“Mum, Your Job Is Killing You.” They Were Right.
It’s July 2013, I’ve spent a day on the sofa watching mind-numbing back to back daytime TV chatshows. And I mean back to back – you could just channel hop and all day long you’d have someone telling all on TV.
My sons arrive home from school, smiles on their faces, they take one look at me and their faces drop.
It’s been a tough seven months for us all. Since January I’ve been admitted to the emergency department more times than I count. The pain has been unbearable. I’ve been passing out, one time I passed out at the top of the escalator at Liverpool Street Station and found myself in a heap at the bottom, tights ripped, legs bruised, and I still made it back to the office in time for the meeting. The next time it happened, a different escalator, I’d ripped my trousers so badly I had to go home.
Nobody at A&E could tell me what’s wrong with me, until recently. They’ve given me some pills a few times, and told me to rest. But I couldn’t, I had so much on at work so I just kept going. I’ve not taken one day off work this year – well apart from the school holidays, and I’ve just caught up with work at night.
I’m resting now though.
Last week I had two operations in 48 hours, at two different hospitals, for two different health conditions. We’re going on holiday soon and some sun will make me feel better. My CEO has also cut off my email access until I’m back at work.
Can you imagine the embarrassment – my Mum contacted my company to say this couldn’t carry on. I’m 32, I have a place on the Exec team, I’m leading a team of 43 people, managing multi-million pound budgets, and my Mum has called my boss to say I need a break.
It’s ok though, I know everyone’s email addresses, so I’ve just been contacting them from my personal email – the projects are going really well.
I see the look on my sons faces change, their smiles faded, and I tell them I’ll be ok. I tell them I’ll be back at work soon as everything will be back to normal. They’re 12. They come and sit on the coffee table beside me, and they look at each other, and one of them turns to me and says “but Mum, we don’t want you to go back to work. Your job is killing you.”
The gut wrenching, heart hitting pain of this comment kits me harder than any of the pain from the last seven months. What am I doing to my sons? I didn’t realise the impact that all this was having on them. They’re the reason I work so hard and do everything I do.
I’m the main earner. I work long hours. I earn really good money. I’m the one who provides the life we have.
We have a conversation, they don’t want stuff, they want me.
And now here I am – I can’t move off the sofa, I’m now living with two life-long health conditions and for what?
I promise them, and me, that I’ll make some changes – but that I do need to go back to work.
I look back at the pictures from the holiday we had the week after, and I don’t recognise myself. The person sat with my sons in pictures, she’s there, but her eyes look lost, she’s drained, invisible, lost.
I did go back to work.
And I instantly realised just how toxic it was. I started looking for jobs – they all seemed the same. Then I heard myself say in a coaching session that I wanted my own business. And so three months later, I’d walked away from my salary, with no financial cushion whatsoever (we’d just bought and renovated a house), and I started my own business.
This was Burnout number one. Of course I didn’t know it was Burnout at the time. I mean, the two consultants that had carried out my operations both mentioned this word ‘Burnout’ when I went for my follow up appointments – but that’s just stress right?!? And that’s not me. I thrive with stress and under pressure. I know they’re wrong, and I tell them so.
Burnout wouldn’t happen to someone like me.
I’m a high-performer, highly sought after, head-hunted, award winning, innovative, doing things differently – Burnout wouldn’t happen to me.
Except it had. And that first one had made me seriously ill.
Over the next year, with no actually recovery time, and no acknowledgement that I’d actually been at Burnout, I grew my business, grew my team, won more awards, worked with global clients, worked long hours, left my marriage, walked away from my home, and started a new life.
The year after that my divorce bankrupted me, I was in a new home ‘co-parenting’ (purely so my ex-husband didn’t need to pay maintenance – he didn’t actually do any of the parenting), experiencing blackouts and told not to drive for a year in case it was my childhood epilepsy returning, growing a business, in a new relationship with two additional children in my life, a growing business, a new home, and a growing team. And in December 2015, my second Burnout almost killed me.
And I still didn’t make any changes.
What turned my life around?
The death of my replacement. I’d left that toxic workplace, she’d stayed and taken on my role. And then, whilst away on a leadership residential, in her room, alone, she went to bed and never woke up.
That was the turning point.
This thing called Burnout – I was going to stop it.
And since then I’ve trained and studied and coached over 700 leaders through Burnout. I’ve trained coaches, and leaders, and doctors and therapists from 16 countries, I’ve written books and spoken on stages to tens of thousands more people, educating and raising awareness about Burnout.
And I’m sharing all of this today, because today, my two gorgeous sons celebrate their 25th Birthday. And after another year of me being constantly in pain, unable to move, or experience a quality of life, after an operation just nine weeks ago, I feel like I’m finally back, back to me.
But those two 12 year old boys, who sat on the coffee table and told their Mum her job killing her, they were right. And quitting the job, didn’t create any change, because she didn’t give herself any time to stop, to recover, or to heal.
32 year old me, convinced that Burnout wouldn’t happen to her, just replaced one kind of toxic busyness, with another, and two years later, on top of the illnesses created by the first Burnout, her second almost killed her.
The 12 year old boys, haven’t really had their Mum, not fully, for 12 years. Not really until now.
I’ve spent 12 years joining the dots on Burnout, trying to understand it, to get to the bottom of how it caused the illnesses that it caused. When I started to share the experience of my first Burnout in 2014, people came to coach with me because of that story. And now, I’m training and educating coaches and leaders in how to be Burnout-Aware, because if my coaches had spotted the signs, perhaps, just maybe, not only could I have avoided the illness and the operations, but my sons would have had a very different Mum over the last 12 years of their life.
I don’t just look at Burnout from the Psychological definition – the WHO definition wasn’t even around when I started this work. I look at it from the psychological, physiological, emotional, neurologically and relational perspectives, to give the complete picture of Burnout, and this is what I train others in.
And don’t get me wrong. I didn’t choose to do this work – I avoided it as much as I possibly could – until I couldn’t.
Because Burnout kills people.
It kills confidence, and clarity and decision making, It destroys lives and careers, and health. It takes parents from their kids, and partners from each other. And It leaves the individuals who reach Burnout lost, numb and unrecognisable.
You might still be thinking that being Burnout-Aware, and Burnout-Informed is a nice to have, a buzzword, a bit of a fad, or something you’ll get round to at some point in the future. It wasn’t even an option for my coaches back then – but it is for you.
And if you don’t know what to look for, how to modify your style and approach, and help your clients avoid Burnout, then 12 years from now, your clients could be sat here, writing this very same blog, and wishing that you as their coach has been aware and informed enough about Burnout so that you could not just improve their performance, but you could help them to transform and save their life.
More than half of the workforce is at or close to Burnout, so whether you know how to spot Burnout or not, it’s in the room. And you keep guessing and thinking that you know what Burnout is, or you can invest the time in finding out what it is, and developing the skills to stop it in its tracks.
The choice is yours.
Today, I choose hugs, laughter, music and cake, celebrating with my incredible sons, whom I’m grateful everyday to still be here for.
Kelly
I’m daring to imagine a world where Burnout no longer exists, and if you’re daring to imagine a world like that too, then come and join me.
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