Fatigue, burnout, distress. Well-being, self-care, resilience.

Tools. Prevention. Resources.

Mindfulness. Yoga. Balance.

This. Is. Exhausting.

I’ve heard talk after talk at national meetings on burnout over the past few weeks. And months. And, well…years. And we are still talking about it. And we are still burned out. We are doing this wrong…

I’m preparing my own talk on burn out. And I’m struggling to say anything new. But I promised myself I wouldn’t just say what’s been said before because I think we are missing something in this conversation. Maybe it’s vulnerability, the courage to be raw. The truth. I guess if I’m going to talk about burnout, I’ll have to tell a story. And the one I know best…is mine.

2011. New job. Brand new surgeon, my first big kid job. Nausea waves over me every time I drive into the hospital to take call. The stakes are high. My decisions, my hands, will save or kill someone today.

2012, 2013. Ease in. Hitting my stride. Take on more. Projects. Call. Research. Mentorship. Committees. My marriage is suffering. My kids are growing…and I’m often absent. I’m mentally gathering a list of patients that have troubled me…difficult patients and devastating stories; my mistakes; my occasional heroic successes.

2014. My clinical outcomes are good. My personal outcomes are not. I’m not sleeping much. I’m not talking with my husband. I’m investing in my job but not my relationships. I’m pulling away. I’m taking personal risks I never used to take. I’m anxious. I’m depressed. I’m yelling at my kids and withdrawing from my partner. I go to work and come home and want to be alone. I want silence. I can’t even stand the dog barking anymore. This is not what I expected from my storybook life…I reached my goals…I’m a surgeon. I’m a mother. I’m a wife. And I’m a mess.

2015. I stop eating. I start running. Literally running. 6, 7, 8 miles a day. And running from everything that I need to address. My marriage, my job, my heart. A trauma conference held at the Happiest Place on Earth…Disney. A speaker uses the word burnout and starts describing me. Detached. Depressed. Anxious. Appetite changes. Insomnia. I am punched in the gut. How did this happen? How can I, innocent, hard working, in-control Jen, have let myself get to this place? Guilt. Shame. It’s a dark place to be….

I cry. I pray and I let myself be broken. Truly, deeply, completely shattered.

Then I start talking. A lot. To a colleague. To a counselor. To my husband.

I start writing. In a journal. In this blog.

I keep running. But I start to understand I am running towards healing more than away from my messes.

I start investing in my marriage. By being deliberate. And humble. And deciding to love and not give up. We looked at each other and said, “We have two choices: we can choose to live this stale life and know that it will ultimately leave us both unhappy and eventually apart, or we can dig our heels in and do this thing. Just ‘seeing how things go’ is the same as declaring it’s over.” Marriage is not a passive activity. It’s stupid hard work.

2016. I’m not as fragile. I hit the reset button and take a new job. Slowly, so slowly, feeling stronger. Surrendering more. To my family, to my self. Mostly…to Jesus. Relationships start getting more real. My identity rests more in my Faith than in my own strengths. I learn to hold loosely to this life as a surgeon. This can’t be who I am…what if a tragic accident steals this career from me? It can only be what I do. Who I am is so much more…

2017…2018…”Take this well-being index survey”, they say. Apparently, I’m still burned out. Then a screen pops up. The suicide hotline. The chaplain’s phone number. The schedule for mindfulness workshops and yoga classes. How shallow and insulting. By now, I am doing all of those things I am supposed to do. I wake up at 5am everyday. I read, pray, and eat my breakfast. I go to work and I am productive and involved. I run marathons. I am a vegetarian. I keep a journal. I am (more) happily married and have a great relationship with my kids, my brother, my parents. I checked all the boxes, I’m doing all the right things and yet, I bury the burn-out needle in the red. Every. Dang. Time.

2019. I’m calmer, happier. And still broken. We all are. I’m still burned out. We all are. But my perspective is shifting. I realize the vulnerability of being broken, staying broken, in some way, is real. Authentic. I am getting better at extending some grace, to myself and others. To forgive. To listen. I keep making mistakes. I over commit. I hurt the ones I love with insensitivity, indifference and inattentiveness. So I say the incredible words, “I’m sorry.” And I realign. It’s ok.

Burnout creeps in. And kills slowly. When we finally realize it and name it “burnout”, we want to rush to provide “resources”, because that’s easy. We try to prevent and cure, because that’s what we do with diseases everyday. But I think we need to stop talking about preventing or conquering burnout. We can’t. We haven’t. We won’t. It’s the same as aging. We can try to slow it or work against it, but it’s coming, regardless. What is beautiful, instead, is embracing the process. We don’t need a sterile link to the Employee Assistance Program so we can talk to a stranger. We need our dear friend’s phone number to pop-up when we bury the burnout needle. Speaking our real, raw truth with our sacred partners and friends is far more meaningful in the long run.

The most powerful words to me over the last few years: you are not alone. I’m walking through rough times with some friends right now. I see their hearts are hurting. Maybe they are burned out. Maybe this is just life. But it’s the talking…the hours and hours of talking…that are soothing for each of us. Not a link to a professional video or obscure campus office. Just a friend. A real, long-cultivated relationship.

The embers of burn-out were never fanned back into beautiful flames with resilience training and mid-afternoon yoga…I’m in the OR then and I don’t need one more thing to do in my day. The fire in me is from my relationships. My primary relationship, my love, my husband. My dearest friends. My Jesus.

Disclaimer: My viewpoints are not necessarily reflective of my employer, or any local, regional or national organization that I belong to. As a matter of fact, I pretty much just speak for myself. Please keep that in mind.