Believing that your wants exist, matter, and can be met, is the first step in learning to figure out what you want.
#ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD #Neurodiversity #Interoception #BurnoutRecovery
Rest is not optional. It is not laziness. It is not a luxury. It is not giving in. Rest is a survival necessity.
All living beings need rest and restoration periodically: daily, seasonally, yearly.
Believing that your wants exist, matter, and can be met, is the first step in learning to figure out what you want.
#ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD #Neurodiversity #Interoception #BurnoutRecovery
Rest is not optional. It is not laziness. It is not a luxury. It is not giving in. Rest is a survival necessity.
All living beings need rest and restoration periodically: daily, seasonally, yearly.
Post-leave burnout recovery, month 2:
I'm burning out again, but this time all of my peer managers are also burning out with me! I'd laugh if I weren't already crying.
Remember how burnout is primarily caused by the environment? And how if the environment isn't changed, that burnout recovery just leaves you right back at burning out again?
Yyyup. 🤷🏼♀️
I am not lacking in communication nor problem solving capabilities to address this. Taking burnout leave was one ratchet in an extensive toolkit. Also an expensive toolkit: it took me over 40 years and a lot of painful lessons to build this wisdom.
🎶 Oh, like a phoenix 🎵
🎶 Burned out for the second time 🎵
#BurnoutRecovery
#BurnoutRedux
Many group meetings are tough while rebuilding context after 3 months of leave — especially while recalibrating to both the current work atmosphere and the trust level in each relationship to gauge what level of directness to use when my intuition catches on something that seems off.
It's hard to come up with generic examples that convey what I'm thinking of, but something like:
"It would help me support you if I understood more about this goal"
vs
"Can you help me understand how this part connects to the overall goal?"
vs
"What options and trade-offs did you consider in choosing this?"
vs
"What do you think the challenges and barriers might be for this, and how can I help avoid or overcome them?"
vs finding a compassionate yet direct way to challenge a proposal
If it's a strong relationship, something like "X might be a better approach here, what do you think?"
And this is all made so much more complicated by Schrödinger's Snake and Schrödinger's Discrimination
My resilience and mental/emotional health skills have been better than ever, largely thanks to years of therapy. But that's not without challenges.
In some ways, stresses at work are harder than processing current events. I have no influence on global events, and they target the parts of "who I am" that I cannot control — which sucks, but it's something I've spent decades learning how to continuously process that day by day.
At work, I'm almost always struggling with Schrödinger's Discrimination: Is this person treating me badly because they had a bad day, because I did something wrong, or because they're discriminating against me? Should I internalize this as my mistake, externalize this as their mistake, or which anti-asshole measures should I deploy?
It takes a lot of energy each day to bring patience and compassion and open curiosity — which, as often as it's rewarded by building mutually supportive working relationships, is almost as often brutally punished by the endless torment of being the whipping girl who can never address the root cause of their animosity.
I have extended thoughts on a few nuances of burnout, resilience, and employment
Before taking time off for burnout, my skip manager reminded me to read the strongly positive 360 feedback from my reports. That's both a shallow and a deep reinforcement of resilience, first and foremost by rebuilding and grounding self-confidence. Reading positive feedback provides evidence that I'm capable and effective at my job.
Beyond self-confidence, I have other needs in a workplace, like a sense of belonging and a purpose. My skip knows why I'm a manager, and knows that I have these things in my team. My reports share constructive feedback with me, which opens up mental pathways to introspect on how I can improve, and brings warm feelings of appreciation that they feel comfortable sharing constructive feedback with me.
There's a bit more depth to this when it comes to burnout and resilience 🧵
Burnout recovery leave, day 28:
I wrote a page! I made some plans! I remembered some things that I love about what I do — e.g., supporting growth, synthesizing complex sociotechnical events, designing strategic plans that anticipate and address future challenges, and helping humans and organizations navigate context-sharing and decision-making around deep technical minutiae that are keystones for bigger challenges.
I started an extended thread on some nuances of burnout recovery:
https://infosec.exchange/@saraislet/114908769837645002
I'm setting some goals for burnout recovery — regular sleep cycles, daily reading or meditation, and either daily writing or a social thing.
I'll start with twice a week as a goal, and see if that works.
