling, not a sniff of thought. I was uneducated and oblivious to how ADHD and Autism can show up particularly in women. I didn’t fit the sterotypes that I knew about. It wasn’t even a consideration.
Pre-pandemic and perimenopause, I socialised, we saw people often. I was the hostess with the mostess, we’d entertain large groups of friends at the weekend. I had worked in high pressure sales environments, open plan offices. And when I started Hormones on the blink, I went to every free networking event possible. Unbeknown to me, all of this was doing me right in.
I would pretty much always have a glass of fizz before social events to take the edge off, unsure if I was excited or nervous? I would play over in my mind, who would be there, what I should say and inevitebly the few drinks that followed would heighten the post event analysis and over thinking, ‘what I had said?’, ‘what they had said?’ and‘do they hate me now?’.
And on top of this, I did not know how to rest, to sit still. So I was always on the go, with something, anything other than nothing.
Knowing I was neurodivergent
It may sound like a complete contradiction but bare with me. From the moment I started to join the dots, my brain was operating at a whole new level. It didn’t then just have family life, kids, work, perimenopause to deal with. It was now acting as some kind of processing machine to double, triple, quadruple check my life’s history. And then coming back round to mull it over again for good measure, just to be sure that I wasn’t making this stuff up.
LOL to that.
Then came the ADHD diagnosis, ahh relief, I knew it, I wasn’t making it up! Followed by the Autism realisation, memories that had been shut off now coming to the surface. A whole new version of me to understand and discover. And grief. A ton of it.
Then there was the what people would think thoughts, how could I suddenly be these things when I had done such an ace job at hiding it?
All of this was only compounded by some people’s reactions and the lack of support around me at the time, meant that the only safe place for ALLLLLL of this, was in my brain. Going round and round like a washing machine that had been well and truly overloaded. A spinning top about to crash.
Is it any wonder it short circuited and said ‘Sophie, enoughs enough?’
Is this something you can relate to? Have you been able to pin point the cause behind your burnout?
On Wednesday 2nd at 7pm I will be hosting an online event where we will be Exploring burnout in Perimenopause, we’ll be discussing:
How to tell the difference between occupational burnout and neurodivergent burnout?
What makes us more susceptible to burnout in perimenopause?
What can it feel like? How do you know if you are in it? What are the signs?
Identifying the root causes
Creating your own recovery support plan
Q&A
If you would like to join us, you can either get your ticket here, or become a paid subscriber to access this workshop and others like it at no extra cost.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, out of your day, I hope there have been some useful takeways and perhaps some things you have been able to relate to and recognise in yourself. x