Navigating Burnout: Thoughts on Stress and Survival from a Procurement Perspective

If you’re anything like me and love a bit of article flicking, you’ll have seen a multitude of posts across Linkedin with tips and tricks of how to spot and recover from stress and burnout. While most are super helpful, I have found that these articles don’t always get all the way under the skin and reach the bone.

Burnout, is a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress. Stress can come from so many places like, the people that manage you (as in my case), juggling the many hats a procurement professional must wear, a specific tender, poor work life balance, bullying and many anything’s more.

The big red flags to watch out for tend to remain similar in all cases (and certainly in mine):

Exhaustion: Feeling drained and fatigued, a constant sick feeling with symptoms like migraines and inability to close your eyes and not still be awake with your mind racing.

Detachment: A real sense of unexplained and unusual negativity (which, for those of you that know me isn’t typically something that you’d connect with my personality) and/or detachment from responsibility (for both work and home).

Rumination: Over thinking and so much difficulty making decisions.

I often wonder whether we tend to gloss over burnout because it’s scary to talk about the ‘stuff’ we’re supposed to be ok with? And on a human level it can often make us/you/me feel vulnerable to say that we’re not coping ok?

Which kind of makes it make sense then that I only discovered burn out because I was burnt out.

In hindsight I’ve realised there were probably multiple times where I was suffering from or on the verge of being burnout. Times where projects were my top priority, and they took over - creeping into my personal life and leaving me with no balance whatsoever. I was often working late into the night, missing school picks ups, picking up little bits across the weekend or even just laying awake through the night ruminating over a particular project deadline. Whenever this happened, I managed to pick myself back up, keep too busy to fully notice and keep going.

In the instance that led me to….wherever I went - there’s not really a verb to describe it - I was riding the wave of a successful job role and the excitement of an adventure somewhere new. I’d been in a team that was collaborative and a place that I felt I was encouraged to use my expertise to make an impact. I quickly realised that where I had moved to was a very toxic environment filled with micromanagement, scare mongering, no respect and absolutely zero trust.

I am very used to starting new roles where I’m thrown in the deep end, I quite enjoy getting to grips with the nuance of a new industry and ways of working. But, being ignored and expected to understand a company, while having my knowledge and every email/phone call/1:1 pulled apart eventually broke me. And while I can recognise it was the culture now, I found it incredibly hard to believe that the problem wasn’t me - no matter how much people around me told me that it wasn’t.

My confidence was completely shattered, and it took me a huge amount of time to just get out of bed and start to re-build myself. Against recommendation I shut myself off and shut down entirely – not sleeping, not eating, and staying in one spot on my sofa without moving or being able to speak. Because I had no idea about burnout, I was entirely confused at how it could happen to me and why I couldn’t just carry on.

While every situation is different, I’m willing to bet that the feeling is always similar and recovery is always difficult. Once I pulled myself back out/up there were a couple of things that really helped me move forwards.

Setting Boundaries: Establishing a work life balance and knowing what doesn’t work for you. To be completely honest, I think this is one that I’m going to need to work on forever. My boundaries are better, but they’re still only just visible. 

Support: I was fortunate enough to be in a position that I could get some external help and it really changed my life. It changed the way I think about everything, how much I cared about certain parts of my life (namely putting work first) and people that weren’t necessarily good for me. But most of all it taught me to put myself first and not last. I opted for CBT therapy, breathing & body therapy, and long-term medication.

Exercise: This is the worst one for me… I really don’t love exercise. But, I did start with little 10 minute walks (sometimes longer). Unfortunately, I didn’t turn into one of those people that then ran a marathon and my lungs still hurt if I break into a jog and manage more than 100m. Being outside and concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other felt great though.

Social Dosing: I mentioned earlier that I shut myself off entirely but eventually being around people recharged my batteries. During this period, I was away from my close family and best friends, so it was difficult to find my tribe – but when I did and along with an exceptional partner – they played a huge part in saving my life.

So, while it didn’t happen overnight (and I can’t stress that enough!) it DID happen and I found myself in a place where I was ready to start a fresh somewhere new, build my confidence back up and take on board all things that I’d learnt about myself.

I’m absolutely nowhere near perfect though I’m not sure that’s the aim – a work in progress is alright for now.