You’ve mentioned your experience with burnout in a previous post—I wondered if you were willing to share more about that, and how it influenced your approach to EtG if at all.
I sometimes think about whether we have or should have language for a mental health equivalent of Second-Impact syndrome. At the time I burned out I would say I was dealing with four ~independent situations or circumstances that most people would recognise as challenging, but my attitude to each one was ‘this is fine, I can handle this’. Taken one at a time that was probably true, all at once was demonstrably false.
Somehow I needed to notice that I was already dealing with one or two challenging situations and strongly pivot to a defensive posture to avoid taking on even more, similar to how you shouldn’t risk a second concussion shortly after your first one. I think this is a more helpful takeaway than ‘well make fewer missteps next time’, which was my first reaction.
I have taken that posture once or twice since then, but the nature of doing prevention correctly is that you never really know if what you’re doing is actually making a difference. Still, it seems the logical thing to do.
You’ve mentioned your experience with burnout in a previous post—I wondered if you were willing to share more about that, and how it influenced your approach to EtG if at all.
I sometimes think about whether we have or should have language for a mental health equivalent of Second-Impact syndrome. At the time I burned out I would say I was dealing with four ~independent situations or circumstances that most people would recognise as challenging, but my attitude to each one was ‘this is fine, I can handle this’. Taken one at a time that was probably true, all at once was demonstrably false.
Somehow I needed to notice that I was already dealing with one or two challenging situations and strongly pivot to a defensive posture to avoid taking on even more, similar to how you shouldn’t risk a second concussion shortly after your first one. I think this is a more helpful takeaway than ‘well make fewer missteps next time’, which was my first reaction.
I have taken that posture once or twice since then, but the nature of doing prevention correctly is that you never really know if what you’re doing is actually making a difference. Still, it seems the logical thing to do.