Well, I looked at my blog posts and realized that my last post was on March 31st. Wow, I didn't think it was that long ago. Time really does fly.
A lot of things have happened over the past three months. In fact, I can't believe three months have flown by so quickly. I am not going to recap the last three months, stuff happened, I went on vacation, and more stuff happened (condensed recap). Instead, this blog is about how not asking for help + feeling overwhelmed = burnout.
As you all know, I was promoted to the Lead Clinician position at work back in November. Well things have not been going that great at work. I had to take on extra duties and felt like I was working all the time. I also had to deal with fall-out from a wonderful Medicaid audit (which was soooo much fun). So I did what any healthy, well-rounded, person would do, I shut down.
I know, healthy, well-rounded people do not shut down because healthy, well-rounded people know to ask for help. I did not ask for help partly because I wasn't sure who to ask and partly because I am very dense at times and felt that it would look like I was weak or that I couldn't handle my job if I asked for help. So for most of the month of July I was a walking zombie and it began to effect everyone around me.
How did I wake up? I was hit by a bolt of lightning. Not literally, I had a meeting with my supervisors and they told me that I needed to refocus because I was not being a leader in the office. The other thing they told me was that, by not focusing on the important aspects of the job, I was putting other people's jobs at risk. Whoa, there's the lightning. The last thing I wanted to do was to hurt the people I work with. I really like the people I work with and I did not want them to worry about losing their jobs. So, the meeting and a pep talk from a wonderful friend help to wake me up and, honestly, I feel really good. Feeling burned out is very tiring and I didn't realize how horrible I felt until I came out of it.
What did I learn from this experience? Do not be afraid to ask for help. It takes a strong person to reach out and ask for help and the weak one to try to take everything on by yourself.
Thanks for reading. I will post again soon, I promise. :)
