Learning to Sleep Again: a burnout recovery story
In the summer of 2019, I came out of the field (wilderness therapy, 35 day shift) and was deeply tired. It didn’t make a lot of sense, it hadn’t been that hard of a shift, or that long in comparison, but I was feeling pretty done. I tried all the ‘self-care’ and ‘self-love’ ideas that I had - taking baths, journaling, going on walks and runs, going to bed early, eating chocolate, trying to move on and think about the things I was looking forward to. My then partner came out of the field a week later, and after just a couple days he had bounced back… I was going on day 10, and still no bounce. I didn’t really know what to do, I tried to eat more vegetables, I tried to make choices that would support my recovery.
In the following months I realized the amount of sleep I needed… I either had to sleep in the afternoons, or had to go to bed early and sleep late, sometimes both. I started to plan when I would drive, knowing that there were certain times of day that would not be particularly safe for me to be behind the wheel. I had gone through some significant lows, battled some battles, grieved loss, felt lost, etc before. But I had never thought that I was fine in so many ways yet felt so tired and emotional, felt such deep depletion.
I started with the things I knew. Trying to eat more healthy food, chatting with a therapist, all the things that are suggested and that we read about. I spent some time farm sitting so I could focus on me, on being outside, on having meaningful chores to do everyday. I quit my field job and took a 9-5 so I could sleep in a bed every night and work toward having a daily routine. I was lost and lonely on the farm and then found the 9-5 work to be very stressful with not enough time to pursue the things I wanted to do in my time off and not enough time to recover between weeks of stressful work. I would consider that time to be my full extent of burnout. I cried at work in front of the kids I work with, in staff meetings, after work, and in meetings with management. I used sick days as mental health days and tried to rekindle hope in the program and get through but I was just so done.
So there I was, celebrating quitting my job by getting day drunk, feeling free and ready to conquer the world and considering working retail to just have a break… and then Covid happened, I got injured, and had a significant amount of time to sit with myself, read the books that I had wanted to for a long time, and one of the things I really wanted to learn about but had never taken the time was Ayurveda. That lead me to Cate Stillman, which lead me to buying her books, which then lead me to taking the leap and signing up to me mentored by her in Yoga Health Coaching.
I started working the habits, the 10 habits we utilize in Foundations to Thrive, and running some serious experiments in my life. I had to learn how to sleep again! I had to learn how to have a routine each evening that would help me feel tired, at the right time, and to recognize this and leverage this feeling. I started to understand the value of going to bed early. That we fall asleep in a time of day where the energy is descending (kapha time), before that late night second wind of the upward energy (pitta time). I started working toward falling asleep around 9:30, I cut out screen time for the hour before. I ate an earlier and lighter dinner and then did something fun, like play guitar or go for a walk down to the river near where I lived at the time. I would journal and read, and I would pay attention to the tiredness. I massaged my feet before bed, sometimes with lavender oil, and I experimented with drinking golden milk, or turmeric lattes a half hour before bed. I trained myself to be ready to fall asleep before 10 pm, and it worked! I got into a rhythm with the energy of the day, the energy of the setting sun and the tiredness that is so natural, and I listened to it rather than doing the opposite and hyping myself up in the evening or trying to get some more work or studying done.
The result? I started to sleep deeper, more consistently, and in a way that refueled me. I woke up earlier without trying and was excited to get up and try more things (this grew with time, to where it is really exciting now and I consistently get up early, but it started fairly soon!). I was motivated to make good use of my days so that I could relax into my evenings and continue to feel the benefits of deep rest.
What I didn’t know was happening, was that this was creating a new trajectory. One of self healing. That my main focus of refueling and recovering from the deep fatigue I was feeling and to sleep. A space was created in this routine that allowed me to digest some of the emotional Ama (Sanskrit word that just means: that which is undigested. Think of excess tissue, toxins in our tissues that lead to join pain, or in the mental and emotional sense, when we cannot integrate our experiences and feel grounded and resilient again. We have not digested those emotions!) that I was carrying. In modern day culture we might refer to it as “baggage”. Things that had bothered me, that I would have a very emotional response to rather than just an opinion, started to carry far less weight. That made my days better and it was easier to fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up excited. I didn’t find myself ruminating about past events and frustrations.
Once I started to experience this feeling, I wanted more. I wanted to be even more rested and clear in my mind, motivated in the mornings, emotionally stable, able to grow and take on bigger challenges, and to be more light and free from past events. It took discipline, strategy, curiosity and courage in the beginning to make a choice to really change important habits. It took community and support and accountability. Once the journey started, it is going to be really hard to fall of the trajectory of ever evolving habits, to step away from that craving of feeling really and deeply good.
