When healing from burnout means that you were the A**hole

[Note: this post was originally published on Substack January 11, 2025] 

My healing journey continues

The thing about healing from burnout is that there really isn’t an “end.” There isn’t a day the cast comes off and you’re back to full health, the way you might be with a broken arm. It’s a long, slow process of healing one layer, then seeing what’s underneath that needs to be healed and working on that layer for a while, and so on, for far longer than you thought you would need.

I’ve been dealing with far more stress lately than before our big move happened back in May 2024. I knew I was feeling more stress and having a rough time managing it. I also had a true friend tell me recently that I was “headed down a path she’d seen before” and wanted to help me before it got bad.

This is a big reason why you can’t heal from burnout alone. You need your friends to help you when you get off track. It takes a village to heal from burnout. It really does.

What I realized was that all that stress brought me back to a place I thought I’d “fixed” and left behind. It turned out it was just hanging out, waiting for when the stress ramped back up.

Now, I need to deal with it for real because it meant that not only was I hurting myself again, but I also hurt a friend. And neither of those things are OK with me.

I knew I’d been in people-pleaser mode because of the stress, and when the stress got worse, I slipped back into codependency, scared and emotional and in a very selfish place, without even realizing it. It’s not a good look, honestly.

I know I’m susceptible to both of these behaviors because of my high empathy traits and identifying as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).

What lots of places don’t really tell you is that being a people-pleaser means it’s really easy to slip into the next level, codependency, especially if you have had a difficult childhood. They will tell you that each behavior can lead to burnout, but it’s messier in real life, at least for me.

I’ve known what these words were for a while, but I needed to go back and look them up to get specific about what I’d uncovered about myself.

Merriam-Webster defines:

• People pleaser: “a person who has an emotional need to please others often at the expense of his or her own needs or desires.”

• Codependency: “a psychological condition or a relationship in which a person manifesting low self-esteem and a strong desire for approval has an unhealthy attachment to another often controlling or manipulative person (such as a person with an addiction to alcohol or drugs).”

Specific, but not very user friendly. To put it in a more user-friendly form, an article from Calm states,

“Codependency refers to a pattern in relationships where one person's sense of purpose and worth becomes heavily dependent on their partner's needs and behaviors. It's a situation where caring too much and needing to be needed overshadow your own needs and wellbeing.”

The thing is, for me, I wasn’t codependent all the time. Back before burnout, I was mostly a people-pleaser. I thought I had beaten the codependency when I finally got divorced.

Now, when I am actively paying attention to my self-awareness, I can be empathetic without moving into people-pleaser mode. However, when I got really stressed again, I went all the way back down the rabbit hole to being codependent.

Looking back now, it’s a place I don’t like. It’s not who I want to be and not living true to my values. And yet, here I am, looking at the selfish, "needing to be needed” behavior that came up and acknowledging that this is where I am.

One thing I’ve learned on this healing journey is that we don’t have any control over how others respond to our needs, our boundaries, or our bad behavior. I can apologize for what I did, but my friend that I hurt may decide that my behavior was a bridge too far and no longer want anything to do with me.

Even if they decide to give me another chance, a level of trust has been washed away between us. It’s a hard price to pay for something that I deeply regret and am working to keep from happening again.

The thing is, I have to accept that this is a result of a behavior pattern that I hadn’t healed yet. I don’t get to choose how this plays out.

I also don’t get to choose what I heal from.

That’s the hard part about healing.

I have whatever my body thought would protect me at the time that things were happening that I didn’t know how to deal with. That’s what I have to heal.

I only get to choose that I want to heal and how I heal.  

When I came to terms with what had happened, I realized that I still had a lot of work to do. Healing from people-pleasing and codependent behaviors is all about building back your self-esteem and especially your self-worth.

When you learn to believe you are someone with value, just as you are, people-pleasing and codependency can heal.

Thankfully, my business coach just started a book club for the book Worthy by Jamie Kern Lima this winter, which felt like serendipity, honestly. I've learned that when things fall in my lap like that, I need to pay attention! (So far, it’s a great book!)

As I have learned on my journey, and heard again just the other day, awareness is always the first step to healing. Learning how to address your needs and heal from past behavior patterns is all a part of healing from burnout and ensuring you stay out of those traps in the future.