COMMENT BELOW, I want to know. Where in your life do you still lack greyness? I find myself burning out in areas of my life outside of just work, existing still in black-and-white. And that’s not something I think many of us consider possible. My ears were perked by this idea of “escalating commitments”, where even when we start to do something we don’t enjoy we feel obligated to see it through to completion. As a people pleaser, I really resonate with this and I wanted to share with you and hear from you in this topic.
Cadre: To continue this conversation around the concept of burnout and just finding balance for in any facet of our lives, I wanted to probe a particular question to you. A psychologist was talking about escalating expectations or escalating commitments. Cadre: I'm equally as burnt out socially as I was professionally.
Whether I'm at work or at home, I still have no middle ground. It's very black and white, and I haven't been able to create any sense of grayness. Where are you lacking grayness?
Hey Cadre. When I moved back to Massachusetts, one of the bigger reasons outside of just being burnt out was that I had no social life and I'd always been neglecting connecting with other people and making plans and spending money. But this fear or phobia of like what could happen, even though nothing really ever happened, each time I tried to do one of those things, but I still haven't achieved any balance and I keep swinging in the opposite direction. So to continue this conversation around the concept of burnout and just achie balance for in any facet of our lives, I wanted to probe a particular question to you based off something I heard on the radio.
And I regurgitate this information to you full disclosure that I heard this at like 4:30 in the morning in the car. So it piqued my interest. But my exact recollection is probably not ideal. But anywho, what the psychologist on the radio was talking about was this something along the lines of escalating expectations or escalating commitments. And basically her argument was that as humans, when we commit to something or we think we want to do something, we end up feeling this obligation to see it all the way through to the end.
And that's even if it's not enjoyable or it's not what we thought or it feels maladaptive or something, but we end up trying to stick with it. And then sometimes because we stick with it, we end up taking on more commitments or getting more engaged more, even if we don't want to be. So as a people pleaser, as an overthinker, and as someone that inherently burns out, I realize that this is something that happens to me usually in the work setting. But since I've made this shift and I'm trying to work less, not like work less, but work less with the intention to do more and more and try to prove myself and really just sort of exist and do my job and give good patient care.
But I've been doing it in my social life where because I want to have friends and I want to reconnect with family members, I will commit to plans even if I don't really want to, or I will agree to do something knowing that it's probably not my cup of tea. And then over time I end up either regretting it or getting sort of trapped in this vortex of like this plan leads to this plan or this obligation, how it's turned into this and I'm out of time and money and I can't find a babysitter for my dogs like all these things happen, and then I'm, like, equally as burnt out socially as I was professionally.
And so I wanted to ask you, what are events in your life where you feel like you get trapped trying to people please? Or are there areas of your life that you find you are always unsuccessful, achieving some sense of balance? Because right now I'm realizing that whether I'm at work or I'm at home, I still have no middle ground. It's very black and white, and I haven't been able to create any sense of grayness. So where are you lacking grayness?
