Burnout: How It Shows Up For Women In Midlife

Burnout seems to be the buzz word of the year, and for good reason. In midlife everything changes for women. Our hormones change impacting every single body system often before we are even aware of it, our home life changes with kids leaving and if they were the glue holding the marriage together that can change too. For many women, myself included the repeated bouts of burnout through life finally get seen for what they are: a side effect of being neurodivergent and masking for too long.

This is the time the most capable women start to question themselves, their ability and the impact to their career cannot be understated. What’s important to remember is this: You are still that capable and amazing women, but your capacity may be changing; and that is a conversation to have with yourself before it sit your on your backside, so you can control your own career and life narrative.

Burnout can affect us in many ways and often flies under the radar until it is too late, when we’ve finally hit the wall and broken.  Here are some key signs to look out for:

Health & Hormones

Stress hormones can have a massive impact on general health and wellbeing.  Have you ever had a bellyache or headache at times of stress?  Some people even get ulcers!  Others get more insidious health issue evolve like general adaption syndrome where the high levels of stress hormone effect our ability to effectively process nutrients and in particular sugars leading to chronic low-level fatigue, weight gain and other health problems.  Stress to someone with a propensity for autoimmune disease is their kryptonite, something I am personally familiar with.  If you are feeling ‘off’, getting headaches a lot or live with chronic health issues be alert to this as burnout will make them worse, and in some cases even cause them!

Fatigue & Stress

Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired?  Burnout can flog our adrenal glands and even lead to adrenal insufficiency and fatigue.  This can lead to long term physical and mental health problems and is incredibly debilitating at its worst.  If you are profoundly tired there may be medical reasons but it may well be burnout or a combination of both.  It is well worth getting checked out by a medical professional in the case of physical symptoms as well as finding ways to manage the root cause of your burning out.

Mental Health

When you are burnt out and under the pump, or at least feeling that way, anxiety can be a real issue for many.  I know it is true for me.  This can be simply the overwhelm of it all, but it can also be a result of the chemical and hormonal changes in our bodies happening because of burnout too.  When anxiety is chronic it is easy to flip into depression from sheer exhaustion alone.  But also, the feelings that come with burnout can leave us depressed.  This hopelessness, feeling alone, struggling to keep up and cope, overwhelm; are all signs of an anxious and depressed mind.

Relationships

Have you ever snapped at someone because you are tired and shitty with the world?  I think we have all had these moments, rarely are they our finest.  Now imagine that day in day out because of burnout.  It’s easy to see how easy it is to put those we care about most offside.  When we don’t have the energy to do the basics to look after ourselves it’s hard to give the best of us to another.  Be it kids, friends, partners, or colleagues at work getting angry or shutting them out can be a very real strategy we use to cope and sadly a destructive one.  In the first instance it can be helpful to tell those you trust about what you are going through, maybe it will help them understand, and even better they might be able to help.

Career Happiness and Satisfaction

Do you hate your job but see no way out?  Bored with what you do but that’s all you have ever done?  Stuck in a workplace with a culture that’s more like a grease shop takeaway than the 5-star restaurant meal you really crave?  Often, we ‘fall’ into jobs or careers because we have some skill, or it is what we got told by well-meaning others we should do.  And while it may not be obviously or hideously bad, it might just be that it is not what truly lights us up or meaningful for us.  If you are hating on your job and there is no real obvious cause like a bully for example, it might be time for a thorough career reassessment.

Ensuring you are managing stress well is not a one size fits all problem to solve.

My tip is to find out what works for you, and while that also takes time and energy; it’s time and energy well spent. 

Personally, I found it meant cutting back on work and really considering not just the immediate issues of being burnt out but also thinking about how I got myself there, and how I can be more mindful of my health and wellbeing.  This was a process that repeated in cycles over years, and not a one event solution.  To quote Shrek ‘Ogres are like onions’, and so are humans!  I discovered later in life I am AuDHD, a big factor in burnout; I experienced losses, became a single parent and then stepparent, and tried different careers until I found the place where I fit.  It is a process, and a very worthy one if you are willing to walk the path.

Putting my Ayurveda and Polarity Therapist hat on for a moment; I can tell you most of the signs and symptoms of burnout relate to our fiery energy.  Fire in the physical body relates to the muscular system, adrenals, thyroid gland, thighs, solar plexus and eyes.  It is masculine in nature and provides us with drive and direction; and the physical energy to power on. And as working women that is something we have mastered, and something to learn to let go of.

Randolph Stone, the father of polarity therapy, said ‘fire in the eyes, running in the thighs.’ 

Fire is all about working energy and metabolism in the physical body. And you can often see imbalance coming from a mile away if you know what you are looking for.

It can show up as thyroid disease, adrenal fatigue, fibro, CFS, autoimmunity more broadly, digestive complaints, or just a feeling of being absolutely flogged.  In Ayurveda our digestive fire is known as ‘Agni’ and it is like the engine house of our bodies.  We need to look after the fire and keep it balanced, especially during this period of transition that is midlife.

Emotionally and spiritually, it relates to the conscious mind and intellect, willpower, motivation, mortality/immortality.  The primary emotion of fire is anger, and its nature is yang (masculine). And this is what women often lose their sh*t completely in midlife.

Fire is expansive energy.

And without it we fade, shrink, lose ourselves, slow down and have no ‘get up and go’ anymore.

As a woman in this day and age, the first generation to really interact with careers, we have leaned heavily into this fiery energy to keep going. We work, are often single parents, do most of the unpaid work that needs doing and carry the mental load for our families. And when midlife rolls in with the changes it brings, it can become all too much. The drain on our fire becomes unbearable.

We burn out.

If you feel like you have no fire or drive left, and are burnt out in midlife as a woman, it’s no surprise.  Midlife is when we start to enter the Vata season of life according to Ayurveda.  The airy, dry energy of Vata is synonymous with the ‘great drying out’ of our bodies that is menopause.  The Vata time of life is also the season of the crone, the wise woman. It is a time of great energetic shifts. It can also be a huge shock to the system when it happens and is a time to turn inward and care for ourselves before caring for others.

The Invitation

If you are feeling burnt out and struggling with how to navigate this time of life, consider the changes you are facing and how this might impact your capacity. The first thing I ask clients to do is to track activities, and alongside that tracking your energy levels, intellectual state and how you’re feeling. It can reveal patterns and changes, giving great insights into where your capacity is really at. This is especially helpful if you are or suspect you are ADHD or on the spectrum (or a spicy combo).

Secondly, consider taking a pause and reconnecting with your soul, the woman you once were and want to be again; and deep dive into understanding what your passions and purpose are.  What lights you up? These are the basics of being human, which sadly are not often taught or modelled for us. 

Finally, I would invite you to consider how you can use this information to best nourish your body and mind, and recalibrate to move gracefully into this next season with purpose and a renewed sense of energy.