When burn out jokes become unrelatable

the bizarre other side of wellness

If you told me two years ago that I could recover from burn out and my deep depression I would have thought you were making a bad joke. I couldn’t imagine a world where I wouldn’t scroll past reels or text graphics on instagram extolling the woes of burn out and find it unrelatable to my current reality.

It feels like a bizarre form of bragging to say that in general, things are good. I’m not being swallowed up by my exhaustion, rage, and deep sadness. There is energy for hobbies and puttering and simply being. We aren’t tricking ourselves into showering regularly with podcasts and nice candles.

But why does it feel like almost an identity crisis to no longer have a quarter of your personality taken up by feeling sad? In the era of post-Tumblr sad girl aesthetic we’ve still created entire identities around being an unwell person. Being an anxious person. Being a person with X or Y.

There is almost a resistance in the healing process because who are you without this sadness? How do you move through the world without this core pillar of identity? Who are you without the deep, dark well of unending doom? Do we like that version of ourselves? What if you were just lying to your self?

Photo by Trude Jonsson Stangel on Unsplash

By getting better, you lose the part of you that was unwell. Not entirely because I think that damaged, tender, fragile part will always be there. An eerie reminder of what could happen. Another little suitcase of baggage to carry around.

For years, I was convinced I could never get better. It was impossible. And that was fine. Being anxious was just a constant sense of being. If I could still get out of bed then there was nothing too bad to fix anyway. But then it did get bad and that feeling morphed into I will never stop feeling this way. Which then slowly evolved to “what if I get better and I don’t know who I am? Or I won’t like who I am? I don’t like who I am now though.”

I think that feeling is anxiety trying to protect you. It wants job security. If you don’t rely on anxiety to “keep you safe” then what else will it do?

Don’t worry, anxiety already has a solid pension plan and basically has tenure. But we don’t let it teach classes anymore. It hangs out in its office and writes ‘research’ papers it can shove underneath closed doors.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Getting better is better. It is worth it. Getting better means that even if losing a friendship is painful at first, you don’t live life feeling like you’re not good enough. Connecting with people about things that are joyful is better than connecting over sadness. There is more patience here and a greater sensitivity for keeping up what makes you well. I feel like I want to whisper to people who are stuck in toxic jobs “run. just run and don’t stop running until you find somewhere that makes you feel at ease.”

Someone told me to run once. They impressed upon me the truth I already knew. If I didn’t run that job would swallow me whole. So I ran.

That’s where I learned that you can get better without being “perfectly well.” Turns out that doesn’t exist. Better isn’t done. Better is just easier.

I don’t want to relate to burn out memes and I don’t want to be that person who sways around with a job that seems kinda fake while claiming to be “free from the shackles of capitalism.”

Turns out the middle is really nice.