Vincent Purrice sleeping, which is a much cuter photo than the one I have of me passed out and burned out. Content warning: description of my burnout symptoms

I burned out. From mid 2021 to the start of 2024, I took on way more than I was able to handle, experienced some huge losses, and had to step back from a lot of things that I loved. I didn’t see it coming. Perhaps I even thought I wouldn’t burn out in that way that people sometimes see themselves as an exception to the advice they give others. When my fire sputtered out, I had already been running on fumes for months without knowing it.

If I had to identify the moment it happened, it was in late 2022, when I was volunteering for Wexford Pride, helping to care for a chronically ill person, traveling to Denmark every month for work, and supporting Veronica through college. I started noticing I’d sleep a lot at the weekends, that I was cynical about everything, and that I was over-identifying with work to the exclusion of self. After a bout of suicidal ideation in 2023, I actually took sick leave for three months, thinking I’d recover, but a flood of stuff was still swirling around. Essentially, I patched myself up a bit and then launched straight back into it. Two days after my sick leave finished, I flew to Denmark for work and came back with the flu. I still didn’t get the message, struggling on through a bereavement and health issues on top of everything else.

Most of my life came to a halt in February 2024 as my mind and body both refused to collaborate with me. I had just lost my job due to a corporate restructuring and I attempted to go straight into freelancing, which had mixed results. To my professional contacts, I probably seemed fine, but behind the scenes, I felt like I was on the verge of death. I had to keep looking for new clients and for work, but it was debilitating. By this point, I had six of the seven classic symptoms (exhaustion, cynicism, overwhelm, withdrawal, depression and depersonalisation).

Those are just words though. The experience was more visceral. I slept half the day, with disabling headaches and flashes in front of my eyes if I tried to push through. At night, my OCD would kick in, catastrophising about the world, and I could only sleep by drugging myself or forcing myself to recite the same story over and over again. I couldn’t taste food, I had no appetite, I had constant buzzing and ringing in my ears, my pain levels skyrocketed, and my hands and jaw developed new tremors. The thought of leaving the house was terrifying. The thought of moving from the corner of the sofa was terrifying. I saw myself as useless because I wasn’t providing for people.

I did have some good days and I managed to do some things, but almost every time, I was completely out of it the next day. So a game night meant the next day was spent in bed in silence. Going furniture shopping cost two days. Visiting Mum cost half a day. Phone calls, meals out, garden work, decorating for the holidays… there was no activity that didn’t feel too big by the next day. Existing health issues were exacerbated, making me feel more disabled and unwell than ever.

After six months of half-life, I dropped almost everything in my life. I resigned from volunteer work that I absolutely loved, cancelled social obligations, reduced my workload to the minimum that we could afford, cut back on the job applications, and allowed myself to sleep 16 to 18 hours a day. We had some very young kittens in the house and that came as a welcome excuse to lie still and sleep as much as they did. I’m sad that I still needed to be able to give myself an excuse, sad that I’m so conditioned by late-stage capitalism that I couldn’t just rest. But the kittens did help take my mind out of certain places: their simple, loyal affection and straightforward needs made my days feel more manageable.

The kittens are now six months old and it’s a year since I crashed. Today is probably the sixth or seventh day that I haven’t had to sleep for multiple hours during the day, the fifth that I haven’t had flashes in my eyes when I’ve tried to write for more than a half-hour. I can taste food again too. There are still some major worries, but I feel better able to handle them, most of the time. And yesterday, for the first time, I felt like I could do something to make myself feel happy.

Extreme stress and burnout are not rare conditions in the workplace. A few examples: 91% of surveyed adults in the UK experienced extreme or high levels of stress or pressure in 2024 (Mental Health UK, The Burnout Report); 65% of surveyed employees in the US experienced burnout in 2023 (isolved, HR Trends of 2023) and 44% reported experiencing it in 2024 (SHRM, Employee Mental Health in 2024); the rate of burnout in Germany doubled from 2018 to 2024, reaching 25% of surveyed employees (Kyan Health, analysis of report on employee health); and the lack of recognition of extreme work stress in Japan led to a condition known as karoshi (過労死; death from overwork, first documented in 1969 and since also observed in many other countries).

That doesn’t take into account non-workplace burnout: parental burnout, caregiver burnout and autistic burnout are all gaining increasing recognition as conditions for concern (Psychology Today). Autistic burnout is certainly also relevant for me as I’ve become so accustomed to masking that there are people I’ve known for years who don’t even know that I am autistic. Masking is an exhausting process of hyper-conscious hiding the traits that have previously provoked a negative reaction, often starting in childhood. I mask as second nature but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t add to the exhaustion.

I’m now cautiously optimistic that I’m past the worst phase of the burnout. I am writing again, ready to document some things that I think will be useful to others, including a very personal journey related to my deafness and the complex experiences of our transitions. I hope you’ll join me.

Want to support the blog, which is going to be my primary source of income moving forward? I have a Patreon account here, a Liberapay account here, and a PayPal account here.