It took the IT specialist Orhan G. seven years to escape the burnout trap. It was only when his body gave out and he yelled at his son about something small that his wife showed him the red line – and he made the cut.
“It took me seven years to fight my way out of a phase of constantly increasing demands in everyday work. On my way there were two psychotherapies, a happiness seminar and finally, last autumn, a five-day intensive course “Personal Stress Management”, which was perhaps the most decisive step. But without the previous experiences it probably wouldn’t have helped me so much. Because apparently it’s part of my nature to work beyond any healthy limits, as I now know. And I also learned that you can – and must – do something about it.
© Orhan Güner
Until last summer, I worked for an insurance company that was growing rapidly, and my workload grew at the same rate. Seven years ago I came within a whisker of burnout for the first time. We were supposed to install new inventory management software, a project that we initially underestimated. The deadline was tight. For several months I often worked 60 to 70 hours a week, often including weekends. I never relaxed, stopped exercising, lived on fast food and sweets, and gained almost 20 kilograms. I lay awake for hours at night, working through to-do lists in my head and thinking that I couldn’t do it all anymore. This combination was a powder keg that was ignited in early 2017 and then exploded. Suddenly I no longer had any energy or strength.
It felt good to pour my heart out to the therapist
I went to see a psychotherapist. He wanted to put me on sick leave for a longer period of time, but I resisted because it would have felt like “giving up”. So I continued to maintain my facade and tried to convey to my colleagues and the managing directors: We can do it.
It felt good to pour my heart out to the therapist. Because before I wasn’t able to talk about my feelings, I bottled it all up. Not many people can handle something like that. At that time I once sat with five close friends and told them how bad I was feeling. I cried a lot. Two of the five friends stayed with me and I lost three. Maybe it was too much for them to see me like that, they knew me to be happy and radiant.
The “brain dumping” helped when I couldn’t sleep
Psychotherapy initially got me back on my feet, but just two years later I needed another one. The happiness seminar also helped me a lot; I was given useful tools for crises. For example, the “brain dumping” method: If I couldn’t sleep again, I sat at the living room table and wrote down the wild thoughts that were bothering me. Afterwards, I was often able to fall asleep. Or the trick with the coffee beans: you put them in your left trouser pocket, and for every happy experience you take one over into your right trouser pocket. At first I counted one or two in the evening, later there were more. Still, it didn’t help me in the long term.
Especially since more and more came on top. Not just professionally. Our son was born two years ago, which is actually a very happy event. But at the time I was currently studying additional business informatics. So the job, the studies, and the friends who wanted to go out with me and whom I didn’t want to disappoint were tearing at me. Worst of all, I had so little time for my wife and son, who needed me now.
At the beginning of last year I had another big project, this time with our US colleagues. When I sat at dinner with my family in the evenings, emails came in with urgent tasks to complete because of the time difference. Sometimes I would confer on the computer until midnight. There were times when I worked for two weeks straight, from early in the morning to late in the evening, without a break.
The stomach cramps started as soon as I entered the office
Then came the physical symptoms. I suffered from chronic diarrhea and stomach cramps that often started when I walked into the office and sometimes got so bad that I had to lie down for half an hour in the middle of the day. Sometimes on the way home from work, a word from a song on the radio would trigger me and I would have to pull over and burst into crying fits.
I became aggressive, not only at work, but also at home. Once when I yelled at my son over something small, my wife said it couldn’t go on like that. I tried to talk to our managing director; we considered many options to relieve my burden, but none seemed promising. In the summer I left the company and took a new job in a large corporation. Lower pay, less responsibility. The mills grind a little slower there, and there was a noticeable relaxation at first. Nevertheless, I soon felt like I was in the hamster wheel again; I had to learn so many new things. At night I worked through to-do lists again.
I found the offer of the five-day intensive course “Personal Stress Management” by chance on my health insurance company’s website. I was looking for another, a definitive way out of being overwhelmed by more and more work. What was promised was “strengthening your personal stress management skills and long-term avoidance chronic stress experiences.” That’s it, I thought and signed up.
There were five participants, a pharmaceutical manager, two self-employed entrepreneurs from the construction industry and, besides me, one from the IT sector. And we had pretty similar problems and symptoms. We worked on a lot in the group. And I think this experience of putting yourself in front of others, telling us about your life, why you are here, opening yourself up, helped us all move forward. I realized I’m not alone, there are so many people who have the same mentality as me. Under the guidance of the coach, an older general practitioner, we recorded our lives and looked for possible causes of our problems.
Actually, I only defined myself by performance and money
I had a key moment when I had to define what work meant to me. I wrote: “Work is there to finance life and to achieve performance.” Then the penny dropped. Wow, I thought. Actually, I only define myself by performance at work and by money. My mental or physical health were secondary . In the evening I thought, where did that come from? Of course it was because my parents didn’t have a lot of money. And I realized that I had to change something about this attitude.
I had another key moment on the fourth day. We learned what transactional analysis means. That our “I” consists of three parts: the parent-I, the adult-I and the child-I. And about myself I learned that the rebellious child-I, who can also say “no”, was completely suppressed . I was driven by the “strict parent self” that told me you have to take care of everything and you have to help everyone. I experienced a third big moment from another course participant who told me: “When I look at your life, then you are a self-made man. You pushed through everything.”
On the fifth day it was all about our vision of the future: We cut out pictures from magazines that showed the motifs we wanted for our lives and stuck them on a DIN A3 sheet. Central to my poster are the words “Chill.” Surrounded by photos of families experiencing happy moments together, a boxing match for the fighter in me, a group of friends on a ski slope, the view from a sailboat into the sunset.
My realization: Everything that is important to me has nothing to do with work
When I look at my life today, this seminar has had a decisive impact. I realized that everything that is important to me has nothing to do with work. If I sometimes forget that, I take out the poster again, I always carry it with me. When I look at it, it feels like someone is injecting me with a drug.
I often think of the participant who recognized me as a “self-made man”, and that helps me regain my self-confidence that I can complete the tasks at hand. I have also learned to say “no”. When I get home from work, it’s over, then I play with my son, take care of my wife or use the vacuum cleaner to clean the apartment. I no longer have a work cell phone and I have free weekends where I don’t think about work.
I could have had all this a few years earlier, I sometimes think wistfully. If I had spoken to my managing director sooner, if I had resigned earlier, if I had listened more to my body and my soul.”