Why women burn out differently
By Chantelle Botha
BURNOUT is often treated as exhaustion, but in women, exhaustion is usually the breaking point. Long before women burn out physically, many have begun buckling under the weight of the identities they carry.
Through my research into the relationship between desire and shame, I’m particularly interested in the little-known roles that identity load and emotional suppression play in the contribution to burnout.
Identity load is measured by how many versions of yourself you are expected to be, often simultaneously, each with competing expectations and emotional demands.
Consider my client: the married mother whose partner is disabled, climbing the corporate ladder whilst completing her PhD.
She is not only mother, but also father; both nurturer and disciplinarian. She is married, yet single. Both bread winner and caregiver. At work, she is an employee, but also a leader. Beyond that, her life carries the oft dismissed identities of friend, lover, daughter, sister, aunt, and even roles such as yoga teacher. Each role asks something different of her, and none pauses while she fulfils another.
Burnout in women extends beyond workplace stress – it’s related to the identity load we carry and the resultant collision of suppressed desire and internalised shame.
She longs to be a lover, yet spends her evenings as a caregiver. She desires greater influence at work, yet measures every opportunity against the needs waiting at home. She dreams of completing her doctorate, yet ends each day with nothing left to give.
This is the inflection point where internalised shame wreaks havoc. The people in her world are supportive (albeit slightly in awe) of her ability to juggle all these roles, but her internal narrative is “what if they find out I am failing dismally at holding it all together?”.
Left unchecked, this pattern of self-abandonment eventually becomes catastrophic burnout. The kind of burnout that goes beyond simple exhaustion, and dismantles your health, relationships, and sense of self.
Recovery from severe burnout can take months or even years, particularly when the underlying identity patterns remain unchanged. Burnout doesn’t resolve simply because we rest. It resolves when the patterns that created it begin to change.
We need to understand that burnout is a systemic problem, and as such, there is no quick fix. The identity patterns that lead to burnout are built over years through what we believe, what we suppress, and what we repeatedly ask our bodies to endure. Identity load is carried both mentally and physiologically.
Desire and shame are embodied experiences. We feel shame as contraction and tension; desire as expansion and energy. If burnout is, in part, the accumulated cost of suppressing one and living from the other, then recovery cannot happen through insight alone. It must also involve the body.
Healing begins when women stop asking, “How can I do more?” and start asking, “What have I stopped allowing myself to want?”. Every act of self-abandonment begins with withdrawing permission from our own desires. Recovery begins with restoring that permission, through new ways of thinking, new ways of inhabiting our bodies, and the small, courageous choices that bring us back into integrity with ourselves.
Identity load explains how we burn out. Shame explains why we stay there. Desire points us home.
Chantelle Botha is the founder of Phoenix and leads research into the relationship between desire, shame and women’s vitality. If this article resonated with you, join Chantelle at one of her upcoming August events exploring permission and courageous self-leadership. Details at https://phoenixconfidence.com/events/
