A woman clutching her head, with a stressed facial expression, and pale blurring in the foreground. Photo: By Uday Mittal on Unsplash.
From stress to spirituality: Stephen G Wright on burnout
‘Within the crisis there is potential to discover meaning and purpose.’
Between the probable and the proved there yawns
A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd,
Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse,
Our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns
Our only hope: to leap into the Word
That opens up the shuttered universe.
Sheldon Vanauken
A Severe Mercy, 1977
The topic of burnout appears to have surfaced more in the general media in recent years, highlighted by the pressures on key workers during the Covid pandemic (and more recently raised as an issue in the Covid-19 inquiry). Burnout is portrayed in these instances as almost entirely a product of extreme stress. It is rooted in definitions provided in the seminal work of Christina Maslach in the 1980s, which portrayed burnout as a psychological phenomenon creating physiological effects.
But those of us who have roles offering spiritual support to others, especially carers (such as the charity for which I work), see burnout as more than a stress problem. It may have deep spiritual roots, and thus demand spiritual responses. Relatively few sources have taken up this perspective, and, although more research and information has been published in recent years, a significant shift in attitudes to accept burnout as more than stress does not yet seem to have taken place.
Arguably, the advantage of drawing on a spiritual perspective helps to shift the approach to burnout from a pure health-illness approach, seeking a cure. This model often compounds the problem by either sustaining a sense of victimhood (it’s the fault of the big bad employer) or subtly adding to the pressure by victim blaming – that is, you’re burned out because you don’t meditate or ‘chill out’ enough. The individualist zeitgeist creates the milieu in which it’s easy to make life’s problems ‘down to you’, ignoring the wider context.
Including spirituality suggests additional possibilities, a response rooted in a healing-wholeness approach, embodying transformation. It may offer perspectives that take the burned-out person from a position of being a victim of circumstances to one of agency, of hope and change. Within the crisis there is potential to discover meaning and purpose, a shift into a different way of being that is more positive, authentic and heartfelt.
A recent survey, The Burnout Report, from Mental Health UK, reported on experiences of burnout among 2,020 adults, of whom 1,132 were in work. Although the report emphasised that twenty per cent of workers reported needing to take time out from work because of stress, and that burnout was essentially a workplace problem that could be resolved by workplace solutions, it is perhaps noteworthy that there seemed to be a willingness to expand the possibilities of the source of the problem beyond ‘stress’. There is growing recognition that global challenges around issues such as economic and social breakdown, climate change, conflict (both worldly and inner), artificial intelligence, population change, and mass migration are creating other potent causes of powerlessness, hopelessness, stress and anxiety than individual and local problems.
Burnout as stress is relatively easy to describe and offer solutions. In the sense of the effects of extreme exhaustion, overwork and overgiving, it can be resolved by removing sources of work-based stress (such as excessive workloads or a bullying culture) or by leaving the situation for another job, or by entering some form of therapy to build better boundaries and assertiveness.
‘Nothing less than a radical inner inquiry and action is called for.’
But when we explore the spiritual, we can find a more nuanced approach, for it is to enter the realm of meaning, purpose and relationships, the very stuff of spirituality. Burnout as spiritual crisis is not solved by workplace changes, for the source of this suffering is often deep and internal, and not always obvious to the sufferer. It concerns the debilitating effects of trying to continue in work or relationships in which heart and meaning have evaporated, in which we have lost a sense of purpose (if we ever had it), and in which we are being summoned to a different path in life, arguably our ‘soul’s purpose’. Nothing less than a radical inner inquiry and action is called for if the person is to make the inner and outer transformation. For burnout here is the ‘red flag’ wake-up call, urging us to take serious steps to rethink who we are and why we are here. That might mean significant changes in self-perception, work and relationships. We might not give them up, but we are called to live with them from a completely different place in ourselves.
Sometimes either form of burnout can inadvertently get treated as depression (one of the common symptoms), but this rarely helps as the underlying drivers are not being seen. For this ‘seeing’ to take place, we need to step out of the (usually) workplace situation. Thus we need family and employer support – not always easy, especially where burnout is seen as a personal stress matter. We need to take some time for retreat and recuperation, and have the benefit of working with someone like a spiritual director who can help us make sense of what has been going on, and see deeply into the changes that need to be made in both inner and outer lives, to discover and follow the heart’s desire, free of compromise.
This process, where a spiritual perspective is adopted, is essentially an optimistic model of re-birthing. I have worked with countless people who, having faced their burnout, have found new direction, fulfilment and heartfelt joy in life. The working-through process is never easy, but it offers us a more humane approach to that which reduced burnout to stress.
Burnout is a crisis, a deeply painful place to be, but a spiritual crisis in which transformation of our way of seeing self and the world, and that which is beyond the self, and is thus a liberation model, however catastrophically experienced at the time, leans towards the fullness of personal being.
