Burnout is not exhaustion, it is loneliness

​I had a work meeting yesterday. As part of the meeting, a collection of bright and caring people discussed ways our work environments can be more trauma sensitive.

The ideas often sound like programs or policies or laws or practices.

I am a fan of all of those approaches. But only if at the heart of each of them is knowing what traumatizes workers most - what traumatizes people in general most - is the feeling that they are going it alone.

They are going at their challenging jobs alone.

They are going at their homelessness and hunger alone.

They are going at their anxiety and depression alone.

They are going at their broken relationships alone.

They are going at their addictions alone.

There's a buzzword out there for people who collapse under the pressure of going at their things alone. That word is burnout.

But too many times burnout is interpreted as someone being exhausted by what they are dealing with, when what they are actually being exhausted by is dealing with it all alone.

Alone in the challenge is what leads to burnout, not the challenge itself.

We were created for community. We have survived the evolution of human existence because of it. Burnout is a result of us turning our backs on both of those truths.

In a culture whose greatest testimony is - we have got this, we've become a culture of - you have got this.

A culture built on the strength of interdependence has become a glorification of independence.

Ask yourself, would I rather tackle something really hard with friends or something really easy all by myself?

When you answer that, and you look around your community at all the people tackling something hard, you'll have taken a giant step into knowing how to best help them.

Sure, policies and practices and programs can help, but not if we don't take the right giant step first.

We are not burning out, we are burning up. And the fire - it is not exhaustion, it is loneliness.

Togetherness, it's become such a watered down approach to life.

But togetherness, it is still plenty intense enough to put out the fire.