High-Functioning Burnout: When Your Life Still Works but You’re Not Okay

You get up.

Go to work.

Pay the bills.

Manage childcare.

Make sure people get what they need from you.

From the outside, life works.

That’s part of the problem.

We tend to imagine that when something is seriously wrong in our lives, it will become obvious. We’ll stop coping. Work will suffer. Relationships will collapse. Our health will force us to pay attention.

But sometimes the opposite happens.

You become remarkably good at functioning while parts of your life progressively deteriorate.

When functioning hides the problem

Other people may see someone who is coping.

You’re still working. Still parenting. Still meeting deadlines. Still paying the mortgage. Still doing what other people expect of you.

What they may not see, and what you may be acutely aware of, is everything happening underneath that functioning.

Drinking has crept up.

Exercise has disappeared.

Poor sleep is now the norm.

Parenting has become more difficult.

You’re increasingly irritable.

Your marriage has become functional rather than intimate.

You can’t remember the last time you genuinely enjoyed yourself.

Yet you keep functioning.

And because nothing has fallen apart, it becomes easy to conclude that nothing is sufficiently wrong to require your attention.

The danger of being highly functional

When you’re capable of carrying a lot, you can become very good at carrying things you probably shouldn’t.

You tell yourself:

I’m managing.

Things aren’t that bad.

I’ll address it when work settles down.

When other people need me less.

When I have more time.

If things get worse.

And so you adapt.

Imperceptibly.

You learn to function on less sleep.

Daily drinking starts to feel normal.

You tolerate increasing distance in your relationship.

You decide irritability is simply part of your personality.

You stop expecting to enjoy life as much as you once did.

Your circumstances haven't necessarily improved.

You’ve become better at functioning within circumstances that are making your life worse.

High-functioning burnout doesn’t always look like collapse

Burnout is often imagined as the point at which someone can no longer continue.

But deterioration can begin long before someone reaches that point.

You can continue to perform professionally while becoming exhausted personally.

You can be responsible for employees while neglecting your own health.

You can be dependable to everyone around you while repeatedly breaking commitments you've made to yourself.

You can remain productive while becoming increasingly disconnected from your partner, your children and the parts of life you once enjoyed.

That's what makes continued functioning such an unreliable measure of wellbeing.

Being able to carry something doesn't tell you what carrying it is costing you.

Why we wait until things get worse

There is a simple reason problems often don't receive our attention until they become serious:

Changing something has an immediate cost.

Addressing your marriage may mean having conversations you’ve been avoiding.

Changing your relationship with alcohol may mean giving up something you currently use to switch off.

Protecting your health may require saying no to work.

Responding differently to your children may require acknowledging behaviour in yourself you don't particularly like.

Making changes can bring discomfort, uncertainty, guilt or disruption now.

Continuing as you are can feel easier.

At least temporarily.

So you keep going.

Until the consequences of continuing become greater than the discomfort of changing.

The cost of waiting for a crisis

Eventually, something may happen that makes the problem difficult to ignore.

Your partner says they want to leave.

Your health deteriorates.

You lose your temper with your children in a way that frightens or concerns you.

Your drinking begins creating more obvious consequences.

You can no longer sustain your workload.

You burn out.

Suddenly, the decision to change becomes easier because continuing as you were has become more painful.

But there’s a problem with using crisis as your prompt for change:

Collapse is a costly method for identifying that something needs your attention.

By the time the consequences force a decision, some of your choices may already have disappeared.

Problems don’t need to become crises before you address them

You don’t need to wait until your marriage is ending to address the distance between you.

You don’t need to wait until alcohol creates serious consequences to question the role it has started playing in your life.

You don’t need to wait until exhaustion prevents you from working to take your health seriously.

You don’t need to damage your relationship with your children before examining how stress and irritability are affecting the way you respond to them.

Problems don’t require you to fall apart before they deserve your attention.

There is enormous value in intervening while life still works.

Because that's often when you have the greatest number of choices available to you.

Ask a different question

If you’re someone who is used to being capable, the question you ask yourself may be:

Can I keep carrying this?

And perhaps the answer is yes.

You probably can.

You may be able to carry it for another six months. Another year. Perhaps much longer.

But your ability to endure something isn't necessarily a good reason to continue enduring it.

So there may be a more useful question:

What is carrying this already costing me?

Look beyond whether you're still functioning.

What is it costing your health?

Your sleep?

Your relationship?

Your parenting?

Your enjoyment of life?

Your behaviour?

The person you're becoming?

You don't have to wait until those costs become catastrophic.

You can intervene earlier, while you still have choices, before the consequences choose for you.