You love your life, so why are you running on empty?

In this episode of the Rise From Within podcast, I'm talking about something I've been experiencing recently — functional burnout. This is not the dramatic, can't-get-out-of-bed version most people picture. It’s the kind where you're still doing everything, still showing up, and still ticking the boxes, but something feels off and your body is telling you it's had enough.

I'm sharing what it actually looked like for me: the emotional strain, the snappiness, the tiredness, and the moment I realised I could see exactly where I was over committing but couldn't work out what to cut because I genuinely wanted to do all of it.

That's the tangle this episode is really about. What happens when the things draining you are things you love? How do you recognise burnout when your life is full of good stuff? And how do you make decisions about pulling back and cutting things out when stepping back feels like compromising and losing part of yourself?

I'm also sharing the signs that are easy to miss. There are plenty of indications that don't look like burnout on the surface but are definitely worth paying attention to. 

And I'm talking about what changed for me when I finally made some decisions on what to let go of, and why a Tuesday night making pancakes with my family felt like the most significant thing I'd done in weeks.

If you're still functioning, still showing up, but running on fumes, this one's for you.

Transcript

0:00

Hello, how are you? How are you? Happy pancake day. It's not pancake day anymore. I know that, but it has been this week. So happy pancake day to you. Do you do pancakes? We do pancakes. I love a pancake. We don't have any of that first pancake goes in the bin nonsense here. I have mastered the art of pancakes a long time ago because I have had to cook them for my family for many years. But I love a pancake. What's your topping of choice? What is your topping of choice? um We go for primarily sweet stuff in our house. My husband doesn't even really eat them. Can you believe that? Should I divorce him? He, yeah, he just, he's just not bothered by them. He's not bothered about food in general though. I think I've mentioned that on here before, haven't I? He's just not. Just not that into it, but the rest of the family is. So pancakes, sugar, lemon, course, staples of the pancake world, aren't they? But chopped fruit like bananas and things, chocolate spread, ice cream, it all comes out. It all comes out on pancake day. So we had a good one. What do you have on your pancake? Tell me, I am interested. Also this week I went to see Wuthering Heights at the cinema. Oh god how good is it have you seen it? Have you been? Are you bothering? It is, it's so good. It's so good. And actually now that I've been, I'm really pleased that I didn't actually see the original one and I hadn't even read the book. So I really didn't know what the storyline was about. The only thing I knew about Wuthering Heights is Kate Bush and her song. And that it was Heathcliff and Cathy. That's all I knew. That is absolutely all I knew. But... What a story. What an actual story. And the film is just brilliant. Just brilliant. So I did that this week as well. And do you know, I haven't even worked an evening this week. I just haven't. And it's been quite the revelation because I'm really bad for doing work in the evening. Even if I've done a full day. in the office or I've been out and I've been at meetings or I've been helping a client or I've done a VIP day or whatever, I still get home and in the evening sit there twiddling my thumbs going, oh, I need to do something, I need to do something. And then I end up doing work in the evening while I'm sat trying to watch TV or something. So that's never a good thing, is it? It's never good to just work all hours like that. Unless there is something pressing and then you've just got to get it done. But on the whole, is not, it's not a good way to be. And I really got myself into a rut. So this week, it's been really, really nice to not do any of those things. I've just done nice things. I've been in a play pool. I had pancakes with the family and then we just kind of sat around and chatted and stuff. And then I went to the cinema on Wednesday and then Thursday's pool night and yeah, it was just really, really nice stuff. But how mad is it that for me that was an abnormality? That's not the norm in our house. If that feels like relief, then I think there's something wrong, you know, in general. I think if you're go, go, go, go, then you stop and you think, this is unusual, then the go, go, go is too much. And that's kind of led me to talking about what I want to talk about this week. Functional burnout. Now functional burnout is not the big kind of dramatic burnout that we imagine it to be. So a lot of people will have full on breakdowns because they've just worked too hard and their body and their mind are saying no, I can't do this anymore. But there is a burnout where that doesn't quite get to that point. So it's not, it's not a massive thing and people don't really see it. You know, you're not laying in bed in the morning and you can't get out of bed and you can't face the day and all of that. The thing that most people picture. It's not like that functional burnout. is when you are, you're still doing everything. You're still functioning, hence the name, right? You're still getting stuff done. You're still showing up and you're managing your workload and you're here, and everywhere and you're capable and you're coping, or at least that's what everybody sees. But slowly you are running out of steam. you're running out of spoons. Have you heard the spoon analogy? You've seen that? I'll have to find it somewhere. I'll have to find a video and link it in the comments or something. there is a, there's a spoon theory, which basically says a person has so many spoons, right? And each spoon represents some energy. So you start with say 10 spoons. And for many people, an active full day, is those 10 spoons. So you get up in the morning, you sort the kids out, you run around, you've got everything sorted, you get everybody out the door and where they need to be, and then you get to work or you get to the office or you get your first appointment of the day, whatever it is, and that uses a spoon. And then you have a couple of meetings in the morning and that uses a spoon. And then you have... this workload to do, you have a particularly taxing client that you work with and maybe that takes another spoon. And as the day goes on, you use your spoons just in different types of energetic ways. Now for some people who are really, really stressed or they're suffering with depression or they've got a chronic illness, for example. those 10 spoons look very different. So that first spoon might get used up just by getting out of bed in the morning. And then maybe the next spoon is used up having breakfast, know, feeding yourself or just having some water or something. And then maybe another spoon gets used up by getting dressed. And before you know it, before your day's even really got going, your spoons are gone. And that is it, that is it. So everybody's got a different level of spoons, right? A fully functioning, non-stressed person with not too much on their plate, you know, the whole day, 10 spoons. For somebody who is just coping, those spoons get used up very quickly. So this type of burnout, this is more like you're on your very last spoon. eh Okay, that is what's going on. You've got very little energy, very little capacity, and you're just trying to manage, you're just trying to get through your days. So it's coping, right? But it's coping at a cost because you're a bit emotionally raw when you get to this point. Maybe you start getting a bit snappy with people, maybe you're tired. Maybe you're feeling unwell, maybe your body's really feeling it. Your body will tell you when enough is enough and you will start to feel these things if you are overloading yourself. So it's not one big moment. It is an ongoing steady accumulation of all the demands that are being put on you that are using your spoons up. Now your nervous system does not lie. When you are carrying way more than you can sustainably hold, it starts to show up physically and emotionally. So it does show up physically in your body. You will feel tense. know, maybe your shoulders are always like really hunched or your jaw's really tight. Maybe your stomach's always uncomfortable or you've always got headaches. all these different ways in your body that you can feel it, your body will start to show these signs of stress. And it shows up in how you interact with people, in your relationships with people, your reactions to things that they're saying. Maybe there are things that, ordinarily, if they said them months ago, you'd be like, oh, whatever. And now you're like, wah, snap. Your patience wears very thin. end of your tether at all times, just waiting for somebody to really tread on that one last nerve, you know? So your body will tell you this stuff before you admit it for yourself. You can look at this in lots of different ways. You can see it in lots of different ways. Being emotionally reactive in ways that don't feel right to you, ways that feel out of proportion to you. Being tired, but really unable to rest properly at the same time. You're never really getting that downtime. This low level irritability that's always there, just rumbling under the surface, just always ready to be annoyed by people, even if nobody's doing anything annoying. Just going through the motions without being really present. That's something as well. You start to detach from reality a little bit and you're just going through the motions. You're just doing things and you're not really present in the moment. Or maybe you start resenting things. You start resenting having to do things for people. Or you start resenting the fact that people are asking you for these things in the first place. That's very... very real when you're feeling overloaded. Maybe it's a sense that you've just got too much on your plate. Even things that you enjoy normally. I've felt this the last few weeks. I have started to feel really irritable with things that I would usually enjoy and people that I would usually enjoy and places that I would usually enjoy being. You know how much I love pool, right? And I was starting to get annoyed with the game and not happy playing it and feeling like it was just a bit of a chore that I had to go there and be there and do it. And I love playing pool, but it was... It was starting to be something that I felt annoyed at. And I get frustrated with myself and my own game, of course. But the actual whole pool scene, that's not something that annoys me. I love it. I love that scene. But it was starting to grate on me a bit. And the demands that people were putting on, I was looking back at all the things that I do for... different people in different scenes, know, in different walks of life. I won't go into details because if people are listening, I don't want them to feel like they've contributed to this or feel like I don't want to be with them, you know? So I won't go into detail, but there are lots of places, there are lots of people in my life that I was starting to really resent for what they were putting on me. And actually what I've realised is that... They haven't put it on me. That's not what I need to be annoyed about. I've let myself be overloaded by this stuff. And that's the difference. These people were just doing things and asking me things that they have done for years now. But now I'm feeling overloaded. So I've got no right to be annoyed at them because this is on me, right? I've not drawn those boundaries. I've not put the lines in the sand and said, you can't ask me to do all this stuff for you anymore. So it is a case of just slowly but surely being overloaded and overloaded and overloaded. And then you realise that even though your life is full of things that you've chosen, it's still a lot. And that's what makes it really confusing. That's what makes functional burnout so confusing and easy to dismiss. It's not bad stuff filling your plate. It's good stuff. So for me, my coaching, my business, Paul, my roles on the committees, the people that I care about, the things that I've built, the life that I've built, the way I live my life. I looked at all of that and I really couldn't see anything that I wanted to cut out because I wanted all of it. I wanted it all in there. But this is the thing. I've allowed myself to cram all this stuff into my life. And now I've got to name it and I've got to name it as a bit of a functional burnout. And I've got to make decisions in there on what I want to do. So this is also why it makes it really difficult to name it as burnout because it's all stuff that you choose. And burnout is supposed to be about what you're hating doing or being trapped somewhere awful or being in a job that you don't like and everybody puts all these pressures on you. But what happens when these things draining you are things that you love. So I had to sit with that. I had to sit and ask myself, what is it that I want? What do I want? And to what degree am I involved in this stuff? And to what degree should I be involved in this stuff? So it's not even a case of what do I need to remove completely. It was a case of, where am I putting my energy? How much energy am I? giving to these things and can I just still be involved but reduce what I was giving? What of these things are serving me and what is actually a problem? Is it just my degree of involvement in these things that is the problem rather than the whole thing? There's a difference, right, between having something in your life and just carrying everything that goes along with it. You can be committed to something without being, I guess, all consumed by it. You can be committed to something. You can really enjoy something. It doesn't mean that you have to take on everything related to it. So for me, I could see where I was over committing, right? The harder question was, what did I do about it? Because I didn't really want to let anything go. I didn't really want to let any of it go. Because I love it all. I love it all so much. But loving it hasn't protected me, has it? It's just put me in this position and it actually makes it harder to spot what's going on because I love it so much, I'm just taking on all these tasks and then that's harder to deal with because then I don't want to let any of it go. So there was a part of me that I had to ask, when I am somebody that does everything? How do I feel about letting it go? You know, there's a real identity thing in here. If I give up some of the things that I'm responsible for, what does that say about me? If I stop taking so much responsibility in a certain area, if I stop doing different types of work in my business, if I... stop focusing on supporting other people that I am linked with in different areas. What does that say about me as a person to let them go? Does it mean I'm not important anymore? Does it mean I'm not valued anymore? Does it mean I don't care anymore? All of these different things come into play and I'll do another episode on this because it's a real, it's a real talking point. There's a lot to... your identity and what it means to have all this stuff on you that you deal with all the time and then to let it go. But I had to think of what I could let go, what I wanted to let go of more than anything, what I wanted less involvement in and what it meant to actually let some of that go. and I think that's an important thing to consider if you're in this position. You know, so for you, do you feel overloaded? Do you feel like you're getting to the point of being burnt out? Do you feel like people are putting too much on you and you can't handle it anymore? What is it that isn't sustainable for you anymore? Sometimes you need to sit down in a room, shut the door to your office, whatever it is. and just write some notes on everything you do and everything in that list that you want to do and everything that you want to let go of and then all the things that you want to let go of but you can't and then why you can't. It's a real, it's a real piece of work, you know, to sit down and do that. But doing that gives you clarity and doing that gives you a way forward out of it. So if you're going to look for this in your own life and see if some of this resonates with you, there are some signs that you can look for that you might not be clocking as burning out right now because they're so subtle and they're very easy to explain away. I'm just tired. I had a bad night's sleep. Haven't drank enough water. So I've got a headache. it's been a rough few days. So I'm sorry. I've been a bit. bit stroppy lately, there's lots of different ways that you might be feeling it, but you're dismissing it or passing off something else. So some of those things are decision fatigue, right? You make so many decisions in your life, in your business, for yourself, for other people, and it goes on and on and on. You're always making decisions and now... those decisions feel disproportionately hard. So, whereas you used to be like, yes, done, decided, yes, done, decided, yes, yes, yes, I know what to do here. Now you're mulling things over and you're like, I just don't know. I just don't know what to do. And all these even little decisions become really difficult. Less enjoyment in things that used to feel good for you. You don't hate them. You don't want to stop doing them. You're just not really feeling the love for them anymore that you used to. Or avoiding those things. Avoiding things you would normally really look forward to. So maybe you like a night out with the girls. Maybe you like to go to the cinema or the theatre. Maybe you like to go out shopping with people. Maybe you just like time on your own and you like to go off and explore different places. but now you've started to not do it. You're not taking part in life the same way that you used to. Never fully switching off either, that's a common one. Your head doesn't really switch off, even if you're sitting on the sofa doing nothing, even if there's nothing around going on for you to pay attention to, your brain's still whirring. Or maybe you get a book out or you sit and watch the TV and then you realize you can't remember what you've read. You don't know. You don't know the last couple of paragraphs you read or you don't know what's just happened in the program that you're watching. And that's because your mind is whirring and your cogs are turning and you're always like thinking of all the stuff you've got to do and the things you've got to do and the places you've got to be in. And it just keeps going. The mind just keeps spinning. Maybe it's a physical tension. in your body and it just will not shift. Even when you're just sitting still, as I said earlier, the jaws tense and your shoulders are tense and maybe your chest is tight or your stomach feels uncomfortable. Maybe it's a patience issue. Maybe you're not as patient as you were before. The people that you love, the people not really doing anything wrong and you're still feeling a little impatient with them. and that's because you've got nothing left, nothing left to give, no patients left, thank you. Or doing things on autopilot, know, the opposite of not doing things. Maybe you're just doing things because they've just gotta be done, but you're not really involved in them, you're just getting stuff done. And in your business, being half-hearted in everything. You don't really care about the tasks you're doing anymore. You don't really pay attention to your clients, maybe. You don't really do all the preparing for meetings or presentations or things that you used to. You just do it. You're just a bit half-hearted about it. Or maybe you don't want to get going in the morning. You don't want to get up. You don't want to get ready for the day. You don't want to dress yourself properly. You can't be bothered to get in the shower. You can just about manage to brush your hair and clean your teeth and you just can't be bothered with the day at all. Or maybe you just don't care about your job role anymore. You just don't care. You just do not care that you own a business. You don't care that you're going to work and you've got a very important role in that business. You just don't care. Or maybe you start to feel resentful of others around you and the lives that they're leading and the way that they're coping and the things that they have and the things that they talk about and the way they approach life and maybe all that is really grating on you because that's not how your life feels at the moment. And maybe everything just feels like a massive ordeal. I mean, that is a sure sign that you've got to the end of the rope with this and everything feels like a big deal and you've just had enough of it. Now these are all signs that you just have too much on your plate. Okay. This is not a sign that you are weak in any way. It's not a sign that you're ungrateful for what you've got or your position in the company or your position in your business, the business that you've built, the people around you, your family, your friends, your, your money, your clients, all, all of this. You're not, not grateful for them. We know that. These sounds are just information, right? It's the body telling you that everything is too much right now. There is an old saying, you can't pour from an empty cup. And it's a very famous saying because it's a very, very true. When you are running at this level, when you are running on the last legs of your energy, when you are running on your last spoon, nobody gets a decent version of you. Not your clients, not your family, not your friends, not your networking peers. Nobody gets you as you should be. You are giving everybody this depleted version of yourself and the people and the things that you're showing up for deserve better than this. And you also deserve better than this. Nobody, including yourself, deserves an empty cup. So in order for you to give to these other areas of your life, your family, your friends, your clients, your peers, whoever, whoever you're interacting with, whatever you are doing where you need to show up, you need that cup to be full to be able to do that properly. but this is what functional burnout does. It drains your cup dry. Drains your cup dry. And it sounds obvious when you say it out loud, right? If you've got no energy, you can't give anybody to anybody else. However, it's surprisingly easy to ignore that when you're in it. Now for myself, I could see the overcommitment. When I sat and thought about this, I could see the overcommitment. I had a session with somebody last... week, I had a breath work session with somebody and it was amazing. All the tension that came out of my body through this session was amazing. I could just feel everything that I had stored up and as I went through it and as I was talking at the beginning before we got into the breath work, it all became very real that I was overloaded and my body and my nervous system were overloaded. So I knew that I needed to do something about that. And the breath work session was a part of that. The hardest part about all of this stuff is doing something about it. I just knew that something had to give. So for me, it wasn't a case of, what do I want to remove? It was, what is my degree of involvement costing me more than it's giving me? And that reframe really matters because the goal wasn't to actually just gut my life and get rid of everything. It wasn't just to bin it all off, burn it to the ground and start again. It was to... resize my involvement in things, right? It was about deciding how much of myself I wanted to commit to every area that I was trying to commit to. Some things just needed reining in, right? Just pulling back. They didn't need ending completely. It was like, can I still have this in my life in a way that doesn't drain me anymore? Is there a version of my involvement in this that is sustainable for me? So that was a really important realization and turning point for me. It meant that I gave myself the permission to do the things that I wanted to do at 70 % rather than 100%. And that's still being enough. There was a real guilt with that though. There was a real guilt with pulling that back and doing less, especially when others relied on me or turned to me for information. But I had to do it. There were things that I've done this week that I thought I wasn't going to do, you know? There's things like I gave notice on my membership. This is a big deal for me. I have run that membership for five years now and I really love it. I really love it. But as a part of where my business is and where my business is going, it's not sustainable. On an energetic level for me, not sustainable. When I'm working in the business and I'm deciding what to work on, I have to kind of split my time and my energy between different things, not sustainable. And it meant that none of those things were getting my full input. And that's not fair. And that's not fair on the clients that I'm working with in any direction, because they're not getting, you know, even half cup me. And then I have to consider that actually also I've got a chronic illness that causes me to get very tired. So the membership was actually draining that because my membership sessions were in the evening. And so I had to let it go. It was the best thing for everybody involved. My God, was that ever difficult? Writing that email and that message to my members was horrible. but it was for the best all round. And now it's done. feel a bit of sense of relief. I've still got another month with these lovely, lovely people, and I've still got another three coaching sessions to go through with them. And I'm going to enjoy every one of them. And in the long run, I know it's for the best, but there is that part of me that was like, I'm really letting these people down and really letting them down. They rely on me. and it's a space that I provide for them and what will they do? What will they do without? But equally, that can't be the reason to just keep going. It just can't. So sometimes you have to weigh out what's better for you, what's better for the other people involved and what version of you everybody's getting and what you're doing to yourself in keeping these things as fully alive as you have them. And sometimes you just have to say no and you have to stop and you have to cease doing things. that feel too draining. It's really, really difficult. It's really difficult. If it was easy, we'd just be ditching things left, right and flip-flop, wouldn't we? We would just be ending things and cutting our ties with things, but we're not. And that's because it's a difficult thing to do, but you have to do what's right for you. You have to do what's right for you and your business and your life. You can do this just by starting with one area that you're over committed, right? You don't have to completely overhaul your entire life. You can just start on one area where you're over committed. Just start there. Act on it, see it clearly and see what works in a different way for you maybe. And that shift for me made such a difference because after I'd made those decisions and I'd had that breath work session, I then came into this week with a completely different energy. I did pancakes and I went to the cinema and we had nice times with the family and we had fun times at pool and my business days have been good. Just ordinary stuff. feels significantly better now because I've made these changes, because I've addressed some things. And it's really sad that this way of being has been absent for a while now. Now this isn't about a massive transformation, right? I haven't done, I mean, the membership, changing the membership was a big deal, but in the grand scheme of things, I haven't massively overhauled everything in life. I haven't completely burnt down my business and started again. I've just made some changes and some tweaks where I've needed to. So this is about noticing where you need to have some space back and then... taking it for yourself. You show up then for the things that matter and you can actually be there rather than being physically present, but not mentally present because it's all a bit too much. And then also the productivity that comes along with that is massive. You know, when you give yourself some breathing space and your output becomes so much better, your work, your activities that you care about, it all improves. It all improves because you've created that space. Okay. I'm not doing less and achieving less. I'm doing less and achieving more because now I'm actually present for the stuff that I'm showing up for. Have you heard the saying, you've got to slow down to speed up? Absolutely true here. So resting, stepping back, taking some space for myself, it's really contributed to everything that's left behind. And that feels really good to me. So what I've realised is that a full diary and a full life are not the same thing. having everything that you have in your life now is not necessarily the best way forward. So I'm not asking you to dismantle everything that you've built, obviously, because that would be careless of me, reckless, some might say. What I'm asking you to do is take a look at the degree of the involvement that you have in the things that you're involved in. And if you are still doing everything and showing up, and ticking all of the boxes, but something still feels strained, then this might be something that you need to be aware of. Your body already knows. The question is, are you actually listening to it yet? I will just leave you with one question. Where in your life are you involved at a level that's costing you more than you realize? You don't necessarily have to change it today. It's just a little bit of thought for you. Just so you can see it. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're not burnt out at all. Maybe you are not even heading for functional burnout. And I really hope that is the case. but for a lot of us, women especially, We do tend to overload ourselves and tell everybody it's fine. And then when we think about it deep down, it's not fine. So if you do have a think about this and you come to the conclusion that yes, life is a little bit messy and yes, you could do with addressing some of this stuff, but you don't really know how to do it and you don't know where to start and you don't know what to get rid of and keep and all of this stuff. If it's all just feeling like I need to make some change, but I don't know how to make the change, then maybe a breakthrough session would be good for you. So it's just a one-off session, one hour, and let's work through some stuff and come out of the other side with some action and some clarity around what you want to do and need to do with your life. You can find all the details in the show notes. There'll be a link in the show notes for the breakthrough session. But I would love to spend an hour with you just going through stuff and seeing what you can do to make life a bit better for you and a bit easier for you. And I think that is it for today. What is coming up, I do not have anything to tell you about. That's good, isn't it? Yeah, that's it. Have a really great week. Look after yourself, listen to your body, and I will speak to you soon.