Who needs a Burn-Out?

Psychotherapy practice. 7 rue Pierre Haret, Paris 9. Burn-Out Psychotherapy, How to break through a Major Existential Deadlock...
Psychotherapy practice. At the crossroads of Paris 8, Paris 9, Paris 17 and Paris 18.

Whatever its form, associated or not with depression, burn-out is always a sign of a major break in the continuity of your existence. Burn-out literally means, when it happens to you, that you have « burned » all your vital energy reserves. Personally, I think it is actually a real security system of the body, kind of the penultimate attempt, before the final death, to bring you back to reason. Whether the death in question is existential (a Zombie life that no longer has the time or energy for what really matters, even if in the same time you accumulate wealth and professional successes…) or real (death of the body vehicle), « bringing back to reason » means « to force you to be aware of the catastrophic nature of your existential situation (even in case of financial comfort) and force you to refocus on needs more essential to the being that you are ». It doesn’t mean that you have to throw away whatever you are proud to have achieved, but some of your priorities are desperately in need for change…

Thus, the burn-out is a call from your whole body that informs you in a single block, by cutting you the « juice », that he no longer intends to let you run to your loss in this hellish race in which your dictatorial mind has already led you for a far too long time. This Energy of Life is precious and it is time to repatriate it, by forcing you to a forced pause, to reorganize all of it towards more profoundly significant directions of life. More significant than what you were desperately plating all this energy in, until then. Here, no matter how violent it is, you should know that this event is a symptom of an obligatory transition from a way of life that will have to stop and change to make way for a more embodied life. That is to say to a way of being more in tune with the principles and deep necessities of your true Being, which you have obviously neglected in you for far too long.

The violence of the « slap » you have just taken is usually equal to the blindness in which you lived. This is not to say that everything in your life should be questioned, do not throw the baby with the bathwater, the change can and often must be as gradual as the « shock » was radical. A sudden stop often requires a long step back to digest what is happening. If the pause message could not be heard other than by an injunction and a violent judgment of the body, largely independent of your will, it implies that you will first have to « open your eyes » and reassess this abrupt conclusion as something other than a curse that falls on you. This awareness in itself is already, for many, a difficult step to pass, in addition to the possible medical consequences that will also have to be crossed. Here, suffering, denial, frustration, anger, apathy, and victimization, may well be your bedmates at first. And it’s only when you’ve started to let go a little bit about this « great misfortune », that you can finally take the next step, namely « how I do now to deal with the uncertainty of this part of the unknown that now makes my side. Namely, the rest of my new existence… »

It is also important to hear that this burn-out wall, sometimes taken at full speed, is not at all a punishment related to an I do not know what fault you think you would have committed. In the same order of idea, not having listened to the weaker messages that your body had already inevitably sent you before this last big clash is not related to a fault or deficit on your part. If you could not hear earlier and take into account the different « warnings » before the crash, it is because of others unconscious and not necessarily rational imperatives were then still too powerful in you, for you to integrate more serenely the Infos. Never mind, now that you are « locked-in » unable to return to your usual excessive occupations, the work of listening and awareness will finally be possible. Better late than never and there it is of no point in martyring you for not having done it more calmly earlier. If this did not happen, it is because it was simply not psychically possible before. But it is now…

(to follow…)

P.A.M.