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From Denial to Awareness to Empowerment— a Burnout Recovery Journey
How, for Angela, hitting a wall became a gift.
Angela came to me after hitting a wall — she woke up one day and could not lift her head. As a software engineer based in Paris, she had been working 80-hour weeks as long as she could remember. Now, her body had given way.
As she put it in her email, “I hate typing these words, but I need help. Now.”
Over the course of the next few months, we identified the following phases in her burnout, which had played out over years.
>> overworking, high on caffeine, mega-productive, “killing it”
>> exhaustion starting to creep in, less productive, denial
>> massive denial — ignoring pleas from friends and family, working even longer hours, pretending everything is “FINE”
>> collapse, forced acknowledgement of how fucked up things were
What happens when we’re in denial
It’s not just Angela. Most of us during burnout experience denial (personally, I experienced it to outrageous extents).
Denial is understandable. Acknowledging you’re not happy and that your work life is draining you to the point of total depletion…
