Have you experienced burn out before? It can happen to us because of our jobs, our lifestyles and our commitments. One of the biggest jobs we have as spouses is to protect our spouses and to look after them. Part of looking after them is watching for these signs of burnout and providing them with the assistance and the support to recover from it.
Burnout
I’ve gone through burnout before. It’s a state where you’re exhausted, overwhelmed and lacking the will to continue facing the challenges that happen. This happened to me once when my daughter was an infant, I was going to school, she was very tiny and demanded so much time from me and I was learning to rework the priorities in my life to care for her. Emotionally, I was a mess. My husband and my mother-in-law worked together to get me a day or two of real downtime, time that let me catch up on my sleep and relax.
It helped.
My husband wouldn’t let me withdraw from all my other activities and my friends, because he knew I needed those relationships even though I really couldn’t see it at the time. Previously, we’d enjoyed going out at least once a week and we found way to incorporate that into our new lifestyle and finally, he worked hard to make sure that on the weekends, I caught up on some of the sleep I was losing throughout the week.
Coping with Burnout
Coping with burnout is never fun and in fact, the first time it happened — I didn’t recognize the signs. I’d put on weight, I didn’t really care about my appearance, and I didn’t care about much more than getting the things done throughout the day that I needed to do. I couldn’t really see that taking care of myself was fundamental to getting the rest of it done and frankly, I didn’t see the point. That first period of burnout was really hard on me.
I’d gained a lot of weight with the pregnancy and it made me slow and sluggish. I got sick easier because I was always tired and I felt this overwhelming sense of stress because everything I needed to do, I needed to do for our infant. I was so worried about whether or not I would be any good at it, that I let that pressure suffocate me.
I Needed My Husband
This was a time in our marriage that I really needed my husband and I am grateful that he understood my issues and he made it his mission to find a way to lighten the load on me. It wasn’t always easy for him, in part because I didn’t know what to ask for help on and he wasn’t always sure where he could intervene. We’re very different people, very focused in our own ways and I have a tendency to get locked up in the idea of getting it all done.
When I have a lot of responsibilities, I have a very difficult time relaxing and letting go. My husband recognizes this. If helping me meant doing a load or two of laundry or taking over as primary caregiver when he got home from work or asking his mother up every few weeks to look after the baby so we could go out for a day or an evening and have fun.
He continues this particular task really well – ten years into our relationship and he is still one of the only people who can make me laugh when I really don’t have much to laugh about. I do the same for him. We work very hard together to confront our life challenges head on – but when he gets so wrapped up in work, he forgets to relax – I’m right there, making relaxation a priority and he does the same.
Protecting Our Marriages
Protecting our marriages is important for us and for our spouses. We need to protect our down time; our alone time; our intimacy and our social time. It’s critical – it also helps us keep our fingers on the pulse of our relationship – and in that way – we can help prevent burnout and recover from burnout at the same time.
Have you or your spouse ever experienced burnout?
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