When Productivity Meets Burnout: The Importance of Slowing Down

This year saw my beginnings in trauma therapy. While there are many definitions of what trauma therapy is, and varied approaches, I’m clear on one thing: this has been the most significant and most painful (and perhaps rewarding?) undertaking in all of my 45 years. 

As I entered my office this morning at 6.05am, I paused to reflect on what was happening within-telling myself if I’d been up earlier, I could have managed more and been done by lunch time. 

Therein lies the bullshit. 

I’ve been a 4am riser. I’ve been an early starter all of my life. There’s nothing like the stillness of a morning drenched in the early light of the sun, the last moments of the moon and the beginnings of the glorious birdcall on this Country. No rushing past of humans in their cars, buses or children rushing to school. I live across from a school, a bus stop right outside my office window. 

But amongst the early starts has been a long hidden anxiety recalled during therapy this year. I was never afforded experiences to lean into the stillness of the night as many of my neurokindred do. I hear about the ADHD night owls, the autistic gamers and creators, the bipolar writers and other varying neurodivergent folks who live for the hours beyond midnight to find their peace, and I don’t relate. 

I’d wake and check the clock, feeling disappointed it wasn’t time to rise and this would repeat, hour after hour.

When I was most plagued by CPTSD, I found myself rising at 2am and creating-writing, reflecting. The day became night and the night became day and I found myself in the space of where many PDAers land when in burnout-a reversed circadian rhythm. 

I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t cope with the anxiety of checking the clock in my wait of the bird call. I knew I wasn’t okay but I didn’t know how not okay things were. I was so accustomed to pushing through, getting it done, side stepping and dropping off problems for future Kristy. Then I learned about this in relation to early childhood trauma. Pushing through, getting it done, taking it all on without the luxury to reflect on how healthy or unhealthy the load I was carrying truly is. 

When I entered my office this morning, berating myself over a 6am start, I stopped. Since I began therapy, I’ve sat at my office desk to work a handful of times, only when presenting. I don’t like it in there. 

The neurobiological impact of it all is more switched on than any consciousness I could offer. The dissociation in me is more powerful than any self compassion or reality checks I’d afford myself previously and this was evident today. 

My office was a space of chronic stress, panic, overload, overwhelm. Peering over at my desk & walls, shelves & cupboards, I was reminded of how exceptionally cluttered they are.. filled with 'tools' for organisation. Calendars and time mapping journals, clocks and alarms, watches, sticky notes, reminders scrawled in chalk across a wall I painted with blackboard paint. All of it amidst the carefully organised pencils, colour coded in their meticulously arranged containers across beautifully orchestrated wall designs. Shelves of utter chaos, also colour coordinated. Those are the signs of my distress. My need for order. The smaller parts of my world that could be arranged and controlled. 

I felt a pang of sadness as I realised there was no tool, no calendar, no watch, no sticky note or ‘the right colour’ paper; no app or program, no training, no time mapping journal, no ADHD book or specialist that could help me stay on track. 

There is nothing in this world that could have helped me sustain the chaos that was my working life six months ago because it was utterly unsustainable for any human. I pushed myself through all of it for years. Years and years of a completely unmanageable workload and lifestyle that no matter how I shifted or rejigged it, was never going to change and there was no way I was ever going to notice until I was ready to notice. 

Instead, I blamed my neurodivergence in all the ways that dismantled the beauty of my skill set and strengths and disempowered me. I felt hopeless, useless and trapped in a perpetual cycle of chasing my tail. 

The grief I felt in letting go of major parts of my business was very real. A membership of over 500 families I had bonded and connected with and spent hours in community with. The closure of a server for PDA families and their children, where friendships and connection flourished. It was heartbreaking to close down but I tried it all-hiring, upskilling, training, delegating, deferring, culling, even my employees expressed challenges around just some of the daily tasks I was taking on for myself. 

It wasn’t until chronic illness set in and I became desperate, lamenting in the grief of no longer being able to push through, dissociate and defer, that change began to take place. 

What would I be without the constant panic, chasing my tail, in perpetual overwhelm? Who might I be as a person with trauma as opposed to a traumatised person? 

It’s quiet. There’s no panic. There’s no overwhelm or chronic stress. But there is the aftermath of it all..the neurobiological responses to entering my office and the potential for winding up in the same cycle if I’m not careful. 

The difference between then and now? I listen. I pay attention. I pause. 

My pushing through; our collective pushing through is a byproduct of the culture of the new  ‘resilience’. The one where we define resilience as someone who pushes through and ignores their neurobiological response to stress at all costs in order to placate those around us who wait for us to produce, achieve and remain silent. 

This begins in early childhood for many of us, born into a system where our parents are forced into unsustainable lifestyles reinforced by punitive social and economic measures. This then of course bleeds into our current education system and on it continues from there. 

But many of our children are healthier at younger ages now. They are crying out to mirror what is unsustainable. We call them pathologically demand avoidant and bully their caregivers by shaming the ways they love and nurture their children. We dismantle their power before they have a chance to reflect on said power of who they are; how rational and healthy their responses to the current state of the world are. 

And so, in this stillness, I find a new definition of resilience—not the one that asks us to push through and numb our minds and our bodies to meet external demands, but the one that calls us to listen, to pause, and to respond with self compassion. It’s in this space that I’m learning to embrace who I am, not in spite of my trauma, but because of my ability to survive it. 

To all of us, especially our children, whose resistance to a growing culture of unsustainable demands is often pathologized - Let us mirror their wisdom. Let us honour the healthy parts of ourselves that cry out for rest, that demand space to heal; to know ourselves.

This is not a conclusion, but a beginning—a commitment to no longer defer to the chaos, but to cultivate peace within the stillness.

KF