WHEN BEING
BURNT OUTFEELSso right
The realities of imposter syndrome for one used to working until the brink of burnt out.
JOAN THYAGARAJAN
S
cody editor
tare at the wall. You are enveloped by the myriad assignments, applications and activities coursing through your mind. Look up at the ceiling. You can count sheep but the moment you close your eyes you are awake again. Open up your phone. You wonder how people
myself beyond my boundaries. I was tween my academic ambitions and proud that I had broken myself, and I my identity. I am the girl who loves would restitch myself together so that autobiographies, sour gummy bears, I could do it again. 70’s sci-fi films and notebooks with As a senior, I have finally let my fancy covers. I have learned to find walls down and stopped walking on the little things that make me happy, the edge. I let myself feel the exhaus- so that I can be happy with who I am. tion and embrace it. I felt catatonic, I wonder how long this will work but despite how overwhelming though. One of the most fundamental the fatigue felt, it was familiar aspects of the human mind is that we because a few months ago that will always want more. We acclimate feeling was what I had craved. to the new heights that we reach WHEN BEING I had not realized the severity shockingly quickly and continue to BURNT OUT of my burnout until I believed look up at the stars, wondering how FEELS SO RIGHT that I actually deserved to take much farther we can go. It is how we a break. I had decimated my have reached our current state with self-worth to the point where nearly eight billion of us and we are JOAN THYAGARAJAN burnout was becoming funda- still growing. I wonder if I can be hapmental to who I was, and I was py with myself. Maybe, burnout is somehow manage to look like they afraid to let it go. the inevitable side-effect of running have it all. Your mind hurtles ceaseNow, as I try to leave this harmful on the neverending treadmill to the lessly forward and you beg yourself to lifestyle, I often feel as though a part unattainable success that our innate take a break but you cannot because of me is missing. My idea of happi- human greed makes us desperately the idea of slowing down terrifies you. ness was warped yearn for. So, you continue to walk the edge into the temporary I am still trying to I HAD DECIMATpushing yourself farther and farther satisfaction I got find the answer, but TED MY SELF WORTH until you break. This is burnout. when I had accomwhat I believe is that TO THE POINT WHERE Over the past four years, I have plished something. it is a constant push BURNOUT WAS BElearned to live on the edge of being Without looming apand pull. We will nevCOMING FUNDAMENburnt out. It’s where I felt I belonged. plication deadlines er stop trying to reach TAL TO WHO I WAS, I did not know how to live without the or crucial standardthat next step, but in AND I WAS AFRAID TO mass of stress that was so omnipres- ized testing, it is not order to get there, LET IT GO. ent it almost became comforting. as easy to find. we must take a That stress and exhaustion became The perforstep back and JOAN THYAGARAJAN an indicator that I was doing what I mance-based envimake sure deemed enough, that I was pushing ronment in many schools, especially that we have enough gas myself to what I now realize was an in the Bay Area, enforces the quint- in the tank to go the whole unhealthy limit. essential American belief that if you nine yards It always felt so good to cry, and work hard enough you can get anywhile crying releases oxytocin and where, but it is incredibly easy to endogenous opioids — endorphins overdo it. The line between trying to made to make you feel better — that become the next genius from Silicon is not why I felt relief. Crying was a Valley and driving yourself into the cathartic release that soothed the ground blurs easily. sharp pain of my anxiety, and, more Separating who I am from my acimportantly, it gave me a feeling of complishments has been essential toxic pride. I had successfully pushed to creating a healthy dichotomy be-
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