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Grief and Burnout
How to ask the right questions and recalibrate.
It can be difficult to identify what you’re feeling emotionally and physically at any given moment. Bring grief and burnout into the conversation, and it’s even trickier. A busy life is a fertile state for amplified emotions to sneak in and clutter the mind, the Self. Before you know it, anxiety and impatience latch on. This is an awakening process — a trial in your own hero’s journey.
Learn about your unique relationship to grief and burnout ahead of time through curious listening. How do the emotions filter through, and function within you? Are they felt physically? Are they felt within your psyche? How are they expressed?
Take it one step further: If you were to walk into a room representing your emotional self, what would that room look like? Would it be dark, or light? Would it have people in it, or would you be alone there? Would there be music, and if so, would it be loud, or soft, or some particular genre? Picture the room as a way to get at your internal emotions. What does the room tell you about them?
Now, interrupt the course of your emotions when they are rigid and bound to stress, burnout, and distracting episodes of grief amid a busy workday. Ask yourself:
What is distorting my thought process?
How does that challenge my identity?
How do negative cognitions make me feel?
To understand the emotions related to your experience, you must get more precise about what you’re feeling. The greater the precision, the easier it is to see the picture of your grief and burnout.
