Boundaries And Burnout – The Powerful Link Between Them
Healthy boundaries are one of the key tools in the prevention of burnout. When a forest fire is burning out of control, the firefighters don’t keep pouring water on it. They instead put their energy into creating fire breaks, clearing flammable material in a line which acts as a barrier to slow or stop the fire from progressing.
When the fire reaches these boundaries, if they have been well cleared and are of sufficient size, the fire is unable to jump across. And if a fire is hemmed in on all sides by fire breaks, it will eventually burn through the fuel available to it and then eventually go out.
Your own personal forest fire
If you haven’t already, check out this post where I cover what burnout is. Right now though, let’s think about the stress, anxiety, and overwhelm in your life as a forest fire. The fuel that fire is feeding on is your mental, emotional, and physical energy. Left unchecked, your own personal forest fire will consume every ounce of energy you have before it finally begins to die out.
And even once the fire begins to die down, if you never built a fire break, every bit of energy you restore will be consumed by the fire as it reignites and continues to burn.
Boundaries are your own personal fire breaks. Strong healthy boundaries which you enforce and hold firm keep the fire contained. They preserve stores of mental, emotional, and physical energy which the fire can not reach. And if you draw your boundaries tight enough around the fire, you will be able to avoid falling into a state of burnout.
The function of boundaries
To put it simply, boundaries help us define what we are (and are not) willing to do, how we are (and are not) willing to interact with others, and even what we are (and are not) willing to accept from our own internal monologue.
When we draw our boundaries, we declare that we are willing to expend a specific amount of energy on a situation. Whether that energy is measured in units of time, emotional or mental investment, or external resources like money, our boundaries determine how much we are willing to spend and how much we are keeping for ourselves.
Again, if you haven’t already read it, I’m going to send you to check out another post – you can read more about boundaries and how to get started on your path to becoming a boundaries rock star here.
Burnout starts to happen faster than you think
Even once we get comfortable drawing boundaries, it is important that we don’t draw them so wide that we set ourselves up for burnout. You might be familiar with the budgeting concept of “pay yourself first” where you prioritize savings and investments over spending. Or the safety instructions on a plane where you are reminded to put your air mask on before helping others.
The theory behind both of these is that we tend to overestimate our resources – in these cases money and oxygen. But it applies just the same to time, physical energy, and emotional and mental capacity.
I love this guided visualization to really help you understand how important it is that you retain much more energy than you think you might need in order to maintain a healthy balance in your life and avoid burnout. (This is an excerpt from a Masterclass I held on Self-Care – learn more and register for the class here.)
How do you know where to draw a boundary?
We are all unique, and as such, where we each need to draw our boundaries will be different.
The best way to get started is to think of anything on your to-do list, or that is part of your daily life that you either consistently avoid, or each time you do it find that you feel incredibly drained / frustrated / overwhelmed / stressed afterward. When something results in these types of emotions, it is a good indicator that it is taking more of your energy than you have to spare.
Next, try to figure out what part of that task is the most taxing on your energy reserves. It could be the physical act itself, but more often, it will be another component of the interaction that you need to draw the boundary around.
For example – every week you dread the idea of grocery shopping. At the end of it, you return home feeling totally drained. Review each component – what could you change to make the experience feel different? If you rode in a motorized cart to preserve your physical energy would that make a difference? If you did all the shopping online so you didn’t need to interact with anyone, would that change things? Maybe you are uncomfortable with the amount of money you spend only to throw food away uneaten each week? What if you had most of your order setup to auto-deliver weekly so you spent less time on the shopping?
Once you know what you find to be incredibly draining, you are able to draw an appropriate boundary to preserve your energy, finding a balance between necessary tasks and optional ways to execute them.
How to draw boundaries
Sometimes a boundary is simply a new way of approaching an old task like in the grocery shopping example above. However, sometimes a boundary requires you to say no to something or delegate it to someone else.
Perhaps you cook dinner for your family every single night when you get home from work. No matter how tired you are, you get a hot meal on the table – despite the fact that you don’t particularly enjoy cooking. Then everyone rushes through it while staring at their phones and quickly leave the table without even a thank you. Everything about the situation is draining for you.
You might tell your family that you will no longer be cooking dinner each night. Instead you will each take turns, rotating through all family members old enough to prepare a meal. And you add a basket where all phones must be deposited before the meal and can only be picked up after everyone is done eating.
If you have trouble letting go of control over certain tasks you know you need to create a boundary around, it is important to put them into perspective of every yes also being a no.
When you say yes to something that is draining you because you don’t trust someone else to do it, you are at the same time saying no to any activities which would help restore your energy reserves. And vice versa – when you say no to a task and allow someone else to do it (or accept it won’t be done at all), you are saying yes to something you otherwise never had the time, money, or energy for.
Once you set a boundary, hold firm
Setting a boundary is like drawing a line in the sand. You look at someone and say – “if you cross this line, there will be consequences”. If they walk over that line and the only consequence is that you draw another line in the sand and say – “I really mean it this time – don’t cross this line”, neither of you will respect any future boundaries you draw.
This applies if the person crossing the line is an actual person, or if it is instead a situation you allow to cross over a boundary you have set. Regardless of how the boundary is crossed, once you have confirmed to yourself and the world around you that your boundaries are not firm, it becomes that much harder to enforce the next boundary you draw.
And eventually, if you don’t hold firm to your boundaries, you will end up with the forest fire we talked about at the beginning of this post, running rampant without any fire breaks to control it.
The only exception to this is if you determine that a boundary you have drawn is not working for you – either because you drew it in the wrong place, or because your life has changed in a way that makes it no longer appropriate. Let’s go back to the cooking example above – if one day you stumble upon a cooking show which ignites excitement in you about cooking, you might find that instead of delegating that task, you would rather your family help keep with other household tasks instead – each taking a chore daily or weekly to provide you with downtime.
Setting boundaries with yourself
One area I have not talked about much in this post is setting boundaries with your own internal monologue. Think about the things you say to yourself each and every day. How much of it would you be appalled to hear a friend say about themselves? Those are things I work to draw a boundary around, making them simply unacceptable.
For instance – I don’t allow my internal voice to tell me I look ugly when I look in the mirror. It doesn’t matter how exhausted I look, if my skin is broken out from eating too much sugar, or if I have put on a few extra pounds. No matter what – that is not an ok thing for me to say to myself. That is a boundary I drew to protect me from unproductive and unhealthy criticism (something which also eats away at my energy reserves).
If you want to get started on building a healthier relationship with your internal monologue, check out this post to learn more about setting boundaries with your own inner mean girl.
Recognize this is the work of a lifetime, not of a moment
It takes time to build healthy boundaries. Not only do you need to figure out where to draw your lines, you also need to invest time and energy into creating and holding them. Once a boundary is established, you may find that it wasn’t enough. Maybe you decide that you are only going to meet up with a particularly draining friend once a month, but after a few months, you realize even that is too much.
The more you allow your boundaries to be crossed the more burnout you feel and the less energy you have to create and enforce new ones. However, the more you create and hold firm healthy boundaries, the less burnt out you will be and the easier it will be for you to implement new boundaries to help you preserve even more of your energy. If you view this as a journey instead of a one-time task, you can remove the pressure to get the perfect boundaries in place all at once.
And remember that your new boundaries are an adjustment, not just for you, but also for those around you. It will take them time to understand what is and is not acceptable anymore. In practice that looks like a consistent reminder that certain behavior is unacceptable when someone tries to cross a boundary – not a bending of boundaries because someone is still learning the new normal. You may find that in the beginning you baby step some of your new boundaries to make the transition easier for you and those around you. Again, this is the work of a lifetime, not something that will be completed in a single afternoon.
