Coming to Terms With My Limited Energy

About limits and setbacks as a highly sensitive introvert after burnout

Photo by noel o'shaughnessy on Unsplash

What happened to my energy?

I focus a lot on the small positive moments in life on this blog, on the beauty of nature, which I enjoy exploring more and more to my delight, reconnecting with it. I talk about my slow and simple living, about my happy quiet life. And all of this is true.

But that’s not the entire story. It never is.

There were times when balancing my energy worked fine, smoothly, without really thinking about it. Pre internet-era, mind you. Before the world / everything got so damn fast - and scrolling wasn’t invented yet (or at least just as a roll of parchment). Years before I’d known what a highly sensitive person was (although the term applied to me even before it was invented / discovered / aptly named) - and that I am one of them.

Then there were times when I balanced it quite okay-ish. And then, ten years ago, an intense and demanding friendship started and a new job that wasn’t just a job, but my vocation and which became my life. (Not healthy. Can’t recommend it. Both actually.)

If you’ve been reading this blog since the beginning, you know, that it didn’t end well. At the end of 2022, I quit my job after having suffered from burnout / complete exhaustion / nervous breakdown. I took a year off from absolutely everything to recover.

I had lost all my energy, every single bit. I had given all my energy to my job, to this friend, to expectations, to society, I had failed to set up boundaries. (Not healthy. Can’t recommend it either.)

I worried that I was broken beyond recovery.

Vulnerable balance

It took 14 months until I felt like a version of myself again. I rediscovered my long- neglected creativity and started witing again. I promised myself to never ever let anything like this happen to me again. I would protect myself. From now on, I would resolutely create a life that only felt good for me. I would start new.

Some of it worked.

I am much better now than during the final years of my job and the year after I left, and I am more than happy and relieved to have some (or any) energy back. But it stays fragile. Whatever the reason, it’s difficult. There are setbacks and I haven’t regained my previous energy level of energy.

Is it because I have lived beyond my means for years? Or do my body, my soul and my mind say in rare unison: ‘That's enough, we've put up with this for decades, now it's time to live the way that suits us and not society’?

Maybe it’s just because I get older? I’m turning 50 in the summer. Is this it?

Highly Sensitive Person

Sure, part of it is because of me being a highly sensitive person (HSP). An introverted person too. I don’t have the energy for our fast-paced, always-on, stressful modern Western life. The scrolling, the blaring and glaring. You might have met it.

Everyday situations lead to sensory overload. Simple interactions or just a busy environment like a supermarket can leave me drained. Everything feels overwhelmingly intense. Noise. Smells. Light. And don’t get me started on the internet.

My brain works always fast, it makes connections very quickly, sees all kinds of links and possibilities. Which is great when I learn something new, experience something new. I have a very quick grasp, which has helped me a lot in life. But it also has disadvantages, e.g. when I think about going to an event, read job offers, plan an appointment or a meeting with others, I'm already experiencing it in my head as if it was alreading happening. My brain is already running and thinking about all sorts of possibilities and outcomes. Everything has to be deeply thought through and processed. Before and after. It's exhausting. But I've realised that I can't shortcut or skip it. It is what it is.

Mental health issues

I am worrier (no, not a typo). I have anxiety issues and know more about depression than I’d like to know. (My husband and I call her “my shadow” and I am not a big fan of hers.)

They all feed off my energy. As does background stress.

The constant worrying, the anxiety, the depression are long-time companions, but before burnout I was able to balance them out. There were rougher times and there were better times, but my energy overall didn’t hit zero so fast that often. And when it did, I came back relatively quickly most of the time.

The world of snippets

Being too much on the internet is not good for me. Always just reading snippets, lots of scrolling, lots of pictures and animated adverts. Scrolling in general overwhelms me. The fragmented attention makes my brain go fuzzy and foggy.

This is why Substack Notes is problematic, too. I love engaging with long-form texts and my brain copes with them brilliantly. Whereas scrolling through Notes, snippets of different topics and from many different people at a time is exhausting for me, like walking through busy streets where you only ever hear snippets of conversation and there's a constant buzz, like at a venue before a reading or before the beginning of a play while everyone is still talking. It makes me dizzy.

Fighting fast-paced, shallow, unnecessary stuff

I have to be (and I want to be) careful of what I take in: news, shallow content, gossip, adverts, the endless possibilites of Netflix or Spotify, browsing, there's so much unnecessary stuff, everything feeds into it. Everywhere I go, online or offline, everything is trying to grab my attention. Yet so much is so superficial, not ‘real’, has no value to me. I find it a constant battle, and it’s also exhausting.

Social interactions

I am an introvert and I need a lot of time alone. I charge my batteries while being on my own and being somewhere quiet. That’s fine, I love it, I’ve always been this way and I know what to do to stay balanced in this respect.

I like meeting people, I like talking to others (although not on the phone, I dread that). One on one preferably, but small groups up to four will work, too.

I enjoy having deep conversations - with an emphasis on both parts.

I like real conversations, where everyone talks and listens in more or less equal parts. However, I so often end up in the role of the listener, nodding, making encouraging noises and cursing myself for not being able to put up boundaries yet again. It’s like others assume that I have nothing interesting to say, so they keep going on about their life (at great lenght and in great detail). Yawn!

I like deep conversations. Of course, small talk is fine for breaking the ice, but I get bored and depleted at the same time if we stay in shallow waters for two or three hours. Everyone else seems happy, but I am drained. And I don’t really see the point. Is this kind of conversation valuable or enriching?

Maybe some of the people I meet and I just don’t match? Different expectations, different needs?

There are also appointments or the occasional shopping to take into account. Or generally being out and about where there is much traffic, noise, hustle and bustle. All taking a big toll on my energy.

About priorities, rest and living life at my own pace

I’ve learned to live according to my needs. A simple, slow and quiet life suits me on all levels and I wouldn’t want it any different.

I have no fear of missing out of events, vacations in far-away countries, city life, the newest movie or series or anything the advertisers want to convince me I can’t live without. On the contrary.

I don’t watch TV (except biathlon). I prefer watching only selected films (preferably on DVD, yes, I am that old).

I don’t go shopping (not if I can help it).

I’ve stopped listening to music during my work and you’ll never find a radio or TV playing as background sound at home or in the car.

I love gardening and enjoy walking, especially in nature. I don’t do it often enough.

I know it’s indispensable to lie down and switch off for at least 15-20 minutes at lunchtime. I’ve been doing it for over 20 years. Emptying my ‘full cache’ is absolutely necessary after half a day and it’s the single-most helpful strategy I’ve discovered for myself to balance my energy throughout the day.

I love to focus on a book, an actual book in my hand. Long-form is key. Offline is too.

I enjoy listening to radio plays in the dark and shutting out sensory input while doing so in the evening. Apart from ‘emptying my cache’ at lunchtime and immersing myself in a book, nothing relaxes me as quickly as listening to radio plays of The Three Investigators in the dark. (You may not know them, but in Germany they have gained cult status for generations.)

I take all the time I need to rest und do life at my own pace. When I am overwhelmed, tired or stressed, I get rid of it, I try to do less, I rest. I make clear decisions and consciously prioritise the people and projects I want to devote my time to. And that feels good. It helps to feel in charge of my life, opposed to overwhelm, anxiety and the occasional panic attack. It’s freeing.

I feel limited sometimes - and frustrated

That said, I do feel limited sometimes - and frustrated over it.

I’ve limited my social interactions to twice a week. That includes meeting others for a walk or for tea, doctors’ appointments, shopping, library, going somewhere that is not nature, chatting on the phone, attending a reading or a small concert. More is just not possible for me at the moment.

Plus I need at least two days in between two social events to process and recover.

I am interested in so many things, I would like to meet more people (the right ones, of course), not have to split it up so much, visit more exhibitions or talks, go to new places more often, work in an animal shelter. I would also love to get involved in so much more again: animal welfare, nature conservation, maybe becoming a reading mentor.

But I can’t. Not with my current level of energy. And that frustrates me. I’d like to do a lot more, but I don't know if I’ll ever be able to again.

That's why I’ve started to write so much about the small joys here, because sometimes you have nothing else to hold on to. And when all the worries about global politics, social developments and division as well as fear of war are added to the mix, my nervous system quickly goes into panic mode again. I don’t feel safe, something is triggered, it’s overwhelming and even more exhausting and I need a lot of time to get out of it.

That’s where I find myself right now.

In another cycle in which I am in a deep hole and slowly crawling out again.

Acceptance

Accepting where I am now in terms of energy proves to be difficult sometimes. I do struggle with it and I’ve fought against it, but I've seen where that has led. (Not to a good place.)

I struggle even more with the fact that it’s often me who is responsible for the overwhelm. I fail to protect my boundaries, I fail to stop doing something that I actually know is bad for my energy but I do it anyway (internet, I’m looking at you!). Blaming myself leaves me with even less energy than I already have.

Sometimes it’s just life that interrupts all my best intentions. I can’t shut myself off from everything.

Maybe I just need more time. Maybe I’m not as far down the road to recovery as I’ve thought I was. Maybe setbacks are to be expected.

I don't know if it will stay like this, if I will always be so limited in my energy, but I do know that it's definitely a good idea to be careful with the energy I have now. Because either it stays that way and that’s all I have and I have come to terms with that, or I build up more energy again by being mindful of the energy I have, like I have been in the past two years, and slowly building it back up from zero (or from below zero, to be honest).

I also know that my life doesn’t feel so limited anymore when I live in my rhythm, when I work on my writing (for hours on end without getting exhausted at all, I definitely have energy for that and I am most grateful!), when I read books about the many interesting topics out there, when I go for walks in nature and listen to the birds, when I talk to my husband, while staying away from scrolling, the internet, the news, the hectic world. When I focus on what feels good for me and my nervous system. When I focus on the small beautiful moments, the little joys.

I don’t feel exhausted and limited then, quite the opposite.

Then I feel grateful, enriched and just happy.

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