Burnout and Internalized Oppression

It was April 2020. My children’s school had been closed for weeks. I was seeing my online clients in my makeshift basement office, cordoned away for privacy and maybe a little sanity too, if I was being honest. My kids were completing what would have been a day’s worth of school. I winced as I heard their feet patter above my head, heralding they had completed their lessons and had the rest of their day to do as they chose. I looked at the clock. New record: it was 7:45am. It took them less than 30 minutes.

Here I was, a burnout therapist, and here I was, head in my arms, wondering if I was sliding towards burnout once again.

All things considered, we were a lucky family. Though I had a husband working on the frontlines, we stayed healthy. We had security and safety. We had each other. I did this stuff for a living–I knew what it was to be aware of the realities and be reasonable in my expectations of my energy. 

Yet I learned something in those early pandemic days that I keep with me today. Burnout was a sign of internalized oppression–a myth that my power was not my own, and my agency was stripped from me. 

Internalized Oppression and Burnout Culture

Internalized oppression is the result of systems that usurp our autonomy and profoundly alter our beliefs about who we are and what we are capable of. Systems of oppression use these gaslighting tactics to maintain the power differential. When we begin to believe that we are powerless, then we are at the mercy of systems that will be able to use us to their benefit.

We just need to look at the history of social justice movements to see how power is mythologized and internalized, ritualized and utilized to maintain–and challenge–the status quo. Our healthcare and insurance systems, our schools and hospitals, our religious institutions all struggle with balancing care with money, power with service. In the modern era, these systems have become more and more centralized and less interdependent, causing much of the pressure to fall on its service providers–teachers, therapists, nurses–to be cogs in systems bloated with power and financial gain. 

Burnout culture reliably happens in cultures that commodifies healing and places aside human experience for the highest bidder.

Reclaiming Power when You Can’t Fix It All

We’ve been taught that our exhaustion is the mark of hard work. We’ve been taught (espeically women and people of color) that our voices don’t matter as much. We’ve been taught that rest and creativity are extras.

Work is mythologized and we begin to believe that it is our fault, that we have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and just be a better person, then maybe we would be less exhausted. This is a messaging that tells us it’s our fault, how we can prevent burnout on an individual level—get more rest, sign up for a retreat, stop scrolling, be more present, on and on. I’m not saying these don't work. In fact, they can be deeply helpful. Yet what we’re talking about when we are looking at deep, internalized oppression, none of these can be the cure.

Burnout is a signal of the uprising of resistance that is all about reclaiming your power and agency. We begin to notice where we can find footholds again when we’ve been told we don’t have any. Where did you have choice, today, in who you engaged with, who you spent time with, where you spent your money? Burnout speaks to us the same way. It is signaling that you are giving your power away without your permission. Where are you spending your emotional or physical resources without your full participation and agency? Where are you feeling powerless, and how can you look at this systemically? Who is part of this system–and how do you fall within it?

Becoming Re-Resourced Even If You’re Exhausted

Systems of oppression work only when there is participation of the group. So group effort is key here—finding like-minded folks and soliciting anti-burnout work is a collective effort. Our resourcing is always reflective of what we have been born into, what we have fostered, what we have been given simply by the luck of the draw. Let’s begin to look at your resourcing, from the outside-in.

What does it mean for you to be fully resourced? In the early days of the pandemic, part of my burnout was not just because I had no idea how to teach my children their lessons they were receiving from school–I could learn that–it was because I had no agency in doing so. I felt like I had been thrown a new set of tasks when I needed to keep up with my everyday work, plus manage my own stress and anxiety about my husband coming home healthy from another shift at the hospital, or my family members staying well, let alone about the state of the world. I was significantly underresourced emotionally and mentally.

What we know about brain science is that we notice what is missing much more easily than what is in front of us. We have a negativity bias–we don’t notice what is working. This served our ancestors, as it was very costly if we didn’t notice that the food source was running out. Yet in our modern world of efficiency and relative wealth, most of us aren’t living hand to mouth.

Yet, today, our lack is of the emotional sort. We are lonely, dejected, feeling overwhelmed by a sense of isolation even as we are more technologically “connected” than ever. 

The first step for inner resourcing is always to assess whether our emotional supports are stable, reliable, and extensive. Before you turn to advocate for your client, your student, your child—who is YOUR advocate? Without this step, we cannot have true agency in our lives. Even one person can make a huge impact. Be that person to make that first step–connect deeper, more true, with your sources of support, inspiration, determination, and joy. 

Listen to the Invitation

In the early days of the pandemic, I didn’t know much about how to cope with the exhaustion and fear for myself and my family, but I could listen to what nature was giving me. I walked, because it was something I could do when I felt caged, restless, and lost. And with each step, my thoughts began to slow. I didn’t know much, so I just had to slow down, and with this slowing, I could finally listen.

More out of emotional desperation than anything, I began a personal spiritual care that I now call Soul Echolocation. With this practice, I intentionally move, with every step, and ask my soul to be echoed back to me in whatever I see or hear. I began to see that I actually did have agency, despite feeling powerless. That I was capable, that I can rebound, that I am free, that I have what I need. 

If not soul, you can use words like self, lesson, invitation. Some of my clients do this in free-write form, in free-flowing art making, in dance, or in sitting meditation. All of them come back from this practice with their own inner truth mirrored back.

This inner truth roots us into our resourcing. It is beyond our entirely legitimate fears about the current state of affairs in the world or our worries tied up with what will become of our children’s future. All of these worries beg attention only when we are resourced, with our deeper truth, for your ears alone.

When we’re burned out, we become dried up in our ability to be flexible, creative, and resilient. Yet as burnout is a signal, it tells us that our resistance is always there to guide us to what is most important right now, and usually, the more simple solution is the most needed one. When have you taken the time to nourish your soul? I don’t mean taking a yoga class or even going to a religious service. I mean, in the dark of the night, in the quiet of the room, if you get really, really still–what is your soul saying?

Anti-Oppression Work is a Call

True burnout care–deep, sustainable care that lasts–is not for everyone. Many of us aren’t willing to look at internalized oppression, how we have engaged with systems in our lives that actually cause harm to others, and what kind of agency we have in that. Many of us aren’t willing to see how liberation of others is in our hands, and how we are fully interconnected to the health and peace of all. Many of us aren’t willing to tend to deeper parts of ourselves. And that’s okay. 

But some of us are.

And if you are here, reading this far, it’s you. You’re here. You’re ready.

We know that burnout will keep talking to us, until we finally, deeply, listen to its resounding call. We can begin to see that burnout is our signal that our power is worth reclaiming. We know this in our bones. We who are raging against the abuses and horrors of the world, we who are moved to use our gifts to become a part of a new hope, together, beginning today.

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Find resources to assist your anti-oppression work HERE.

Learn more about your own inner listening with a free consult HERE.