A few people have asked: How do you know what your elephant really wants? I need to think more about this (for me, I just had to cut the bullshit and I knew), but I'd suggest starting with the Forbidden Feeling from this post: https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/crossing-the-cringe-minefield
The forbidden feeling often stems from a basic drive you're not allowing yourself to experience because it's "bad," so that might be a good pointer to what your rider has been selectively blind to.
I have found simply seeking external validation helpful TBH. It's not always a bad thing to want!! E.g. I'm a writer; sending my pieces to friends and family, who are often pretty nice to me, keeps me motivated.
I found the Values Bridge assessment (free version), and Suzy Welch's book "Becoming You" very helpful for uncovering true values, and knowing what it feels like when they are actually values you think you "should" hold.
I have a Substack coming this week about this exact question.
In a nutshell -- yes there are true values, BUT our current values (the ones that our behaviour is showing us that we are valuing) are often built from what was reinforced and taught to us. It's helpful to know our true values yes, but it's even more helpful to FIRST understand our current values so that we can start to overcome the conflict of what we say that we want and what we're actually motivated for.
Like @calereid said -- it often feels like we want external validation because that's just what we've learned feels good in the absence of true self validation.
We have to find the current value, learn different more useful ways of meeting that need and then consciously and slowly build new behaviours in search of new values.
Which substack post are you referring to? Would love to read
I certainly appreciate the need for internal (self) validation, but I've always struggled with the idea of it alone being sufficient. If only because we can't be unbiased observers or evaluators of ourselves
I'll add my anecdote here. In August 2024, I quit my job after 6 years at a startup, 3 of them being always on-call (not by force, kind of by choice, fun to be part of the team and all). 4 years in, I took a 6 week mini-sabbatical hoping it would be enough to address what I called burnout at the time (spoiler: that's not enough recovery time). I made it another 2 years before the stars aligned and it felt OK to quit. I also look back and see how much I rationalized that I was quitting for a ton of other reasons other people would find acceptable - I'd saved up enough money, I've always wanted to take a long break, it's time to pass the torch, I am just not feeling it, I want to do something else for a while... But really I think it was burnout, in hindsight.
I could barely look at a coding terminal without feeling revulsion for a full 365 days. I tried to do two mini projects and failed. I spent a lot of time on the couch, or in front of my computer, doing "not much". That's another judgement of myself - I actually accomplished a lot, but it was just "solving my personal problems". Not having my brain rented out to a company resulted in what I can only describe as magic - I didn't see myself as conducting "long-term burnout repair" but I think that is what my brain was working on in the subconscious. I was doing the things that brought me sustenance but because the results come from the slow drop-at-a-time accumulation I didn't even notice when my watering can got full again.
About a month ago, my watering can got full. "Addiction"-like behaviors (endless scrolling, constant task switching/avoidance) just started to not even seem like an option. I have a tsunami of energy carrying me through the day, I'm getting more done than I ever though was possible for me, and I can't pinpoint where all of the waves started before they joined together. It is too complex to grasp.
this whole essay attracts and confuses me. I don't know whether my elephant or rider (or both?) are fkd. Lot's of 'addiction like behaviors' (SStack scrolling, super-high preference for small/short tasks, no movement on anything large/duration based (martial art, gym)).
Despite 'perfectly functioning' brain (on paper), i am getting fuck all done. Don't have a ledger of authored books, companies, K2 hikes to claim. Again, not sure whether my elephant or rider is asleep or toasted, or what .Still 'want' things, but consta-fucking-ly turning to small-ass tasks and SStack-sized dopamine hits. (FWIW, i can make it sound great on paper -- new job, starting a second one, book reviews for 'name' authors, great friend circle) buuuuut.....core, long-term, haul-ass stuff not getting done.
sigh.
Don't know that there's an answer to this. Just wanted to vent, i guess. Good to see high-performers (ie people with results) talking about this topic.
It's tough, and I actually relate specifically to something you said - "Despite 'perfectly functioning' brain (on paper), i am getting fuck all done." That is what I told myself a lot during burnout. If you really are burnt out, then (1) you are injured and probably should lower your expectations for what is possible to get done, and/or (2) your brain is lying to you and you're actually getting plenty done.
It seems unfair to have things going well on paper and not feeling like things are going well. It's tough to identify *why* one's brain thinks that way too - no two people are the same. I found a therapist that I really vibed with who helped me through that (more indirectly than directly). For me it is just a mix of temperament/parenting styles (well meaning but a lot of "here is how you should think about the world / embody OUR values") and a lot of the trope-y things that people say about "gifted kids" - ironically, the memes about gifted kids growing up and then being miserable poisoned me. Those memes? I believe they are untrue and we should see them for what they are - people who are struggling, and latching on to something that seems like a coherent explanation for their predicament - but identifying with those memes is dangerous and unfair. We should not reduce ourselves to such a thin dimension.
Maybe you're caught in a trap of expectations that are not your own but the result of your upbringing, conditioning, or temperament. What are the "core, long-term, haul-ass stuff not getting done" for you? I had a bunch of ideas in my mind about what that was and had to do a lot of deconstruction of "programming". To use the essay's metaphor - we spend our lives riding an elephant that nobody teaches us how to work with. We are terrified riders and we look at other elephant riders around or ahead of us and see them doing things, and try to mimic what they do as a blueprint of success. We don't tend to notice the ones that struggle (most people struggle in silence and obscurity), so we are exposed to severe availability bias in the form of success stories. The remedy may be a hard reset - you're a beginner, and you gotta forget everything you thought you knew about riding elephants. That takes time.
It's SO HARD to see this from inside the misery box. To make things worse, when you're inside the misery box, a lot of the advice people give (even this post) almost seems like an insane rambling that you have no idea how to apply.
There is usually a lot of ground to cover with inner work: therapy, meditation, journaling. And don't underestimate setting some foundations: even though it might feel like torture for a month, fix your sleep schedule, eat healthy food, cut as far back on drugs as possible. You'll have to cross a chasm but everyone on the other side is cheering for you and understand how hard it is to cross, no judgements from them.
What are the gifted kid memes that you think were counterproductive? I'm somewhat aware of the genre but don't have the context to understand that part of your comment
My (probably biased) taxonomy of the "gifted kid meme" trope:
- In school, you were identified as smart and either put into a "gifted class" or accelerated programs. (my specific example: In 7th grade they literally took a handful of us out of our regular classes once a week and we would learn stuff from random adults, like how to make a webpage with HTML, how to design logic puzzles, I would just say "more advanced problem solving stuff").
- Things were way too easy in early school and until teenage years or even college, you could get by in school without learning how to study or do homework deeply. You would just blast through it because it already made sense, or you would be so interested in it that it didn't feel like "work".
- You are routinely reminded how smart you are and associate being smart with being accepted or loved or whatever (well meaning - but many adults miss rewarding the process rather than the outcome of a high grade)
- When you reach adulthood and things actually require deep focused work, everything comes crashing down because you never had to do real deep work so that skill (it is absolutely a skill) didn't develop.
- (if you believe the anecdotes in the memes) many people who identify with "gifted" are neurodivergent, which muddies the waters because now you're trying to disentangle ADHD or something related with a different issue (you rarely had to work hard to succeed).
The memes are mostly the me_irl type that invoke very high levels of "i relate to that", BUT they are relatable because of the pain, not because it's a fun nostalgia relation.
The key is that you usually don't post or read or relate to gifted kid memes until you actually crash and burn. The memes aren't "i'm still gifted and blah blah" it is "I was gifted and cursed with praise about my potential and now it's not actually happening", and the experiences are extremely relatable for a certain path of life.
I think the result is a mixed bag. It's almost euphoric to read a post and see "holy crap I'm not alone!" especially early into the crash. The memes themselves aren't the problem, it is also how the discourse goes in the comment threads - which fall into the same class as "bad advice" - blanket prescriptions ("this worked for me") that often completely skip the diagnosis. The top comments are almost always "do this to fix yourself", AND since the "gifted kid" associates success with something being easy, telling them to fix their diet, sleep patterns, and habits triggers the *exact same* crash pattern that got them into the mess in the first place. There are good comments that say "do this hard thing" but they don't get nearly as much traction as the "take a pill"-type answer (caveat: pharmacology can be a critical part of the recovery but it's usually a tool not a magic wand. I was on bupropion for a while with mixed results)
Maybe a crude summary is "gifted kids had it easy early in life and didn't learn that you actually have to grind away at things and not expect to immediately be good at everything you do". Different people hit the wall at different times in their lives and kids who hit it early are still malleable enough to realize that hard work does pay off. If you never had to do hard work and nobody told you that it was about the WORK not the outcome, how can we expect them to accept advice that is "do hard work to get out of this... there is no easy win, sorry".
"The top comments are almost always "do this to fix yourself", AND since the "gifted kid" associates success with something being easy, telling them to fix their diet, sleep patterns, and habits triggers the *exact same* crash pattern that got them into the mess in the first place." Oh wow yeah I can see this.
I will add - it wasn't like the recovery period was easy, and I could have also fallen deeper into the addiction-avoidance axis. I think that having some core "stabilities" in my life were a prerequisite to the subconscious healing: A peaceful home, a supportive partner and family, a plan that reduced my anxiety about not having income, and pushing myself to still get involved in local communities instead of trying to do it all alone in a dark room.
Reading this from the floor mattress at my dad's place, after getting a notification that my checking account is overdrawn and credit card is maxed out, over a year into the burnout that caused my divorce and the end of my consulting career. The remaining people in my life aren't sure how to help me and I've been unsure how to help myself. My only agenda item today is to log a few hours on this remote contract gig that landed in my lap this week due to my consulting resume. On paper it's a godsend and exactly what I need. All I have to do is open my laptop and do some tedious but not that difficult stuff in PPT and Excel, and collect $100/hr that I desperately need to cover my debt. But I'm not sure I can do it. It looks exactly like what my elephant rebelled against at BCG.
Instead, I'm going to see if ChatGPT can help me uncover what kind of food my elephant likes. I probably need an immediate and costly signal of loyalty. Just gotta figure out what it'll be.
> The remaining people in my life aren't sure how to help me and I've been unsure how to help myself.
A thought, in case it clarifies or resonates. When I see you write it from the perspective of seeking help, I read an implication that you believe that there is a specific action or remedy you can take to "fix it... NOW or FASTER". I could be wrong! But if that is the case, consider a reframe: there is only so much you can do to go faster, and trying to go faster often backfires. When your leg is broken, you don't start rehab until the bone is mended (or you'll just keep on injuring it). If you've been spending your time trying to *actively fix your burnout*, you might be pushing yourself in the wrong direction sometimes. Some remedies can be poisonous - the dose and timing matter.
If anything, the best help you are probably going to get from others is going to be "let's help Takim understand that it is acceptable to rest and recover, in whatever way makes the most sense for them... and we will be there when they are ready for rehabilitation into action."
that is terrible and I was in the same spot 2 years ago. there is a path back to functioning normally, I'm barely past the trailhead myself but headed in the right direction.
I like this metaphor because it can explain burnout arising from circumstances other than overwork. I’ve felt intense burnout in jobs that were not particularly demanding in terms of time because my elephant brain felt a lack of rewards. In my case, it’s things like autonomy, novelty, and feeling like my work makes a difference.
Those are the things my elephant loves, too! In dog training, they say some dogs are food motivated and some are play motivated. I'm definitely a play-motivated dog.
I have a theory: most people's elephant just wants in-person, chill hang out time with a small group of other elephants they feel safe around. Elephants are very social, tribal creatures. As are monkeys.
If all our time is spent "working" (not usually safe or chill) and "resting" (isolating or using media), then there's no time left for just hanging out. And if all of our so-called "socializing" feels stressful and isn't with a safe and consistent tribe, we will always feel like something isn't right, that we can't let down our guard.
Thinking that your elephant needs relaxation when it actually needs play and novelty is important.
Or, even more likely, thinking that passive entertainment and physical inertia = relaxation, when what you actually need to relax is freedom of thought and physical motion.
A few years ago I burned out from a part time job, and it felt silly—it was just 16 hours per week! And I had been doing it only for a few months! And yet as soon as I stepped out I knew it was the right thing. Also I may be suffering from permanent damage in the form of really really disliking Discord, which was the main communication tool for that job. It kind of sucks because sometimes I want to use Discord for things that are on it that I care about but I really hate it.
Kiki's delivery service's central conflict is arguably about feeding her elephant, as represented by her cat. When her crisis happens she can't understand her cat's speech anymore and he goes off to have some irresponsible sex.
This is one of the clearest explanations of burnout I’ve read because it treats it as a systems failure, not a personal weakness. The elephant-rider framing captures why sheer willpower stops working once the feedback between effort, meaning, and reward breaks. Once that pact is gone, pretending you can think your way out only deepens the damage.
"This is not purely metaphorical. Part of the startling experience of burnout is a split in personality: The voice in your head can yell and yell about what’s supposed to be happening, while the body lies passive, without generating any propulsive energy whatsoever."
This is precisely it. Stress is everyone screaming. Exhaustion is everyone flopping over. Burnout is the strangely dissociative experience of one half of your brain screaming and flailing and digging in the spurs to a totally unresponsive other part.
I just got lucky that 1) my wife noticed what was going on, and 2) COVID saved me. I realised being socially and acceptably 'on' in the office was an additional exhausting grind above and beyond the actual hours of work, and partial work from home removed a ton of that burden even though amount of work didn't change much.
"Stress is everyone screaming. Exhaustion is everyone flopping over. Burnout is the strangely dissociative experience of one half of your brain screaming and flailing and digging in the spurs to a totally unresponsive other part." yes! great description
"Ultimately, you can’t go anywhere without your elephant. Sure, the rider can imagine it controls everything — that it’s capable of endless achievement, that it will never rest again, that it doesn’t possess humiliatingly normal needs. The rider, gifted with imagination, can pretend it is an infinite being, right up until the moment the elephant stops playing along."
The last sentence of this paragraph is the one that people that have yet to experience the true brunt of a burnout induced mental shut down should take very deep note of; it happens almost at a moment's notice.
This is timely, thanks for sharing your wisdom. I've been grinding nearly non-stop on my business since quitting my job to start it in 2011. A few years ago, as a loved one was diagnosed with cancer and I had to take care of them, I started to feel burned out. Two years into it... really burned out. And when my business went under rather rapidly in October last year from LLMs making it completely redundant, well... I think the universe is sending me a message to rest and reflect before figuring out the next chapter of my life.
Thank you for writing this. It has been suggested to me that I’ve been burned out, but I have always taken it to mean ‘stressed’ or ‘overworked’, which seemed impossible as my job is hardly stressful in comparison to prior ones. The notion that it is a breaking down between rider and elephant has put this in new light for me. And hopefully I’m on my way to repairing that relationship.
This was recommended to me by one of my close friends and mentors, an MD certified Hospitalist who specializes in trauma recovery. It's an incredibly helpful framework! I'm linking it up with my trusted sys folks. Be well.
I enjoyed this post for many reasons, not least of which that I also recovered from burnout by becoming a professional poker player. (Before your time, I think.)
At the time I told myself I was playing for the money, as you’re supposed to, and I did make a lot of money, but I was mostly playing for other reasons.
I’m curious if those are scare quotes around “recovered” or if poker actually helped you recover. It certainly did for me!
A few people have asked: How do you know what your elephant really wants? I need to think more about this (for me, I just had to cut the bullshit and I knew), but I'd suggest starting with the Forbidden Feeling from this post: https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/crossing-the-cringe-minefield
The forbidden feeling often stems from a basic drive you're not allowing yourself to experience because it's "bad," so that might be a good pointer to what your rider has been selectively blind to.
Edit: I recommend this piece by @aelle as a supplement on this question! https://ponderingperspectives.substack.com/p/no-but-how-do-you-stop-burnout-really
What if what your elephant really wants is external validation?
Asking for a friend
I have found simply seeking external validation helpful TBH. It's not always a bad thing to want!! E.g. I'm a writer; sending my pieces to friends and family, who are often pretty nice to me, keeps me motivated.
This! IFS helped me. FWIW.
Came here to ask the question in this vein. I also read https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oxGpocpzzbBNdtmf6/my-model-of-ea-burnout-logan-strohl recently and wanted other's advice on - how to figure out what are your "true values" instead of the ones that you think you "should" hold? What does the elephant want!?
Oh great post! I'd never seen it before.
I found the Values Bridge assessment (free version), and Suzy Welch's book "Becoming You" very helpful for uncovering true values, and knowing what it feels like when they are actually values you think you "should" hold.
Hope it's not uncouth, since you asked: I wrote a full article on the specific exercises I used to figure out my own values post burnout.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-183903032
Oh, such a good question!
I have a Substack coming this week about this exact question.
In a nutshell -- yes there are true values, BUT our current values (the ones that our behaviour is showing us that we are valuing) are often built from what was reinforced and taught to us. It's helpful to know our true values yes, but it's even more helpful to FIRST understand our current values so that we can start to overcome the conflict of what we say that we want and what we're actually motivated for.
Like @calereid said -- it often feels like we want external validation because that's just what we've learned feels good in the absence of true self validation.
We have to find the current value, learn different more useful ways of meeting that need and then consciously and slowly build new behaviours in search of new values.
Which substack post are you referring to? Would love to read
I certainly appreciate the need for internal (self) validation, but I've always struggled with the idea of it alone being sufficient. If only because we can't be unbiased observers or evaluators of ourselves
I'll add my anecdote here. In August 2024, I quit my job after 6 years at a startup, 3 of them being always on-call (not by force, kind of by choice, fun to be part of the team and all). 4 years in, I took a 6 week mini-sabbatical hoping it would be enough to address what I called burnout at the time (spoiler: that's not enough recovery time). I made it another 2 years before the stars aligned and it felt OK to quit. I also look back and see how much I rationalized that I was quitting for a ton of other reasons other people would find acceptable - I'd saved up enough money, I've always wanted to take a long break, it's time to pass the torch, I am just not feeling it, I want to do something else for a while... But really I think it was burnout, in hindsight.
I could barely look at a coding terminal without feeling revulsion for a full 365 days. I tried to do two mini projects and failed. I spent a lot of time on the couch, or in front of my computer, doing "not much". That's another judgement of myself - I actually accomplished a lot, but it was just "solving my personal problems". Not having my brain rented out to a company resulted in what I can only describe as magic - I didn't see myself as conducting "long-term burnout repair" but I think that is what my brain was working on in the subconscious. I was doing the things that brought me sustenance but because the results come from the slow drop-at-a-time accumulation I didn't even notice when my watering can got full again.
About a month ago, my watering can got full. "Addiction"-like behaviors (endless scrolling, constant task switching/avoidance) just started to not even seem like an option. I have a tsunami of energy carrying me through the day, I'm getting more done than I ever though was possible for me, and I can't pinpoint where all of the waves started before they joined together. It is too complex to grasp.
I'm so glad you're feeling better again -- that must be such a relief!
I appreciate that, Cate :) Relief is a great way to describe it. So much space now!
Thank you for writing and sharing this piece. It will definitely help a lot of people who stop by to read it.
this whole essay attracts and confuses me. I don't know whether my elephant or rider (or both?) are fkd. Lot's of 'addiction like behaviors' (SStack scrolling, super-high preference for small/short tasks, no movement on anything large/duration based (martial art, gym)).
Despite 'perfectly functioning' brain (on paper), i am getting fuck all done. Don't have a ledger of authored books, companies, K2 hikes to claim. Again, not sure whether my elephant or rider is asleep or toasted, or what .Still 'want' things, but consta-fucking-ly turning to small-ass tasks and SStack-sized dopamine hits. (FWIW, i can make it sound great on paper -- new job, starting a second one, book reviews for 'name' authors, great friend circle) buuuuut.....core, long-term, haul-ass stuff not getting done.
sigh.
Don't know that there's an answer to this. Just wanted to vent, i guess. Good to see high-performers (ie people with results) talking about this topic.
It's tough, and I actually relate specifically to something you said - "Despite 'perfectly functioning' brain (on paper), i am getting fuck all done." That is what I told myself a lot during burnout. If you really are burnt out, then (1) you are injured and probably should lower your expectations for what is possible to get done, and/or (2) your brain is lying to you and you're actually getting plenty done.
It seems unfair to have things going well on paper and not feeling like things are going well. It's tough to identify *why* one's brain thinks that way too - no two people are the same. I found a therapist that I really vibed with who helped me through that (more indirectly than directly). For me it is just a mix of temperament/parenting styles (well meaning but a lot of "here is how you should think about the world / embody OUR values") and a lot of the trope-y things that people say about "gifted kids" - ironically, the memes about gifted kids growing up and then being miserable poisoned me. Those memes? I believe they are untrue and we should see them for what they are - people who are struggling, and latching on to something that seems like a coherent explanation for their predicament - but identifying with those memes is dangerous and unfair. We should not reduce ourselves to such a thin dimension.
Maybe you're caught in a trap of expectations that are not your own but the result of your upbringing, conditioning, or temperament. What are the "core, long-term, haul-ass stuff not getting done" for you? I had a bunch of ideas in my mind about what that was and had to do a lot of deconstruction of "programming". To use the essay's metaphor - we spend our lives riding an elephant that nobody teaches us how to work with. We are terrified riders and we look at other elephant riders around or ahead of us and see them doing things, and try to mimic what they do as a blueprint of success. We don't tend to notice the ones that struggle (most people struggle in silence and obscurity), so we are exposed to severe availability bias in the form of success stories. The remedy may be a hard reset - you're a beginner, and you gotta forget everything you thought you knew about riding elephants. That takes time.
It's SO HARD to see this from inside the misery box. To make things worse, when you're inside the misery box, a lot of the advice people give (even this post) almost seems like an insane rambling that you have no idea how to apply.
There is usually a lot of ground to cover with inner work: therapy, meditation, journaling. And don't underestimate setting some foundations: even though it might feel like torture for a month, fix your sleep schedule, eat healthy food, cut as far back on drugs as possible. You'll have to cross a chasm but everyone on the other side is cheering for you and understand how hard it is to cross, no judgements from them.
What are the gifted kid memes that you think were counterproductive? I'm somewhat aware of the genre but don't have the context to understand that part of your comment
My (probably biased) taxonomy of the "gifted kid meme" trope:
- In school, you were identified as smart and either put into a "gifted class" or accelerated programs. (my specific example: In 7th grade they literally took a handful of us out of our regular classes once a week and we would learn stuff from random adults, like how to make a webpage with HTML, how to design logic puzzles, I would just say "more advanced problem solving stuff").
- Things were way too easy in early school and until teenage years or even college, you could get by in school without learning how to study or do homework deeply. You would just blast through it because it already made sense, or you would be so interested in it that it didn't feel like "work".
- You are routinely reminded how smart you are and associate being smart with being accepted or loved or whatever (well meaning - but many adults miss rewarding the process rather than the outcome of a high grade)
- When you reach adulthood and things actually require deep focused work, everything comes crashing down because you never had to do real deep work so that skill (it is absolutely a skill) didn't develop.
- (if you believe the anecdotes in the memes) many people who identify with "gifted" are neurodivergent, which muddies the waters because now you're trying to disentangle ADHD or something related with a different issue (you rarely had to work hard to succeed).
The memes are mostly the me_irl type that invoke very high levels of "i relate to that", BUT they are relatable because of the pain, not because it's a fun nostalgia relation.
The key is that you usually don't post or read or relate to gifted kid memes until you actually crash and burn. The memes aren't "i'm still gifted and blah blah" it is "I was gifted and cursed with praise about my potential and now it's not actually happening", and the experiences are extremely relatable for a certain path of life.
I think the result is a mixed bag. It's almost euphoric to read a post and see "holy crap I'm not alone!" especially early into the crash. The memes themselves aren't the problem, it is also how the discourse goes in the comment threads - which fall into the same class as "bad advice" - blanket prescriptions ("this worked for me") that often completely skip the diagnosis. The top comments are almost always "do this to fix yourself", AND since the "gifted kid" associates success with something being easy, telling them to fix their diet, sleep patterns, and habits triggers the *exact same* crash pattern that got them into the mess in the first place. There are good comments that say "do this hard thing" but they don't get nearly as much traction as the "take a pill"-type answer (caveat: pharmacology can be a critical part of the recovery but it's usually a tool not a magic wand. I was on bupropion for a while with mixed results)
Maybe a crude summary is "gifted kids had it easy early in life and didn't learn that you actually have to grind away at things and not expect to immediately be good at everything you do". Different people hit the wall at different times in their lives and kids who hit it early are still malleable enough to realize that hard work does pay off. If you never had to do hard work and nobody told you that it was about the WORK not the outcome, how can we expect them to accept advice that is "do hard work to get out of this... there is no easy win, sorry".
"The top comments are almost always "do this to fix yourself", AND since the "gifted kid" associates success with something being easy, telling them to fix their diet, sleep patterns, and habits triggers the *exact same* crash pattern that got them into the mess in the first place." Oh wow yeah I can see this.
This seems very relevant to the conversation:
https://celestemdavis.substack.com/p/new-years-resolutions
tl;dr people always suggest individual effort hacks, but the actual predictor of happiness and health is someone's strength of social relationships.
Thank you.
This is very inspiring to me!
Happy to hear it :)
I will add - it wasn't like the recovery period was easy, and I could have also fallen deeper into the addiction-avoidance axis. I think that having some core "stabilities" in my life were a prerequisite to the subconscious healing: A peaceful home, a supportive partner and family, a plan that reduced my anxiety about not having income, and pushing myself to still get involved in local communities instead of trying to do it all alone in a dark room.
Inspiring to me too, thanks for sharing :)
Reading this from the floor mattress at my dad's place, after getting a notification that my checking account is overdrawn and credit card is maxed out, over a year into the burnout that caused my divorce and the end of my consulting career. The remaining people in my life aren't sure how to help me and I've been unsure how to help myself. My only agenda item today is to log a few hours on this remote contract gig that landed in my lap this week due to my consulting resume. On paper it's a godsend and exactly what I need. All I have to do is open my laptop and do some tedious but not that difficult stuff in PPT and Excel, and collect $100/hr that I desperately need to cover my debt. But I'm not sure I can do it. It looks exactly like what my elephant rebelled against at BCG.
Instead, I'm going to see if ChatGPT can help me uncover what kind of food my elephant likes. I probably need an immediate and costly signal of loyalty. Just gotta figure out what it'll be.
> The remaining people in my life aren't sure how to help me and I've been unsure how to help myself.
A thought, in case it clarifies or resonates. When I see you write it from the perspective of seeking help, I read an implication that you believe that there is a specific action or remedy you can take to "fix it... NOW or FASTER". I could be wrong! But if that is the case, consider a reframe: there is only so much you can do to go faster, and trying to go faster often backfires. When your leg is broken, you don't start rehab until the bone is mended (or you'll just keep on injuring it). If you've been spending your time trying to *actively fix your burnout*, you might be pushing yourself in the wrong direction sometimes. Some remedies can be poisonous - the dose and timing matter.
If anything, the best help you are probably going to get from others is going to be "let's help Takim understand that it is acceptable to rest and recover, in whatever way makes the most sense for them... and we will be there when they are ready for rehabilitation into action."
Right. You can’t recover from burnout with the tools that lead you to burnout. You can’t have an optimized or productive recovery.
Try Claude to speak to the elephant. Ask ChatGPT to make the work documents.
Maybe...talk to a human friend who has known you for a long time? Someone who actually cares about you?
that is terrible and I was in the same spot 2 years ago. there is a path back to functioning normally, I'm barely past the trailhead myself but headed in the right direction.
I like this metaphor because it can explain burnout arising from circumstances other than overwork. I’ve felt intense burnout in jobs that were not particularly demanding in terms of time because my elephant brain felt a lack of rewards. In my case, it’s things like autonomy, novelty, and feeling like my work makes a difference.
Those are the things my elephant loves, too! In dog training, they say some dogs are food motivated and some are play motivated. I'm definitely a play-motivated dog.
I have a theory: most people's elephant just wants in-person, chill hang out time with a small group of other elephants they feel safe around. Elephants are very social, tribal creatures. As are monkeys.
If all our time is spent "working" (not usually safe or chill) and "resting" (isolating or using media), then there's no time left for just hanging out. And if all of our so-called "socializing" feels stressful and isn't with a safe and consistent tribe, we will always feel like something isn't right, that we can't let down our guard.
Thinking that your elephant needs relaxation when it actually needs play and novelty is important.
Or, even more likely, thinking that passive entertainment and physical inertia = relaxation, when what you actually need to relax is freedom of thought and physical motion.
A few years ago I burned out from a part time job, and it felt silly—it was just 16 hours per week! And I had been doing it only for a few months! And yet as soon as I stepped out I knew it was the right thing. Also I may be suffering from permanent damage in the form of really really disliking Discord, which was the main communication tool for that job. It kind of sucks because sometimes I want to use Discord for things that are on it that I care about but I really hate it.
Kiki's delivery service's central conflict is arguably about feeding her elephant, as represented by her cat. When her crisis happens she can't understand her cat's speech anymore and he goes off to have some irresponsible sex.
This is one of the clearest explanations of burnout I’ve read because it treats it as a systems failure, not a personal weakness. The elephant-rider framing captures why sheer willpower stops working once the feedback between effort, meaning, and reward breaks. Once that pact is gone, pretending you can think your way out only deepens the damage.
I really like the way you described this!
"This is not purely metaphorical. Part of the startling experience of burnout is a split in personality: The voice in your head can yell and yell about what’s supposed to be happening, while the body lies passive, without generating any propulsive energy whatsoever."
This is precisely it. Stress is everyone screaming. Exhaustion is everyone flopping over. Burnout is the strangely dissociative experience of one half of your brain screaming and flailing and digging in the spurs to a totally unresponsive other part.
I just got lucky that 1) my wife noticed what was going on, and 2) COVID saved me. I realised being socially and acceptably 'on' in the office was an additional exhausting grind above and beyond the actual hours of work, and partial work from home removed a ton of that burden even though amount of work didn't change much.
"Stress is everyone screaming. Exhaustion is everyone flopping over. Burnout is the strangely dissociative experience of one half of your brain screaming and flailing and digging in the spurs to a totally unresponsive other part." yes! great description
"Ultimately, you can’t go anywhere without your elephant. Sure, the rider can imagine it controls everything — that it’s capable of endless achievement, that it will never rest again, that it doesn’t possess humiliatingly normal needs. The rider, gifted with imagination, can pretend it is an infinite being, right up until the moment the elephant stops playing along."
The last sentence of this paragraph is the one that people that have yet to experience the true brunt of a burnout induced mental shut down should take very deep note of; it happens almost at a moment's notice.
Another wonderul article Cate !
I want 2 b elephant whisperer 👂🏼🐘🥕
This is timely, thanks for sharing your wisdom. I've been grinding nearly non-stop on my business since quitting my job to start it in 2011. A few years ago, as a loved one was diagnosed with cancer and I had to take care of them, I started to feel burned out. Two years into it... really burned out. And when my business went under rather rapidly in October last year from LLMs making it completely redundant, well... I think the universe is sending me a message to rest and reflect before figuring out the next chapter of my life.
Thank you for writing this. It has been suggested to me that I’ve been burned out, but I have always taken it to mean ‘stressed’ or ‘overworked’, which seemed impossible as my job is hardly stressful in comparison to prior ones. The notion that it is a breaking down between rider and elephant has put this in new light for me. And hopefully I’m on my way to repairing that relationship.
This was recommended to me by one of my close friends and mentors, an MD certified Hospitalist who specializes in trauma recovery. It's an incredibly helpful framework! I'm linking it up with my trusted sys folks. Be well.
I enjoyed this post for many reasons, not least of which that I also recovered from burnout by becoming a professional poker player. (Before your time, I think.)
At the time I told myself I was playing for the money, as you’re supposed to, and I did make a lot of money, but I was mostly playing for other reasons.
I’m curious if those are scare quotes around “recovered” or if poker actually helped you recover. It certainly did for me!