How friends can heal burnout together
I recently spent the weekend in the beautiful California redwoods doing a solo retreat and reflection workshop that I designed for myself. My solo retreat was a gentle immersion in reading, journalling, tea-drinking, napping, and staring at 700-year-old trees. The entire excursion centered around absorbing and exploring the ideas in the book Laziness Does Not Exist by Dr. Devon Price. The book describes how The Laziness Lie—which has its roots in capitalism and slavery—traps us in a constant cycle of busyness, status-building, and burnout. It leads us to ignore our own natural needs for rest and wellbeing, to the detriment of our mental, emotional, and physical health.
Back in December 2019, Harvard Business Review ran an article about workplace burnout, which said that leaders could lower employee stress and subsequent burnout if they were better at asking people what they need. Experiences—not lack of personal resilience— are what lead people to burn out. And burnout is not just in your head; it's an actual disorder recognized by the World Health Organization. During the pandemic, many of us replaced workplace burnout with its slouchier flip side: WFH burnout. While we relish the extra time we gained by giving up a commute, we also feel depleted by having all of our work and life happening within the same four walls — not to mention sharing that space with partners, pets, and kids. How can you have work-life balance if you don’t even have work-life boundaries?
A couple years into the pandemic, eager C Suite execs started putting their flags in the ground as devotees of either a full IRL RTO (return-to-office) policy, or hybrid, or fully remote. All of those policies need to address the real needs of their staff who feel wiped out by what they've been going through in the COVID crisis. Things cannot just shift immediately "back to normal" because the previous so-called "normal" (aka life circa 2019 and before) already led to dizzying levels of burnout. Juggling an existencial crisis and the demands of WFH during the pandemic put millions of people’s stress levels on steroids, making burnout not just likely but damn near inevitable.
The time is ripe for a new way of working:
• More compassion
• Increased psychological safety
• Greater flexibility
• Increased paid time off
• A four-day workweek
• More well-being benefits
We are humans, and we deserve more humane working experiences. Imagine seeing the reversal of a recent headline, with this optimistic twist: "60% of working professionals report lower rates of burnout and increased happiness at work." I wish I could link to that story, but it doesn’t exist. What do you think would need to change in order to make this headline a reality? What would it take to decrease your own feelings of burnout? Keep reading for resources to help you reduce your own feelings of mental exhaustion and burnout, while also strengthening your social ties.
Books for burnout
I've found all of these books helpful in addressing burnout in my own life and in finding more balance and peace.
📕 Laziness Does Not Exist by Dr. Devon Price
📙 Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski
📔 How to Not Always Be Working by Marlee Grace
📗 How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
📘 I Didn’t Do the Thing Today by Madeleine Dore
I encourage you to read one or more of these books, or listen via audiobook if reading feels like too much work right now (I get it). And don’t do it alone — invite a friend who might also be feeling burned out to join you. Make a mini book club and process your thoughts, feelings, and reactions to the books together.
At work, speak to your manager about options to create a more humane and supportive workplace for you and your coworkers. Chapter 3 in Laziness Does Not Exist provides research-based findings which prove that well-rested employees are better for business. If you work for yourself, speak to your manager (ahem, yourself) about getting some much-deserved time off. I'll be doing that soon myself.
Whether you choose to read as part of your rest, or if you just need to stare at a tree and remember that your life has value even when you’re simply breathing, I support you. Laboring under the continual pressure of capitalism is not what gives life meaning. Yes, we might derive an immense sense of purpose and find joy and creativity in our work (I certainly do). But if your work is burning you out and you need rest, please never doubt that you deserve it, or think that you need to “earn” rest.
Burnout and loneliness
One of the many downsides of overwork and burnout is that it can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation. As Harvard Business Review has reported, around 50% of people say they’re often or always exhausted because of work. And the more we overwork, the more lonely we feel. The more lonely we feel, the more the quality of our work deteriorates. The crappier our quality of work, the more we want to skip work (or deal with repercussions and reprimands), which just makes us feel more lonely. The combination creates a downward escalator into despair. But it doesn’t have to be this way!
Heal your exhaustion with connection
It might sound counterintuitive to spend time with other people when you’re already feeling exhausted. This isn’t about wearing yourself out even more. I’m definitely not pushing you to plan a four-course dinner party for twelve people. This is about giving yourself access to nurturing social support, in the gentlest of ways. A study published in the NIH National Library of Medicine found that increased access to social support decreased feelings of burnout for healthcare workers across all genders. It’s reasonable to trust that their findings apply across industries as well.
Friends who feel together, heal together.
Here are a few easy, low-stress, and free/low-cost ways to make your time off more rejuvenating and healing by sharing it with your friends.
Relieve stress together
Yoga: Every yoga class is not created equal. Look for Restorative Yoga classes, which calm the parasympathetic nervous system through slow, movements and gentle poses that you hold for minutes instead of seconds. You’ll use a lot of blankets and support blocks in a class like this. It’s the closest you can get to taking a nap during an exercise class. Highly recommend. If money’s an issue, here’s a playlist of 10+ free online Restorative Yoga sessions from Yoga with Adriene; each class is about 30 minutes long. Tell a friend that you’ve been dealing with burnout and ask if they’ll take a restorative yoga class with you, then discuss your feelings in gentle conversation afterward.
3 more stress-relief ideas you can do with a friend:
Is anger a part of your burnout? Go to a drop-in class at a boxing gym and punch out your frustrations.
Need something gentle and slow? Grab a big soft blanket and head to a sunny park or quiet backyard. Lay down and let the earth absorb the full weight of your body.
Feeling bottled up? Write it out. Brew cups of tea and journal together, either in person or remotely. After, share what thoughts and feelings are bubbling up for you.
Practice mindfulness together
Throughout history, different spiritual traditions have recognized the value of attending to your mind and soul while sharing the company of others. For example, in Buddhism, the word sangha refers to your community of friends who are on the same spiritual path as you. Whether you belong to a spiritual community or not, you can practice mindfulness with others. Mindfulness is simply about bringing your conscious awareness to the things you’re thinking and feeling.
If you feel too tired for social interaction, but could benefit from more social connection and support, practice mindfulness with a friend. It’s a perfect fit because you’re together, but you don’t have to say or do anything (externally, anyway).
Here’s a brief beginner’s guide to practicing mindfulness with a friend
Choose a comfortable position to sit down or lie down in a place where no one will disturb you.
I recommend setting a timer, eg. for 30 minutes. If you’re a beginner, you can start with a lower amount of time, like 15 minutes.
Sit or lie down with your eyes closed or softly gazing at something neutral, like a plant or a spot on the wall. If you want, you can play some soothing music, but only if it won’t distract you. It needs to be something you won’t pay attention to.
Now all you have to do is notice what’s happening inside you. What sensations arise in your body? What are your senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch telling you? What are your additional senses telling you, as well as your “sixth” senses that include things like perception and intuition? What kinds of emotions are you feeling? Are your emotions creating a physical sensation in your body? What thoughts do you notice floating across your mind? You don’t have to do anything to change your thoughts — simply notice what your mind is conjuring up. Notice what you tend to notice.
As you’ll notice, practicing mindfulness is a lot about being in conversation with yourself. You’re truly being with yourself, by giving yourself your full, aware, and accepting attention. After the timer goes off, you and your friend can discuss what came up for you.
I encourage you to try these ideas out this week. Remember that when you weave together your rest, stress relief, and social support, there’s no wrong way to do it. Every minute you spend healing your burnout is one more step you’ve taken toward feeling good.
Want to dive in further?
If you’ve been dealing with workplace loneliness, and you suspect that the causes go beyond individual burnout, then you might be interested in my keynote talk, The Other L Word. In this talk, we examine and unpack the ways that loneliness and disconnection manifest in the workplace, especially in the design and tech industry (my former stomping grounds). In this talk, I also share the business case for investing in connection, plus strategies that managers and employees can use to cultivate connection and grow more supportive, balanced, healthy teams. Investing in connection isn’t just “touchy-feely fluffy stuff” — it can literally save companies millions of dollars per year. I’d love to tell you how. I can bring this talk to your company, professional association, conference, Meetup, or community organization. Check out a sneak peek of the content, and use my booking form to reach out.
If you liked the ideas in this blog post, I get you’ll also get lots of value out of the article How to Cope with Burnout: Advice From The Experts on porch.com which I contributed to and which has tons of supportive advice from therapists, doctors, CEOs, and founders.
Hang in there. Take rest. Be well.
~ Kat Vellos, speaker, and author of We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships
