And then she told me that I was burning out…

For years I have gone back and forth between extremes of super focused career/academic pursuits and my mental health. It seems that I could never balance it out.

Either, I’m working 13 hours a day, on weeks that start on a Sunday, or I’m struggling with severe anxiety and depression. Often times, the depression is covered by my bubbly personality and my many hours of work, until it gets too much and it paralyzes me. It has happened a couple of times now and when it happens, things go bad. When I'm manic and overly focused at work, there is no one that can work as hard as I can. I take so much pride on it, I give my all, my best. But when the depression and the anxiety take over, I'm a different person, it has costed me a full-ride university scholarship, a job, and many other things.

When I enter this last stage, where the work euphoria and the excitement are not enough to keep me going, that’s when I often decide to treat my mental health. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to do it all together.

Since April 2021, after a severe episode of panic attack, I decided to change things. I went into a long journey of doing things differently. At that point, just coming out of the pandemic, I was overweight, sad, anxious, and although I had the desire to be better and do some with my life, I had no strength within myself to do or be any better. I remember one Sunday afternoon, when my partner brushed my hair after I took a shower. I had no strength to brush my own hair.

I then went back to work out, hired a yoga instructor, made more effort into going outside of my apartment. It was ups and downs. I was burned out. I was trying and trying, some days were a bit better, but it definitely wasn’t an overnight change. I eventually quit my job, took a break from working, then started studying to change careers. At that point, I had introduced anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills into my attempt to get well, and I also started working with a therapist who is very practical and gives me guidance.

It took a very long time, but over one year after I decided that things needed to change, I remember the day that I walked into my kitchen and declared: for the first time in years, I feel good. I feel stable. I’m not overly excited, nor overly depressed. I am content.

Again, it was not a smooth ride, it was not that I put effort - I did put the effort - but I also got plenty of help getting there. I was so proud of myself! Feeling mentally healthy was different! It was good!

Fast forward a couple of months, I started facing new challenges with the career change. And since my mental health was in check, it was not a priority anymore.

The first thing that I gave up was working out, I started skipping personal training, not attending the gym, skipping the dog walks. I did not do this intensionally. At first it was, I need to work/study a bit more today. I’ll skip the gym. Then, I started getting irritated with my partner over nor understanding my priorities, “I CANNOT go to the gym today, don’t you see that I’m drowning on work?!”

Not working out has a direct impact into my mood and overall well-being. From there, I started skipping therapy, it was hard to attend therapy in the middle of the day, when I can barely manage my workload and imposter syndrome. Then, I stayed working/studying late. Messed up my sleeping schedule. Felt exhausted the next day. Could not focus at work. Felt guilty, worked late to make up for not being focused. Repeated.

Started feeling lethargic again, and all that I could do was to pray for the weekend so that I could sleep in a bit more. Exhaustion at all times. I started dreading sunny days - on sunny days we take more walks to get vitamin D. All of the sudden, I felt that I had regressed. I felt lazy, unmotivated, worthless.

I then got the strength the message my therapist and beg her to fit me in her schedule. I told her to just take me in as a new patient, since she would not recognize who I had become in the last couple of months. From being a lively, happy and excited person, I had become someone that only survives. She laughed.

After I told her that I was lost, and that I had regressed, that all the progress that I had made was lost, she told me this: You are starting to burn out. Nothing is lost, you are just not managing your priorities well. After discussing a couple of ways to cope with the work stress, and to reframe some of my perceptions about work in itself, she told me to pick one thing that would improve my mental health, and work on it.

She told me to pick ONE THING that would improve my mental health and work on it!

I immediately knew that getting back into exercising was the “one thing”. And something clicked - it all made sense! I have gone through a burnout before. It was not all lost, I knew how I could address it, and this time, I didn’t need to quit my job, I just needed to find balance.

It had never occurred to me that I could have both, a successful career and mental health. I never thought about both of them at the same time. Either I was focused on one, or the other.

I always think about the book Republic by Plato, in which Plato says that the children need to be instructed in both music and sports (or something like that), and although this is not the right context - I felt that I understood why today. You need to be strong mentally, emotionally and physically. I know, I know - everyone knows this. But today, today, it hit home. Today I understood, that the well-rounded person that I have been trying to be for years, will never exist while I don’t learn the basics: balance.