Today we are asked to "Write about burnout. What does it feel like? What are your burnout triggers? What gets you OUT of the pit of despair when nothing is going your way?"
From a standpoint of a Caregiver/Advocate, burnout is one of my biggest nightmares. If and when it happens, I have to get rid of it FAST.
All of us affected and living with diabetes in our life, can attest to the fact it is a 24/7 intruder. We barely have time to actually live our "normal" life, so when it is disrupted with diabetes micro-management during our day, it can tend to throw us a detour.So, does anyone really have time for burnout? I know I don't. Do I experience burnout? Yes, I do, but I have to try real hard to not let it dictate anything I do. One little minute of doing so always turns into more time than I have available for burnout.
If I show any burnout, it right away spreads into wildfires into that "normal" life, and I sometimes just want to take a break...wait, sometimes I just want to shutdown completely, and throw a backpack on and check out. Not like dead, like checking out of a room.
Triggers, well not really. Usually goes right past triggers to explosions...
What get's me out of the funk and past any triggers, are triggers. They remind me to work past them and try to actually 'fix' what causes the triggers. I also remind myself that if I let the triggers/causes actually shut me down, it is a very bad thing. So a tad of burnout, is better than shutting everything down.
But my favorite way to get past the triggers, is music. So enjoy this piece (above) from the Album appropriately titled "Out Of The Blue", and I hope you agree that "It's better to burn out, than to fade away".
