Work stress and burnout

[Wizzwazzwas]

Has anyone survived this and recovered? How?

I am signed off for a few weeks. Only now can see how bad it is. But I'll have to go back (got to earn money!), and finding another job is an easy thing to say and extremely difficult to do right now in my area.

It's so hard to see how to cope.

Hi OP - I was in a similar situation a few years ago (job hunting whilst burnt out in an intolerable situation)

@FollowYourOwnNorthStar ’s advice Re self care, nutrition etc helps

Relaxation - eg a bath before bed, when it was really bad I also got a massage every couple of weeks

I was seeing a therapist at the time and that helped, as did a v emotionally supportive partner

I had a lot of quiet evenings/weekends, & baking was another thing that helped me with the stress (bread, pastry etc)

If you were in the private sector, I’d have suggested you sign yourself off with a ‘physical’ illness (D&V or dare I say it Covid) - one which relies on self reported symptoms if you don’t want stress leave on your record

As you are public sector can you not max out the 6 months paid sick leave?

In my case, the toxic situation ended with me being made redundant (I wept with relief!), and I quite literally spent 3 months at home pottering (eg bit of cleaning, cooking, exercising every other day) until I got my energy and mojo back

The job I got after that was much less stressful and this also helped my recovery

Looking back, I wish I’d been more open minded about leaving for a ‘worse’ job as the whole episode cost me several years of my life and I will never get those back

One thing to do now would be to find out what you CAN do re your mortgage (longer term?) if you find you can’t manage … long term stress grinds you down and having a plan in place is wise

In your situation, I’d take 6 months off sick and use that to recover and job hunt

I also agree about the massages, I was having proper ones (not relaxing, soft ones with candles - although there is a place for those too) but deep tissue ones. I saw it has another way of getting my body moving and restorative blood flowing into all parts of my body, and also the tension building upon my shoulders and lower back.

Another thing I wish I had in place (and I do have it now) is 3- 6 months worth of expenses saved, and a list of everything I could cut within a week to bring my expenses down significantly, if I would need too. This is great peace of mind. I think it further adds to the feeling of burnout to have these ‘blocks’ in your mind, where you say “I can’t resign, I have bills’ ppl or “I can’t go off sick, I don't want my work to know”. I started saying both, and realised within a month that if I didn’t look after myself and move fast to a new job, it might not end up being my choice. Which would be worse financially and worse reputationally, than if I had managed my exit a bit earlier.

I have health issues and have been really close to burn out on several occasions because of a combination of the difficulty of living with chronic pain and a stressful work environment.

The solution was always to find a new job with less stress. I have also gone part-time.

So maybe it is a case of working out whether this is temporary blip that you will recover from after some leave and a good rest or if the job is so toxic that you need to leave or the whole cycle will just keep repeating itself.

I'm sorry you're feeling like this OP. No real advice other than to say you're not alone, also public sector, also struggling.

Morale is awful currently, the cost of living is really impacting us all and the change in the weather doesn't help.

Look after yourself.

How it going OP?

I’ve been thinking of you. I realise the info from your post last time might have been hard to hear, when you were hoping someone might be able to just say some quick/easy fix that worked for them…..but you are obviously a smart woman, and deep down, you probably knew that if you couldn’t figure out an answer to keep going, there wasn’t one.

I hope after the initial shock at where others in your situation have ended up, you have found a way to digest it and to start making both short and long term plans of your own.

Thanks for checking in. I'm feeing a bit better than I was. My physical symptoms have largely resolved. I'm keeping up the healthy eating, have lost some weight and I am walking lots. I'm sleeping better too.