Does burnout feel like a cosmic punishment?
May 08, 2025
When my son first went into burnout, I felt like I had done something horribly wrong.
Up until that moment, I had spent my life following the rules, working hard to perform according to society's standards and trying to never upset anyone.
Like many of us high-achieving people-pleasers, I had a silent pact with life that said - Ok, I'll fulfill these expectations in exchange for safety, stability, and love.
Instead, I had seemingly lost my research career to a child who was violent and couldn't eat, and I found myself surrounded by professionals who not only couldn't understand my family's struggles, but thought I was crazy.
I had spent my whole life trying to be "good," yet there I was feeling completely forsaken.
It felt like a cosmic punishment and scary "proof" that somehow I had failed in my quest to be a good human and live a good life.
That is when I awkwardly dove into my quest for meaning. That was five years ago.
There are many ways to find meaning, and my personal route was spiritual. As an academically-minded gal who had previously toggled between atheism and agnostic approaches to faith, this turn surprised even me.
Looking back, I can't help but laugh at the variety of different spiritual teachers I drew on in my desperation. It sounded like a classic joke: a buddhist, a celtic priest, a rabbi, a quaker, a shaman, and a former mormon walk into a bar...
I devoured every book that appeared in my orbit and seemed like it could possibly guide me out of my dark woods:
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
and more...
The 2 main things I took away from this digging were the following:
- Suffering was part of life and belonged as part of my human experience. It was not a punishment, nor was it part of some cosmic cause and effect. It just was.
- The role of spirituality wasn't to make the perceived obstacles and tragedies in my life go away, it was to give me strength to show up and face them. And to connect me to the sense that this was bigger than me, illuminating where I did and did not have control.
These insights have been especially important for my own journey, and also for the families we work with (no matter their spiritual leaning or lack-thereof).
Because sometimes we make great progress with PDA kids and teens, and there are also moments or seasons where things are just shitty and hard, and we spend some time in the sorrow.
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