Work life balance || The Reality

||Sequel 2/3

If I look around at work, I see quite a few colleagues, who are/were sick with burn out symptoms as well. Paying attention, I easily can see it everywhere. Burn Out. People resigning. I was thinking about it too, looking for a new job. The easy way out. Unfortunately, I wanted my job, I liked the general content and I did not want to run away. I feared it will follow up on me and might repeat itself again anywhere else. I assumed there is something I need to learn and to change. I chose the hard way and I am still struggling and torturing myself.

I have the strong feeling it is time to fight for the needs of people who are suffering from stress at work, especially since I’m effected as well. I became part of the “workers council” and have an extra eye on helping others with comparable issues. It is very important to be open to help! And even more, it’s important to let others help you. I’m learning to use both for myself.

You are not alone. There are plenty of people who go through the same shit. There even are various support groups you can search for online.

There are various books that will help you too. The basis for this is you need to be willing to put a lot of work, effort, time, digging and even more struggle into this. I was lucky that I got on a waiting list for psychotherapy and managed to start therapy after 6 month of searching and waiting for a spot.

Work nowadays is fast and changing. It’s either hanging in and arranging yourself – or loosing yourself. If I think about all the benefits our grandparents were fighting for back in the days, it’s sad to realize that we already took a flip backwards. We had those benefits, but it’s old fashion nowadays. Sometimes it feels like we are back to modern slavery. Who is lucky to still have set working hours with max 8 hours a day? Who is getting payed additionally for extra hours? Who still gets paid an extra salary? And which new contract has more than 20 days for vacation? Who can pay the bills with only one fulltime job. Who has more jobs than just one!?

…Instead we have this mentality to “live our job”, be part of the family 24/7 and so much more. Again, feels like modern slavery at times. On the one hand we hear more about work-life balance, wellness and all that, on the other hand burn out become pretty much usual.

Burn Out. Every day we do not listen to ourselves and are ignoring the warnings. We function to fulfill our job. We torture ourselves over and over again. Crossing the borders to investing even more, working on a high energy level became common. Always stress and pressure and the more we accept it and try to adapt, the closer we get to killing ourselves! At work – a world full of zombies.

As part of the burning people, we probably had a lot of doctor’s appointments, psychotherapy and lots more. We learned there are circumstances why some people are more endangered to get an depression (Burn Out) and some are less. We learned about trigger situation and get an rough idea on all those things we need to work on, to get ourselves back on track and have us deal with it in a more appealing way. Most important in this content: loving yourself! Isn’t it strange that thousand of people forgot how to watch out for themselves, loving yourself and taking care of your own needs?!

Burn out?! Who is it to blame? Actually, I feel like there is no one really to blame. It’s the circumstances that made you sick. And it is on you, to get yourself together again.

I always felt pressure on me. I can’t deal with pressure anymore. This was different back in the days. I had to learn the hard way – I am sick and need to take care of myself. It was – and still is – a lot of work. I survived the one year blackhole called burn out.

Before I returned to work, one of my doctors told me, how bad they would make me feel because I missed out on working for a long period. They probably would blame me, they might start mobbing me and wanting to get rid of me. My doctor wanted to get me prepared for my return to work. It sounded strange to me. I could not imagine this would happen to me. I was convinced that I used to be a hard working lady and wasn’t to blame for anything.

So who is it to blame and what is it to expect, who will be blamed in the end?!

…more to follow.