Burnout is not a blip, a bout, or a temporary spell of unwellness, as I used to vaguely assume.

Burnout is more like an eruption of a serious medical condition that requires you to significantly change your lifestyle going forward.

I’ve been in a deeper pit of burnout this summer/year than I’m used to—and I think it’s because I’ve been paying a lot more attention to my feelings and needs than I used to. (A lot of them have to do with understanding and “unmasking” my autism. For example, see my post “Speaking Less, Sparkling More” and “On Taking My Own Needs Seriously.”)

It’s (not) funny: last summer I posted about my grand intentions to practice “My Feelings Matter” in the midst of the extra parenting challenges of summertime. Hah! I didn’t yet know that practicing “my feelings matter,” for someone like me, is a pretty straight line to burnout.

That doesn’t mean I should just go back to masking, over-coping, overcompensating, overexerting myself, and thus living in a chronic state of low-grade burnout. I want to raise emotionally healthy kids who have an emotionally healthy and truly present mom!

No, I think the solution is to let the burnout happen, as far as I can. Let it burn down my structures of over-coping so that I can build new, more sustainable structures for my life instead.

I’m still very much in the midst of that process. I can’t just utterly stop functioning, so I’m letting small fires blaze up here and there instead. Often they take the form of my being less interpersonally responsive, because my need for inner attending is so great.

I talk much less; I pause much more before responding; and when my beloved husband and kids are being so freaking loud that I’m about to lose my mind, I just drop what I’m doing and go outside.

Here was one brilliant act recently, born out of desperation: I dragged a bunch of boxes out of a closet, put down a blanket and pillow in it, and declared it my official hidey-hole for solitude and writing. Ahhhhhhh. It’s amazing! (But next I need to rig up some kind of interior lock for it, because my four year old keeps busting in.)

Wish me luck as I keep finding my way through the blessed fires of burnout.

River Roundup

Section posts since last time

🪷Serenity Splashes

a poem on feeling burnt out & down-and-out

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I'm down like a candle
   burning too long.
My mind feels melty;
   my will's not strong
enough to stand up 
   for what I need.
I'm a puddly hot mess.
   Let me be.
      Let me be.

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Yes, they gave you life,
  but they treated you with scorn
while pretending it was love.
  And you--confused, forlorn--
tried hard to play along
  and dodge their blasts of blame.
Now it's your turn to win--
  by forfeiting their game.

a poem for a loved one who’s had a hard path

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Little indigo bunting, 
  with your blues deep and bright,

you've journeyed hard and far.

Your song has survived
   rough storms and dark nights.

Carry on, like the hero you are.

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May I be my own witness--

notice more, govern less--

not censoring how I feel,

but holding me through what's real.

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I’m already on a rugged climb:
Healing Mountain’s steep and rough.
But sometimes I’m too tired to try.
These days, the going’s extra tough.

Each gust of wind just knocks me down,
where prickly self-doubt shrubs are thick.
But for today, somehow I’ve found
compassion as a walking stick.

reflections on codependency & rejection sensitivity

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Your thin skin, so rejection-prone,
   is not actually my own
emergency to manage.
   I cannot heal your damage,
and I only harm me
   by trying to be your sunscreen.

I feel like I’ve spent my whole life tiptoeing around family members’ rejection sensitivity. I’ve watched my partner do the same with his parents.

We exhaust ourselves and make weird decisions because we are trying so hard to keep them from feeling rejected.

But other people’s sensitivity to feeling rejected is not our responsibility to manage.

That’s what I’m trying to learn.

Your thin skin, so rejection-prone,
   is not actually my own
emergency to manage.
   I cannot heal your damage,
and I only harm me
   by trying to be your sunscreen.

Stay safe in this heat, everyone!

In the notebook

I’m already on a rugged climb:
Healing Mountain’s steep and rough.
But sometimes I’m too tired to try.
These days, the going’s extra tough.

Each gust of wind just knocks me down,
where prickly self-doubt shrubs are thick.
But for today, somehow I’ve found
compassion as a walking stick.

In the notebook

I'm down like a candle
   burning too long.
My mind feels melty;
   my will's not strong
enough to stand up 
   for what I need.
I'm a puddly hot mess.
   Let me be.
      Let me be.

In the notebook

Little indigo bunting, 
  with your blues deep and bright,

you've journeyed hard and far.

Your song has survived
   rough storms and dark nights.

Carry on, like the hero you are.

I’ve seen indigo buntings only twice and briefly. I think they’re beautiful. They’re migratory and travel large distances every year. Here’s a photo of one from Unsplash.com:

In the notebook

May I be my own witness--

notice more, govern less--

not censoring how I feel,

but holding me through what's real.

In the notebook

Yes, they gave you life,
  but they treated you with scorn
while pretending it was love.
  And you--confused, forlorn--
tried hard to play along
  and dodge their blasts of blame.
Now it's your turn to win--
  by forfeiting their game.

In the notebook

Some philosophical reflections for you today…

I used to think of “ego” as basically an inner control freak.

My ego mind, bound up in identity and conditions, cares very much what other people think of me and how things go.

By contrast, when I can access the broader perspective of mindfulness, I can simply observe my experience in the moment, with curiosity and openness. Ahhhh—so much calmer.

Or, in verse form:

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Ego cares how things go.
Big mind just rides the flow.

  Ambition wants to get things done,
  then Stress and Violence join the fun,
    and Ego tells a tale of woe
    because it cares how things go.

Big mind feels, but makes no claim;
observes, but does not play, the game.

-- "E" from my "Alphabet Meditation Verses"

Now, however, my view of ego has become more nuanced.

Here’s my current working model:

Yes, ego is a control freak—but not just out of arbitrary backwardness or “natural depravity” (a brilliantly hilarious phrase in The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins).

Ego is the mind’s social defense system. It’s what develops during the socialization of childhood and adolescence, as we leave behind the simple creature-level existence of playing, moving, and feeling, and we begin self-consciously shaping our presentation to others in social self-defense.

But that’s only the emotionally healthy childhoods.

In childhoods with insecure parental attachment and other sorts of developmental trauma, children have to start developing egos—social self-defense systems—much earlier than they naturally would.

They learn to carefully shape their presentation to others (most of all, their parents/family) to maximize their chances of getting needs met and to minimize their chances of receiving scorn and other abuse. So their egos become supercharged with deeply ingrained layers of hyper-responsibility, shame, blame, and other fun add-ins.

Those of us with these special Ego Plus subscriptions may require extra help for the work of shifting from ego’s “little mind” (for us it’s “little” as in young!) to the “big mind” perspective of mindfulness.

Specifically, the work involves engaging our “big mind” to re-parent our “little mind.”

Here’s an example from one of my recent-ish “Serenity Splash” poems:

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You’re clinging, nerves wringing,
to an illusion of control.

You can let go, little ego.
Take my hand. We're here and whole.  

Practicing this sort of self-soothing and self-coaching is being very helpful for me!

How’s your relationship with your mind’s “ego” going these days? 🩵

River Roundup

Recent section posts

🏝️Book Beach

“I’m trying to inch my way back toward more organization and intentionality with reading…because books feed my soul.”

🪷Serenity Splashes

See full posts for my audio recordings, in-the-notebook photos, and featured photo captions.

For all survivors

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My dear, what happened to you was wrong
   and not your fault in any way.
The shame of it does not belong
   to you. You're free to grow away.

a message to my younger self on codependency and boundaries

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You dash around your loved ones' wounded hearts,
hoping to staunch their spills of blood in time--

but your bandages can't mend their inner harm,
and meanwhile you are burning out your light.

Stop.

No amount of self-abandonment
on your part can heal their woundedness.

The best way you can love them is to tend
yourself and what's on your side of the fence.

simplified reflections on this growth process

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"Overfunctioning"
   was my middle name
(except when I burned out--
   that's when it became
"underfunctioning").
   Now I claim the grace 
of "natural functioning":
   my body sets my pace.

haiku poetry for my fellow religious trauma survivors

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Like a tamed, trained horse,
pleasing other people was
what we were shaped for. 

      spirits broken,
      pain unspoken

At last, we broke free.
Now we're running our own ways
in weird, wild glory.

     Come and join us:
     chase what's joyous.

reflections in honor of Pride Month

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What boxes have you 
  broken yourself
     to fit into?

Perhaps a dull gray
  closet, when your
     heart was rainbow-hued?

I broke myself for altars,
  pews, and good-girl plaques.

Now I break the boxes 
  to keep myself intact.

My dear, what happened to you was wrong
   and not your fault in any way.
The shame of it does not belong
   to you. You're free to grow away.

In the notebook

My reading life has been pretty haphazard ever since I had kids. (Before that—as some of you may recall—were my days of elaborate study systems and reading plans!) I’m trying to inch my way back toward more organization and intentionality with reading…because books feed my soul.

This post is for helping myself toward that end.

The books in the photo above are some current favorites that I hope to reread and/or review (page through, gather quotes from, write a blog post about, etc.).

Here are some lists of my recent reading activity, followed by more book photos.

Actively reading

• audiobooks via the Libby app

  • Life on the Bridge: Linking My Life to Yours as an Autistic Therapist by Kaelynn Partlow

  • Nevermoor, Book 1: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend

  • Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli

• print books (which I keep in various strategic places to grab in spare moments)

  • Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  • Simply Physics by DK Publishing

  • Thinking Physics by Lewis Carroll Epstein

  • New Elementary Latin by B.L. Ullman and Norman E. Henry

Recently finished

• If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares (audio)

• Who Deserves Your Love by KC Davis (audio first, then print)

• The Right to Write by Julia Cameron

• The Fowl Twins by Eoin Colfer (audio)

Want to read in near future

• How to Deal with your (__) So Your Kids Don’t Have To by Eli Harwood

• Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofsteader

• Competitive Sensemaking by John Nerst

• The Biased Brain by Bo Bennett

More book photos

These don’t correspond with the lists above, because I have books in various places and various stages of reading.

I’d love to hear what you are reading lately!

You dash around your loved ones' wounded hearts,
hoping to staunch their spills of blood in time--

but your bandages can't mend their inner harm,
and meanwhile you are burning out your light.

Stop.

No amount of self-abandonment
on your part can heal their woundedness.

The best way you can love them is to tend
yourself and what's on your side of the fence.

In the notebook

What boxes have you 
  broken yourself
     to fit into?

Perhaps a dull gray
  closet, when your
     heart was rainbow-hued?

I broke myself for altars,
  pews, and good-girl plaques.

Now I break the boxes 
  to keep myself intact.

In the notebook

"Overfunctioning"
   was my middle name
(except when I burned out--
   that's when it became
"underfunctioning").
   Now I claim the grace 
of "natural functioning":
   my body sets my pace.

In the notebook

Like a tamed, trained horse,
pleasing other people was
what we were shaped for. 

      spirits broken,
      pain unspoken

At last, we broke free.
Now we're running our own ways
in weird, wild glory.

     Come and join us:
     chase what's joyous.

Can you tell I love horses?

In the notebook

Here’s a model/schema I made up recently, putting together similar terms from different contexts, that is helping me understand myself better.

(1) Overfunctioning

I got this term from the excellent book Who Deserves Your Love by KC Davis. She writes:

“Someone who overfunctions in relationships is constantly reaching over that boundary line to take responsibility for things that are not their responsibility…

“Boundaries are about allowing us to give in ways that don’t harm ourselves or others and allow us to show up for people authentically.

“Overfunctioning isn’t about other people but about a lack of internal boundaries.”

Oof. I felt/feel like that pretty much sums up my life so far, especially in my growing-up years. It’s like I emerged into the world as a carefully honed cornucopia of people-pleasing, codependency, lack of boundaries, masking, and overfunctioning. I’ve done a lot of healing work and growth, but I still have a long way to go.

I also think that the concept of overfunctioning probably applies to all late-diagnosed, high-masking neurodivergent people—all those who have been straining all along to seem normal and fit into the mainstream work/school schedule, while actually having different needs from the majority.

So I’m trying to stop overfunctioning—pushing past my boundaries and needs to do what others want me to or what I think I’m supposed to.

With my kids, this mostly looks like stopping myself from doing things for them that I’ve mindlessly done for years because I “could” and because it was slightly harder to require them to do it for themselves. It’s not fun—we have enough meltdowns around here without adding extra disruptions to routine—but it does seem like the best path forward.

And I do have a handy, if nonideal, motivator for this practice: burnout!

That leads me to the next item in the schema:

(2) Underfunctioning

KC Davis uses the term “underfunctioning” to describe those who, in contrast to people who are overfunctioning in relationships, fail to “take ownership of the responsibilities on [their] side of the boundary line.” In other words, they let the overfunctioners do most of the work.

But I am applying the term “underfunctioning” instead to burnout—what happens when overfunctioners push too hard for too long and then just crash out. For example, they may enter a depression in which they can’t get out of bed.

I go through mild episodes of burnout pretty regularly. This is not surprising, given my strong pattern of overfunctioning. (I did have some major, really bad burnout crises when I was much younger, when I didn’t even know that self-care was a thing.)

I’m in a burnout phase right now, actually. So I’m trying to lean into it and use it as an opportunity to help myself correct for the ways in which I’ve been overfunctioning. For example, at this moment, I’m sitting outside on the deck (having taken a day off of work), utterly ignoring the huge amount of housework needing done. It will get dealt with sooner or later. Or it won’t. But I’m not going to break myself to do it.

“I cannot break myself any longer for you.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Burnout/“I’m not doing it” mode are not the ideal place to dwell forever, of course. So what is? What is the alternative to either “overfunctioning” or “underfunctioning”?

Once I asked that question, the answer was right there:

(3) Natural Functioning

I think I originally got this phrase, which I’ve been using for years, from Thich Nhat Hanh (in some book or talk that I cannot now locate), to describe the dynamic of living with mindfulness according to the natural functioning of one's body and mind, rather than by egoic effort to control things.

It can be hard for the ego-mind—especially under the influence of trauma and cultural programming—to not try to be in control of things. (That’s what my songs and “Serenity Splash” poems are for!) I find comfort in these words of Thich Nhat Hanh:

“All we need to be responsible for is the present moment. Only the present is within our reach. To care for the present is to take care for the future.”

Natural functioning is inhabiting the present moment, noticing your feelings and consulting your intuition. It’s letting your body and feelings guide you from moment to moment; it’s following the lead of your instincts, intuition, and intelligence.

It’s exactly what my evangelical Christian upbringing—and perhaps the larger Western culture in general—said not to do. Don’t trust your feelings; don’t “feed the flesh”; don’t heed your own wisdom. Trust instead to the great patriarchal authority, whose almighty wisdom you must never question, no matter how evil and absurd it may seem. It turns out, that’s a great way to keep masses of people (especially women) under control, but it’s not a great way to live a satisfying life as a thoughtful individual.

I’m so thankful I’ve found my way to learning to exist in a new way—neither overfunctioning nor underfunctioning, but functioning at my own natural pace, which is unique and ever-fluctuating.

River Roundup

Section posts from the past week

🖋️Writer’s Waters

🪷Serenity Splashes

Slow down, body, we're okay--

no need for fight or flight right now.

To let our wise-mind lead the way,

let's take our time to hear its sound.

You're a hero blazing trails,

sometimes through thorns and heavy rains.

What feels hard is not your fault.

These are your hero's-journey pains.

   Compassion and respect to you,

   my friend--and may your sky show blue.

Worn and teary,
 torn and weary:
need to rest--
 read and nest.

Unless I ask,
  please don't presume
    to tell me what I need.
We're not the same,
  so you do you,
    and I'll look after me.

You 
   were never the problem.

Their love 
   was impossibly far

because 
   it was already broken.

You 
   were loveable—

     and still are.

Just because the house is messy doesn’t mean I can’t sit down somewhere to write.

It may be harder to focus due to clutter; it may even be challenging to find a clear enough spot to sit.

But I still get to write.

I don’t have to wait until the house is clean…and I must not. I must tend my body and mind first—a.k.a. write—and clean only when I feel well enough.

In other words, if the only thing in the way of my sitting down and writing is my anxiety about the house messiness (given that the problem is currently much too big to just quickly solve), please, if at all possible, say “screw it” to the messes, and go sit down somewhere (perhaps outside?) and write!

Extra argument: I would much rather be a mom who is often reclining and using her mind—and thus is more joyful and present with her kids—than a mom who’s chronically drained and strained.

QED. I hereby give myself permission to write amidst the clutter.

I give it to you, too, reader, for whatever form of creating, rest, or play you find fulfilling!

You 
   were never the problem.

Their love 
   was impossibly far

because 
   it was already broken.

You 
   were loveable—

     and still are.

In the notebook

Unless I ask,
  please don't presume
    to tell me what I need.
We're not the same,
  so you do you,
    and I'll look after me.

Worn and teary,
 torn and weary:
need to rest--
 read and nest.

In the notebook

You're a hero blazing trails,

sometimes through thorns and heavy rains.

What feels hard is not your fault.

These are your hero's-journey pains.

  
   Compassion and respect to you,

   my friend--and may your sky show blue.

In the notebook

For this one, I wrote out the basic gist of what I wanted to say, then poeticized it. I liked this process and aim to repeat it!